Nước the Vietnamese word for country and water permeates Eric Nguyen s haunting debut. Signifying both a place of origin and the means by which a boat refugee departs from such place of origin,
Things We Lost to the Water poignantly explores all the ways in which Vietnamese refugees are affected by country and water in sum, by dislocation.
Told from multiple perspectives and spanning 27 years, from 1978 to 2005,
Things We Lost to the Water gracefully manages to be both panoramic and specific, allegorical and literal. Most of the story takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana, with subsidized apartments, dilapidated shotgun houses, colorful duplexes, and the trash-strewn bayou where refugees discard their unwanted mementos as backdrop. At the novel s outset, Hương has just arrived in the city with her two young sons, five-year-old Tuấn and baby Ben, after a harrowing escape by sea and a crowded, stressful stay at a Singaporean refugee camp. Công Hương s husb
Saigoneer
Trigger
When it comes to the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, everyone knows about California’s huge community.
Some may be familiar with other communities in Houston or the Washington D.C. area, but you rarely hear about Vietnamese in New Orleans. This group, which numbers around 15,000 people, is the focal point of
Things We Lost to the Water, the debut novel from Eric Nguyen, the editor-in-chief of online literary portal
It tells the multi-generational story of a Vietnamese family who flees southern Vietnam at the end of the war and arrives in New Orleans under sponsorship by the Catholic church, tracking their lives all the way through the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on the city.
Print
Writing what you know is one way to tackle your first novel, but it wasn’t Eric Nguyen’s way. When he started working on “Things We Lost to the Water,” Nguyen was a lot more interested in writing about the things he didn’t know and the things he wanted to know better.
He wanted to explore the Vietnamese community in New Orleans, a city the Maryland native came to love when he attended McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La. He wanted to imagine what it would be like for the Americanized son of Vietnamese refugees to visit the faraway country that shaped his childhood.
Nước the Vietnamese word for country and water permeates Eric Nguyen s haunting debut. Signifying both a place of origin and the means by which a boat refugee departs from such place of origin,
Things We Lost to the Water poignantly explores all the ways in which Vietnamese refugees are affected by country and water in sum, by dislocation.
Told from multiple perspectives and spanning 27 years, from 1978 to 2005,
Things We Lost to the Water gracefully manages to be both panoramic and specific, allegorical and literal. Most of the story takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana, with subsidized apartments, dilapidated shotgun houses, colorful duplexes, and the trash-strewn bayou where refugees discard their unwanted mementos as backdrop. At the novel s outset, Hương has just arrived in the city with her two young sons, five-year-old Tuấn and baby Ben, after a harrowing escape by sea and a crowded, stressful stay at a Singaporean refugee camp. Công Hương s husba
Alerts
Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.
Advertisement
Image: Catapult
We’re big fans of essays that combine cultural criticism with memoir, and Larissa Pham’s
Pop Song especially sings when the writer turns her eye to art and pop culture. In her debut book of nonfiction memoir by way of interconnected essays Pham interweaves a recounting of her life thus far with her thoughts on James Turrell, Anne Carson, Frank Ocean, and Agnes Martin (extra points for not mentioning Maggie Nelson in “Blue,” Pham’s essay on Martin). Through her sensitive, curious telling, Pham lobbies for the way in which art can help people learn more about themselves.