The Mountains Sing

|| @nguyen_p_quemai #TheMountainsSing #bookreview #comingofage #VietnamWar #historicalfiction #familysaga #warfiction #theGreatFamine #theLandReform #booksbypoc #readingasiapacific #stopasianhate

TW: War, Lynch, Massacre, Post-War PTSD.

The Vietnam war isn’t something new to me, but I needed a reason to talk about it. Since we are doing this to #stopasianhate , I wouldn’t miss this perfect opportunity to explain it. Read The Mountains Sing for #readingasiapacific that covers a vast timeline. I will part it into two,

Part I : The Vietnam colonialism and wartime and Part II: My take on the book.

Part I: The Vietnam War. Timeline: 1940 – 1975

Type: Conflict between Communist North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam plus allies.

Roots: French colonialism has been ruling since the 19th century. And during WWII, the Japanese invaded Viet Nam. Ho Chi Minh(Born as Nguyen Sinh Cung) was expelled for protesting against Emperor Bao Dai and French rule in Indochina. Inspired by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet communism, he started recruiting members for the Indochinese Communist Party.

Viet Minh: When Germany defeated France in WWII(1940), Minh along with his allies formed Viet Minh or League for the Independence of Vietnam. This was the time when Vietnam was under the drastic effects of “The Great Hunger” or The Vietnam Famine whose direct factors were French colonization, WWII, and the ongoing Natural disasters. When Japanese forces withdrew from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control of an independent Vietnam, led by Vo Nguyen Giap, Viet Minh forces seized the northern city of Hanoi and declared a Democratic State of Vietnam (known commonly as North Vietnam, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) with Ho as president. In a vision of a Unified Vietnam but with their respective concepts, Ho and Bao stood against each other tearing the country into two parts, The Soviet Supported North Vietnam of Minh and the US-backed South Vietnam of Bao.

Viet Cong or NLF: National Liberation Front was the guerrilla force of South Vietnam that supported North communist Vietnam in the Tet Offensive. Any sympathizer of communist Vietnam was included in it and together was dubbed as Viet Cong.

Agent Orange: From 1961 to 1971, the US Army executed a herbicidal warfare program (along with the bombing campaigns) called the “Operation Ranch Hand” where military troops in aircraft drenched roads, rivers, canals, rice paddies, and farmland with powerful mixtures of harmful herbicides, called the agent orange that caused severe health issues. (Know more about Agent Orange here)

Tet Offensive: January 1968, a crusade of surprise attack was executed in 100 cities of South Vietnam by the NLF and PAVN army against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and US troops leading to the Battle of Hue that resulted in one of the bloodiest Massacre of Vietnam, The Massacre of Hue that not only harmed the US soldiers but also the civilians. This created disbelief for the US govt among Americans and stunned by this, Republican Nixon called out for Vietnamization- a movement where the US troops were withdrawn from the site and the aerial and artillery bombardment were increased giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war.

My Lai Massacre: Then occurred the most shocking war crime of Viet Nam in march 1968, The My Lai Massacre. Unarmed men were slain, women were raped, mothers were shot, children were slaughtered and the village was burned down. This act was tried to cover up and took around 20 months to come into the light.

Leaving you to find out how the war ended and which side was primarily responsible for results, I will take the time to talk about the aftermaths,

The Post-War PTSD of the Veterans: In 1983, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS)1 was conducted by the U.S. government to better understand the development of PTSD from the Vietnam War, and the results were alarming. The reasons were War-Trauma, loss of near ones, friends from troops, self-medication during wartime, and misperception due to frequent failures. And most of these had long-term impacts.

What’s Left?: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Warfare had demolished the country’s infrastructure and economy.

Part II: The Mountains sing

Author: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2020. Length: 255 pages. Original Published Language: English Genres: Historical Fiction, War story, Coming-of-age story, Domestic Fiction

Blurb: {With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Tran family, set against the backdrop of the Viet Nam War. Tran Dieu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Noi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Ho Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Viet Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. This is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s first novel in English.}

I was excited enough to listen to all her interviews and got to know that the details were inspired by her own experiences and also those around her. (Must check the interview with 2020 quarantine book club here.)

This is for the author: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, please tell me why both Trấn Diệu Lan and Hủỏng sound so similar while explaining their POVs? Was it intentional? If it was, it worked for me.

