A Story about Vietnamese Life
“Up From The Paddies”
It is often said by Vietnamese, when rice is good, life is good. When there is no rice, there is no life. These were the times when the truth of the saying was tested and found to be all too true.
When Chien started school, his lunchbox was full. When Cong started a couple of years later, his lunchbox was half-full. By the time I started school, the contents of all our lunchboxes, if put together, were seldom enough to keep a mouse alive. Our stomachs were empty. The time of the great famine had come.
There was no plague of locusts that ate the crops, no flood which drowned our crops. Instead ,the famine was due to the coming together of two very different things: an unprecedented drought and mounting government debt.
Read about how my brothers and I discovered that even dead snakes still bite. Come with us as we hunt whatever nature gives us for food and fun. Follow me as I defy traditional filial obedience and become a university student and later, tour guide. Laugh at me as I make mistakes and learn to cope with mistakes of others. Follow me to Europe where I have an indecent proposal and escape drug dealers. Come back with me to Vietnam and listen to how I found success only to lose everything, rebuild and lose everything again.
Come into my world and listen to the stories from my family that will make you sometimes want to turn away and close the book but will still force you to read on and on to find out how I ultimately satisfy my thirst for a better life despite the roadblocks and landslides that stand in my way.
Sample Stories