For my first book of February I read em by Kim Thúy. Thúy was born in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh city, and fled Vietnam along with her family in 1979 at the age of ten. Vietnam is a country in Southeastern Asia and is bordered by Cambodia, China, and Laos.
This book takes place primarily during the Vietnam War and shows a wide range of the battles and historical events that took place before, during, and after the war, which lasted from 1954 to 1975. While the war technically started in 1954, the roots of the war started as early as the 19th century when Vietnam was under French rule. Boiled down, the cause of the war was the decision of whether Vietnam should be communist or model their society after the West and as of 1974 Vietnam was two countries. The North Vietnamese fought for Communism, while the South, along with U.S. involvement, fought against. The involvement of the United States in the Vietnam war is and was wildly controversial and many Americans believed that we should never have deployed American forces to the country.
In her novel Thúy takes us through the many painful battles of the Vietnam War. Her original novel was written in French and for the author her title is a homonym between the Vietnamese word “em”, which means little brother, little sister, or beloved and the French verb “aimer”, which means to love. Thúy takes the reader on a journey through a series of vignettes or short scenes. The word vignette comes from the French vigne, meaning vine. On her cover is a beautiful painting by artist Louis Boudreault that shows a box with many threads falling over the sides, reminiscent of vines or plantlife. In one of her last scenes she writes out a conversation between her and Boudreault, breaking the fourth wall, where they discuss the significance of the painting and it’s “threads of life”. That is the essence of this novel, threads of life and connection, characters constantly resurfacing, and the outline of the consequences of every action.
In the novel Thúy comments on the influence of the French language in Vietnam, saying that today the Vietnamese use hundreds of French words everyday. Her novel begins on a French rubber plantation in Vietnam as she dives into the history of colonization and it is here that we meet our first characters.
Thúy comments a lot on the mixed race of many Vietnamese people. This was due to colonization by the French, but also during the Vietnam War many American soldiers had children with Vietnamese women during their R and R, "Rest and Recreation", time off from the war. While this time was a period of five days for soldiers to reenergize and recuperate, Thúy gives it a sinister renaming as R and R: "Rape and Ruin". Many children were abandoned by mothers who could not care for them and fathers who returned to the war against the country they were just born into.
The themes of origin and parenthood come up often in this novel. The characters live through brutal and traumatizing events, and still manage to find it within themselves to help others. We follow a woman, Tâm, who survived the My Lai massacre where a debated 504 Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children, were murdered by U.S. soldiers, who goes on to work for an orphanage and save many children. Thúy touches on historical events like Operation Babylift, which was an initiative by the U.S. to take thousands of orphans, thought to be from American soldiers, from Vietnam and place them into adoptive families in the U.S.
She also touches on Operation Ranch Hand, which was the intentional deforestation and destabilization of the ecological environment of Vietnam. During this operation the Rainbow Herbicides were used, including Agent Orange. During this operation 200,000,000 gallons of defoliants and herbicides were used and 24% of Vietnamese territory was sprayed. An estimated 4.8 million people were sprayed and resulted in generations of cancer, birth defects, and death. One thread that Thúy weaves in the connection between Vietnamese suffering from cancer from Agent Orange in Vietnam, to the Vietnamese women diaspora suffering from the cancerous effects of the nail polish industry in the U.S. and Canada, where they made up a large number of workers.
There are three characters that could be considered the protagonists, though in this novel no character is unimportant, and those are Tâm, Louis, and em Hwông (later known as Emma Jade). These characters' lives are weaved together seamlessly and in ways that are simultaneously realistic and unimaginable.
One of the most jarring parts of the novel is the last few scenes. The end of the novel the fourth wall is broken and Thúy writes herself into the novel, having imaginary conversations with people, one of which is Tim O’Brien, an author best known for his semi-autobiographical novel The Things They Carried, about his time in serving in the Vietnam war. She comments on a quote of his, that “a bullet can kill the enemy, but a bullet can also produce an enemy, depending on whom the bullet strikes”. .
Her response is that, “any bullet that kills an enemy creates at least one more. No matter who is the person struck”. I think this response sums up the beauty and tragedy of her novel. em is a book that represents so many, Thúy’s dedication being to the unnamed and the forgotten, and shows the ripple effects of war. No action exists in a bubble, every tactic decided in rooms oceans away, every bullet, and every act of kindness have infinite and lasting consequences.
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