If you have read everything above, you might have gone through the dark phase of the Vietnam war. Now would you believe if I tell you that Quế Mai taught us to find lights in the most impossible places? Two powerful Protagonists, two intersecting timelines, a beautiful portrayal of Viet Nam culture, introduction to age-old proverbs, food culture, love, and pride. This story has everything. Quế Mai has covered quite a span in such a small book. If you are a thicc book addict and believe that history can be told in voluminous projects only, I have something for you. Simple words, flowy lines, additional detailings, and less complicated characters weaved beautifully giving me a fable-like experience. No wonder Quế Mai is being appreciated for her debut English novel, she understands her target audience, she did it for us to realize, she introduced us to the traditions and beliefs of Vietnam.

Now to the bitter part, it shattered my heart and glue together, again and again. This is not a war book. It is a book about a country that faced atrocities, broke into pieces, and rose again like a phoenix.

This is a book of survival.

At no point, I found any biased opinions of the author. She questioned each flank impartially. (You might want to learn how to pronounce the Vietnamese names and words after this. It helps to understand the story better.)

As the grandma narrates her life, you dive into the brutally devastating history of Vietnam that suffered The Japanese Occupation, The French Colonization, The Great Hunger, and The Land Reforms. When the story jumps to the POV of the granddaughter, the brutality continues but now it’s Vietnam’s people shriveling each other in the Viet Nam War, backed up with forces that do not belong to them.

You can see the authenticity of the history at each part of the piece since the author is a native, she is familiar with the customs, culture, and food(oh, the Vietnamese food! Okay now focus).

Here’s something from the book I would like to share,

“For my grandmother, who perished in the Great Hunger; for my grandfather, who died because of the Land Reform; and for my uncle, whose youth the Vietnam War consumed.”

At this point, I want you to go back to the previous post and read about the events. And then you can understand her anguish.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, you are a survivor too. You gave life to a forgotten story that the world needs to remember. You changed the general Americanized perspective of the Vietnam war. You showed them the true Viet Nam.

If this review has convinced you enough, then find your copies at the links below

1. Listen to the audiobook on Audible 2. Get your Amazon copy here. 3. Listen to it free on Spotify

If you are still not over the book, here’s something more for you.

* Some beautiful quotes from the book.

* Other amazing works by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

* Author Que Mai reading out a part of The Mountains Sing for you.

(If you like my work, like & share this page and follow me on Instagram @ Utkirtana )

Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng.

When Nien Cheng said

“Justice? What is justice? It’s a mere word. It’s an abstract word with no universal meaning. To different classes of people, justice means different things”,

I felt that.

Ananya’s post had a question, ” why is hate an easy emotion?”. It’s because of the fear of the unknown and the desire for a scapegoat to funnel their negative energy.

#qotd : Have you ever noticed that it’s always easier for people to hate a community rather than hating an individual? Do you know why?

China’s cultural revolution was anything but cultural. Anyone not praising the Communist Party or the leader Mao Tse-tung (who was trying to purge political rivals and reassert his authority) was considered to be “uncultured”. To ensure his position, Mao appointed a special committee to conduct the Cultural Revolution in the name of ” The Great Leap”.

This committee called the Gang of Four was led by Mao’s wife and 3 other women who were barbarously ambitious and controlled the entire revolution abducting people, forcing them to confess for something they didn’t commit, persecuting them in the name of “Enemy of the state” and killing them in the hands of their so-called revolutionaries. She had the army of Red Guards who were mostly teens with rushing hormones with no knowledge about anything and would even kill their families if aggravated. The mission of the Red Guards was to rid the country of the “Four Olds”: old culture, old customs, old habits, and old ways of thinking. Mao’s “The Great leap forward” that was supposed to be economically revolutionary resulted in The Great Chinese Famine killing thousands of people.

Nien Cheng was the wealthy widow of Kang-chi Cheng who worked for Kuomintang. She was Western-educated, “Read Books by foreign authors” and herself worked in Shell oil. Red guards ransacked her home, arrested her on suspicion, and kept her in solitary confinement for 6.5 years. In these years, she was brutally tortured, kept in a cell too small to even lie down, handcuffed so tightly that she feared losing her hands, and even forced to confess being a foreign spy (just as they did to hundreds of other citizens, but they confessed and Cheng didn’t). She conquered every allegation thrown at her. She even used Mao’s teachings successfully against her interrogators, frequently turning the tide of the struggle sessions against the interrogators. During her term, Cheng lost her teeth, caught pneumonia, and had hemorrhages yet she defused the misery by laughing at her accusers.
After her years in custody, she was told on March 27, 1973, that she was being released because of an “improvement in her way of thinking and an attitude of repentance.” She refused to accept that statement and vowed to remain in detention until prison officials officially declared her innocent and published an apology in Shanghai and Beijing. Yes, she single-handedly defeated Mao’s army.

