The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 9 June 2005
by Robert Olen Butler
The American experience is peppered with the tales of immigrants coming to this country to make their way. They come for opportunity, or to escape political or economic turmoil at home. These same immigrants, throughout history, have been alternately welcomed and vilified. The story continues today. It is our history. At the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, we were faced with a flood of Vietnamese refugees, the Boat People, who sailed under much hardship to the hope of a better life beyond their borders. Many landed in America. Robert Olen Butler has what appears to be (to a reader who knows perilously little about Vietnam and its people) an incredibly sensitive knowledge of the Vietnamese diaspora living in southern Louisiana. This collection of fifteen short stories springs from the experiences of the Vietnamese adjusting to American life while still immersed in the memories of home and the war-torn country they left behind. This is, again, the American experience. Butler, who spent time in Vietnam during and after the war, and who speaks fluent Vietnamese, appears to have gleaned a genuine insight into the people. The stories here are extremely well-written. They are moving and sometimes humorous. We read of former soldiers in the South Vietnamese army, who fought alongside the Americans or who had ambivalent feelings about fighting their brothers. We read of women adjusting to the polyglot life in Louisiana, accepting American ways to varying degrees. And we read of the people, both Vietnamese and American, who can never forget the contradictions and tragedies of that war. Very highly recommended.
(For this collection, Butler received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)
Also by Butler: [Had a Good Time]