![\"Listen\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Listen.jpg\")
<\/a>A fourth-grade boy introduced me to Thanhha Lai\u2019s finely crafted writing. I was in an elementary school to mentor another student, who, that day, did not want any mentoring during silent reading time. I wandered a few rows until I saw this boy reading what appeared to be poetry. NO WAY\u2026 not this boy, a full blooded, pure American through and through male homo sapiens. I leaned down to ask him quietly: \u201cWhat\u2019s your book about?\u201d<\/p>\nThe boy used a finger to mark his place on the page and took about 10 seconds to think and whisper, almost reverently: \u201cIt\u2019s about the struggles of people.\u201d He immediately returned to his reading of Lai\u2019s brilliant verse novel Inside Out & Back Again<\/em>. I ordered a copy that night. I have underlined, dog-eared and written in the margins of that intense tale of the plight of Vietnamese refugees as sensed through the eyes, ears, nose, hands and feet of a 10-year-old girl born in Saigon, South Vietnam, now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, as she and her family escaped and settled in the United States.<\/p>\n My new copy of Listen, Slowly<\/em>, the tale of a California-born 12-year-old daughter of Vietnamese refugees and her summer in Vietnam is underlined, dog-eared, etc., maybe even more than Inside Out<\/em>\u2026 Like the earlier book, this novel is labeled a children\u2019s book, for ages 8-12, but older readers will also find it rewarding. First published in 2015, Listen, Slowly <\/em>was a New York Times Book Review<\/em> Notable Book and a Publisher\u2019s Weekly<\/em> Best Book of the Year.<\/p>\n Mia (at school and the beach) Mai (at home) is a thoroughly Laguna Beach girl and proud of it. She is tan, not yellow as is most of her family, and plans to get more sun than ever, now that she is old enough to ride the shuttle to nearby Anita Beach without an adult alongside. THIS should be the SUMMER OF HER LIFE, if all goes as planned. There is, as there should be, a love triangle, which she WILL manage at the beach. This is a smart, determined girl poised to make the California beach scene.<\/p>\n Mia\/Mai does have the summer of her life, but that summer will be, very much against her will, in Vietnam with her grandmother and her father. She will endure a rite of passage few modern California tweens could imagine, much less survive, and she emerges as\u2026 well, you just have to read this tale\u2026.<\/p>\n Mai\/Mia\u2019s parents escaped the chaos of Vietnam as children in the 1970s, met in college and have lived the American Dream; both are successful professionals who specialize in giving back to people less fortunate. They refuse to tell her much about their childhood and early years in the USA; Mai\/Mia explains: \u201c\u2026 most of what I know about Vietnam comes from PBS, especially from the documentary The Fall of Saigon.<\/em> Mom insisted I watch it so I\u2019d understand \u2013 drumroll, please \u2013 my roots.\u201d<\/p>\n This strong willed, intelligent girl loves and values her family and their traditions beyond description, an Asian cultural trait that Westerners do not understand, but she is bound and determined to be a California\/American girl who just happens to have Vietnamese\/American parents. She quit speaking Vietnamese early in grade school. Through the next years and through most of her summer travels, she pretends not to understand the language; purposely making herself as big a pain as possible, she requires an interpreter at every stopover to write translations of what is going on.<\/p>\n What is<\/u> going on, the central focus of this story, reflects that singularly strong Asian tradition of family<\/em> that makes our Western notion of family ties trivial. What is going on is also more about THE WAR, a war that still divides many of us half a century later. Mai\/Mia gave up trying to find out about THE WAR from her family long ago. She is now piqued that she has been assigned to accompany her aging grandmother, Ba, on her quest to follow the last remaining lead to the fate of her husband, a Hanoi native who fled the Communists to fight for the southern army.<\/p>\n Mai\/Mia\u2019s father is also going to Vietnam, but, \u201cDr. Do-Gooder shriveled me with facts\u2026 (about) the kids with hand burns\u2026 the kids with holes in the roofs of their mouths\u2026\u201d and other stricken children who won last year\u2019s village lottery to be treated this summer by Dr. Do-Gooder. He can\u2019t let those kids down; his wife, a high-powered prosecutor, has a trial approaching that has something to do with battered women. She can\u2019t let those women down\u2026.<\/p>\n And Mai (it\u2019s one name, now that she\u2019s in Ba\u2019s homeland) can\u2019t let her family, and especially her revered grandmother, down either.<\/p>\n Thanhha Lai uses a California tween\u2019s language and perspective to portray vividly the panorama that is Vietnam \u2013 the capricious weather, the incredible terrain, the lovely villages and villagers, the plant and animal life and how that tween became a part of all this \u2013 and allows the reader to be pulled into the middle of it.<\/p>\n Mai marvels at the villagers\u2019 conservation of resources while living within nature\u2019s limits. As for their diets: \u201cThis being the land of perfectly portioned eaters, people nibble on one square per day, if that much. So many good habits in one population are really annoying.\u201d<\/p>\n She has encounters (as everyone does in Vietnam) with leeches, frogs and the insects, especially MOSQUITOES (caps mine): \u201cHundreds of them, aiming for me with baby needles, stabbing, stabbing. They\u2019re hairy, black, superbuzzy, and I swear the size of flies, which are also everywhere but at least they don\u2019t sting.\u201d<\/p>\n Lai once again plays with her two languages, sometimes at levels far beyond Mai\u2019s age. Oh, I forgot to mention, her mother requires Mai to learn one SAT word a day, even while dodging Saigon traffic and recovering from falling into a putrid lake.<\/p>\n As their incredible journey nears an end, Mai reflects upon what she has experienced and decides to stop fretting over her best California friend and HIM, the third angle of her love triangle, which, \u201clike so many other triangles, will eventually solve itself and life goes on.\u201d She then checks the smart phone her mother hid in her luggage to discover a Friend request from HIM.<\/p>\n \u201cI take back every mature, philosophical thought I just had about triangles,\u201d she says, beginning to have second thoughts about facing the last challenge of the summer. Her original obligation to her Ba is done and over. She could <\/em>make a strong case to hop a flight back to finish this summer with a flourish in California, but a new close friend here in Vietnam could really use her help for a couple of weeks. Only Mai can do the job\u2026.<\/p>\n You\u2019re going to love this book.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long before he was a public school teacher and principal, my husband, Lloyd Brinson, was a Marine officer who served in Vietnam. Who would have thought he\u2019d find so much of value in a children\u2019s novel set in contemporary\u00a0times in that country? Reviewed by Lloyd Brinson LISTEN, SLOWLY. By Thanhha Lai. HarperCollins. 272 pages. $16.99, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,33],"tags":[883,881,882],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literary-fiction","category-young-adult","tag-childrens-novels","tag-thanhha-lai","tag-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1957,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions\/1957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}