I am not going to describe the life of Cheng after her release or what made her move to another country. That’s for you to find out. And this book is not just an autobiography, it’s the history in itself.

#stopasianhate #readingasiapacific #utkirtanawrites #china #hongkong

Maajhi Vitthala Mauli: We call you mother.

भिडे आसमंती ध्वजा वैष्णवांची
उभी पंढरी आज नादावली
तुझे नाव ओठी, तुझे रूप ध्यानी
जिवाला तुझी आस गा लागली
जरी बाप साऱ्या जगाचा परि तू
आम्हा लेकरांची विठू माऊली

If you have ever grooved to this song, “Mauli” by the famous Ajay-Atul Gogavale duo, you must have wondered what’s “Mauli”(if you are not someone who understands Marathi). And if you have not, I insist you listen to that song.

A charming dark-skinned youth in his extreme essence standing on a brick with his hands in akimbo position and winning hearts with his smile. Vithoba, Vitthal, or Panduranga residing at Pandharpura was originally a God for farmers, who gradually rose via being God of poet-saints to being one of the Supreme Lords. I tried to comprehend the concept. It’s the same overwhelming sentiment we Odias have for our Jagakalia (Lord Jagannath) where we consider him to be a family member with whom we can share our emotions.
Now we must know why these cult Gods are considered as our own people and why a male God, Vitthal, is summoned as Mother. Yes, the Varkaris(devotees of Vitthala) fondly address him as Vithoba Mauli (Mother Vithoba).

We, humans, are extremely emotional beings. We feel happy when with our loved ones; sad if we lose someone near to us; guilty if we hurt someone; and angry if things do not happen as we had planned. Hence there is never a moment when we do not emote. And these emotions are highly influenced by the thousand years of cultural devotion and the idea of ” becoming the seeker to the finder”.

The Indian view of life moves from an infra-rational existence to a more rational existence, and further, towards a yet greater supra-rational existence and end-state of Truth, Bliss, Peace, and Beatitude. We seek divinity in our leader, to assist in this journey, who must have walked the same path and is ahead of us. These cult Gods have stories of the same sufferings and overcoming them and accepting everyone into their circumference without any discrimination.
The whole idea revolves around the journey from darkness to light or finding shelter and peace of mind. And we make the idea of a safe shelter according to what we have perceived from our lofts. For some, this secure base can be the lover. For some, it’s a brother, and for some, it is the mother. Magically, this idea of bhakti heals our mental state and helps us calm down our anxieties. In those idols, with stories attached to them by our ancestors, we see the perfect person we need in our life who is capable enough to solve all our issues and understand us. This idea is inscribed so deep in us that even in our conscious state we reciprocate it(though knowing that it’s not possible). Consciousness is contagious, and psychic consciousness is more so. And it has been passed down for generations.

Book lovers can understand this as we tend to get attached to a character from the book who can never appear before us. But for us, he/she is the one who can understand our mental state. This is what has been cleverly done with idol worship. You need a point to concentrate your emotions without going nuts. And it actually healed people and made them find their own ways to tackle their issues without boosting their ego.

The roots of everything weren’t that bad after all. It’s people among us who utilized them against their own people.

Mythos: The Greek myths retold

What’s common between Greek and Hindu myths? Zeus and Indra, Icarus and Sampati, Hermes and Narada, Trojan War and Ramayan, even the concept of gay, transgender, or impotent Gods. And the difference? We got Gods and became blind, they got Gods and opened their eyes. We don’t even question their actions and they never saw them as just and merciful and dared to challenge their authority. Gods can be really weird with their own logic that doesn’t apply to us nor would they want to(if present). And Stephen Fry perfectly understands this brutal queerness of Greek Gods like the birth of Aphrodite( I wouldn’t get into the ball cutting part as that can be a spoiler).

Read this book as a part of #folkloredecember with @whatsshwereading and I wish I would have heard the audiobook first as reading the book and listening to Stephen Fry are two different experiences. I heard it yesterday after Swetha’s reco. So I will talk about the good and bad aspects of the reading part.

The title tag, “Greek Myths retold”, can be misleading. It’s not retelling, it’s what we already know and have been among us for quite some time. He talks about a small group of Gods that doesn’t include the bigger ones just like talking about Mahabharata and excluding Bharata and Shantanu. (But I understand that I have to read the next book.) If you are someone new to Greek mythology, you need to gather your knowledge before hopping on to Fry’s space. Relying on it for everything is like relying on modern retellings of Mahabharata for actual incidental information. It’s hard to impress with a retelling to someone who has gone through the actual scripts. At times I found the writing chaotic and started missing the ” who’s who” with so many elements romping all around the book. I started losing the track of it and had to go back and forth.

But would I recommend it? Yes! Read it for Fry, his wit, his wicked humor & his absolute love for this subject. Fry was unusually delicate about Gay Gods and his pleasing way of characterizing things kept me hooked up.

Fry absolutely has a grip over his love for language. He shows us how these myths gave us our modern-day expressions and how strong an impact they have on us. As you go deeper you realize that his goal was not to interpret or clarify things rather only to tell them, breathing new life into these well-known characters and making stories outright funny.

He has added notes littered all around for you to catch them. These are the soul of the book.

I loved Fry’s vibrant aura and would love to dig into more of his works before coming to any conclusions about my relationship with him. I recommend hearing the audiobook first for Fry made it irresistible.

Watch out, Mr. Neil Gaiman! I may fall for Mr.Fry

And Mr. Stephen Fry, you and I have one more date!

~~For more bookish contents and small talks,~~

Follow me on my Instagram handles,

@utkirtana and @puniija

|| The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus// The Biblioraptor Book Club

– Christopher Marlowe

“In these times I don’t, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don’t want what I know and want what I don’t know.”
Marsilio Ficino, The Letters of Marsilio

We, humans, are ambivalent. Duality in disposition interprets our true selves. Neither we have outstanding good characters nor the prominent evil ones. We keep wavering between them as long as we breathe. We sin, we bemoan, we ask for redemption. But when given chance, we sin again. There is this endless loop of going back to where it all began. But what changes, are the elements we confront in this loop. These elements are powerful enough to either make us hop into another loop for salvation or keep on running the same into our damnation. Do you know what’s crazy? We get to choose what spice we add to our curries. At every step of our life, we get options to choose that determines our fate.

Then why “Qué Será Será”?

Why it is said that what has to transpire will transpire?

If that is the case then why we need to do the right things at the right time? Why not live our lives with pride, ambitions, and arrogance? Are we deemed to have free will in our paths or is it all on fate? If you are confused then, mate, you are not alone in this, Doctor Faustus was equally disturbed.

Read Doctor Faustus, a play by Christopher Marlowe for the#spookitupanotch readathon conducted by our book club, The Biblioraptor BookClub. And guess what! I was amazed at how perfectly Marlowe understood the dual nature of humanity.

( No, this is not a review. This is completely my perception based on the play and the movie. If you disagree, kindly be polite about that and we can discuss it.)

*Connotation of Pride.

Many say that Doctor Faustus is the perfect portrayal of the inner struggle of the human mind. But I say, it’s so much more than that. The unmistakable point to notice was the portrayal of Pride and Ambition, not only of Faustus but also of one of the least interactive character, Lucifer. Who doesn’t know the biblical justification for the banishment of Lucifer? The pride that threw Lucifer out of heaven was the reason that took everything away from Faustus.

*The Duality resides in us.

There was a point when I screamed at Faustus.

A man who is in constant motion, mentally!

He fights between good and evil, between knowledge and greed, and even between God and the Renaissance. Being someone from the Medieval period but well-read, he is constantly wavering between Putting God as his central focus and longing for magic and necromancy.
His primary interest in the deal was to gain proficiency in the other world as he had completely gained all sorts of Earthly Knowledge. But it didn’t take much time to hop into the shoes of greed and lust.

And then he had so many characters around him to detract him. The good and evil angels popping up, ” tween tween” and dragging him both ways. Then there are his worthless opportunistic friends who are just waiting to bathe in the light of his fame. And of course our beloved Mephistopheles.

Leave him alone, guys!

(I would suggest people read Dawkins Theory after this. It’s bizarre but will blow your mind and you can find similarities between this play and the book.)

*The mythical junctions.

The story of this Doctor of Divinity has all the connections with the Greek Tragedy (it’s that obvious), structurally and thematically. The preliminary speeches, the protagonist falling into the hands of circumstances, the choral narratives, and the heart-wrenching mishaps.
I was amazed at the fact that this play had no particular narrator, either the characters are blabbering or the chorus just popping up out of nowhere to provide the background information about Faustus’ life, swelling pride, and how it led to his downfall. There was also this prominent indication of the popular tale of Icarus, the son of Daedalus.
The biblical reference was clear too with the Sin-redemption-damnation concept. And “Deal with the devil” part taken from European folklore.

(Honestly, though the genre was a tragedy, I couldn’t stop laughing at a few places. Like the prank in Pope’s assembly was funny. Even Robin clown ignoring Mephis’ threatenings.)

*Faustus wanted to be a Demi-God.

Within a few intervals, the craving for knowledge was flushed into the gutter and all that left was the desire to become a demi-god with immense supremacy that paved the way to greed, lust, arrogance, and blind heeding into the evilness.
He claimed to use the gained knowledge for greater researches but ends up using it for cheap tricks and dirty pranks.
Faustus not only accepts evilness into him but also influences his surroundings, like Wagner using magic to control Robin or Robin summoning Mephistopheles for his naughty tricks.

I have a theory here, Faustus summons Mephistopheles and razes all links with God. But when Mephis arrives, he gets scared of his appearance and orders him to change his face and come back. And Mephis returns disguised as a saint. It clearly shows the hypocrisy that lies within us. We mask our evil traits with brighter and calmer faces and expect the other person to do the same. We believe that anyone wearing a mask of a saint is trustable, even if we realize that the person is disguised.
Isn’t it what happening around us with all those self-proclaimed Gurus?
Another point is, we humans cannot bear the burden of ugly truth, hence, we always prefer fabricated lies.
This point is cleverly portrayed in the part where Faustus orders Mephistopheles to bring him an illusional spirit of Helen Of Troy (*steamy *steamy) in Act 5, twice. Even in his last moments, he yearns for the physical love of Helena but not the forgiveness of God.

*Homo Fuge.

The good and the evil angels very well represent the two states of mind but at various points, the emotions get intermingled. There is a lot of confusion between what is wrong and what is right in Faustus’ mind. Though it’s quite clear for the audience. (As expected)

The second appearance of the angels shows that humans always get second chances to rectify their deeds. It’s then the choices they make that changes their fate forever.

Even the blood getting clot indicates that as if the blood didn’t want him to sign the pact. It shows how at every step your mind and soul question your actions.

“Homo Fuge”, which means “Fly, man!”, shows that instead of flying into righteousness, Faustus chose to sell his soul to the Devil. A warning from God to fly away from this path for it will bring him no peace. Evil ways will always lure you to embrace them, but it’s you who decides the way your term ends.

*Mephistopheles, the star of the story.

The way Marlowe has given dialogues to Mephis is impeccable. Even for a moment, I wanted to sign that pact. It’s so seductive and persuasive that it feels so right at that moment. I can’t blame Faustus at that moment.

I loved the part where he explained that hell has no limits since it is not just any particular physical space. Any place away from your conscience is hell.

” Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. -Mephistopheles”

“Hell is just a frame of mind“

The cunning creature, that he had to be, told Faustus the stories of Lucifer’s banishment, of heaven and hell but cleverly ignores the most crucial question, “who created the universe?” Wickedness avoids confrontation with eternal verities.

To distract Faustus from his quest for truth, Lucifer shows him a pageant of seven deadly sins.

How easy it is to manipulate us!

The path to damnation is always full of glory and grandiose. But the path to redemption tests you at every notch. Faustus cheats everyone, plays dirty pranks, and tortures people that came his way digging up his own grave.

A peculiar point that struck me was the point where Faustus ordered Mephis to torture the old man for warning him. According to the then applied theory, Mephis could only have tortured his body and not the soul, for his soul belongs to God. (He has not sold it to the devil) (correct me if I am wrong).

Even Robin’s part confused me. Was he turned into an animal? Let me know in the comments below.

*Ciao, Faustus.

All these for nothing? Noone helped Faustus in those last moments. His friends found his body brutally tortured and left alone.
I remember reading these kinds of stories where the once glorious life ends with loneliness and murder. Why does it remind me of The Great Gatsby?
Now to answer my question, it was never fate that dragged Faustus into his damnation. No one ever pressured him. (Although seduced) But he chose his own path. At every step, he was given the option to choose between the good and the bad. But he was so in lust for supremacy, that he couldn’t choose to struggle in the path of righteousness.

For Faustus, everything was out of the free will. Even summoning Mephistopheles.

“Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell.“

I can go on writing about this marvelous piece of art. And you may even get another post about it. So don’t blame me.

Wanna know why am I so obsessed with this? Try reading Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. And if all these confused you, that’s because I tried to jink it up and not to spill the specific facts.

💕💕Utkirtana

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: