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    Postcards From Nam
    Postcards From Nam
    Postcards From Nam
    Audiobook2 hours

    Postcards From Nam

    Written by Uyen Nicole Duong

    Narrated by Leslie Bellair

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    International Book Award Finalist, Fiction: Multicultural category.

    Mimi (the protagonist of Mimi and Her Mirror) is a successful young Vietnamese immigrant practicing law in Washington, D.C. when the postcards begin to arrive. Postmarked from Thailand, each hand-drawn card is beautifully rendered and signed simply “Nam.” Mimi doesn’t recognize the name, but Nam obviously knows her well, spurring her to launch what will become a decade-long quest to find him. As her search progresses, long-repressed memories begin to bubble to the surface: her childhood in 1970s Vietnam in a small alley in pre-Communist Saigon. Back then, who was her best friend as well as her brother’s playmate, and what did art have anything to do with the alleys of her childhood? What was the dream of these children then? What happened when these children were separated by the end of the Vietnam war, their lives diverged onto different paths: one to freedom and opportunity, the other to tragedy and pain? Now Mimi must uncover the mystery of the postcards, including what might have happened to the people who where less fortunate: those who escaped the ravaged homeland by boat after the fall of Saigon. When the mystery is solved, Mimi has to make a resolution: what can possibly reunite the children from the alley of her childhood even when the alley exists no more?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateNov 27, 2012
    ISBN9781469200842
    Postcards From Nam
    Author

    Uyen Nicole Duong

    Vietnam-born Uyen Nicole Duong arrived in the United States at the age of sixteen, a political refugee from a country torn apart by war. She received a Bachelor of Science in Communication and Journalism from Southern Illinois University, a law degree from the University of Houston, and the advanced LLM degree from Harvard. She was also trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena. She has been a journalist, public education administrator, attorney, law professor, and a self-taught painter whose work focuses on l’Art Brut. The author resides in Houston, Texas.

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    Reviews for Postcards From Nam

    3/5

    19 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Postcards from Nam, by Uyen Nicole Duong is a novel that begins with the evacuation of Saigon and ends with the author posing the question: can we ever all be united again? Mimi is a young Vietnamese woman living in the U.S. practicing law. She ritually receives postcards from Nam (a real person she grew up with in South Vietnam). The name of the book is a dual title : the postcards are from Nam (a person) from Nam (as in Vietnam). Mimi sets out to find out the fate of Nam but has difficulty, even years later, getting people to tell the truth of the evacuation and the fate of the boat people. This book read like a memoir for the first half, but fell apart in the second half when the answers to Mimi's questions were never answered. The last 3-5 pages seem like they don't even belong in the book. 114 pages 2 1/2 stars
    • 3/5
      Postcards from Nam, by Uyen Nicole Duong is a novel that begins with the evacuation of Saigon and ends with the author posing the question: can we ever all be united again? Mimi is a young Vietnamese woman living in the U.S. practicing law. She ritually receives postcards from Nam (a real person she grew up with in South Vietnam). The name of the book is a dual title : the postcards are from Nam (a person) from Nam (as in Vietnam). Mimi sets out to find out the fate of Nam but has difficulty, even years later, getting people to tell the truth of the evacuation and the fate of the boat people. This book read like a memoir for the first half, but fell apart in the second half when the answers to Mimi's questions were never answered. The last 3-5 pages seem like they don't even belong in the book. 114 pages 2 1/2 stars
    • 4/5
      Short but to the point.Although this novella was only 90 pages long, it delivered quite a punch. With a slow start describing Mimi's life as a lawyer in America, the book opens out to describe her past as a child in Saigon before it fell to the Communist North, and the difficulties of escaping from the country.Mimi's escape was traumatic enough and she was devastated to leave a much beloved grandmother. But many were even less fortunate and suffered as the 'boat people' that we heard so much about on the news at the time. With storms, pirates and often refusal on their eventual arrival, this was an hugely risky way to escape.The postcards of the title arrived from Thailand without return addresses, signed 'Nam'. At first Mimi could not fathom who they could be from, but when she finally realises the identity of Nam she is forced to remember suppressed memories from her childhood.Mimi interviews several survivors, to relate a piece of history that has probably slipped from many memories.Although this is the third of a trilogy, I did not feel I should have read the other books first. Having read Postcards From Nam, however, I would very much like to read the previous 2 books.Written in a slightly awkward style, I would still recommend this for its powerful content.For an alternative read based in Vietnam, I would also suggest The Man From Saigon by Marti Leimbach.
    • 4/5
      Postcards from Nam is the third book in Uyen Nicole Duong’s “Fall of South Vietnam” trilogy, so I suspect that I would have been more emotionally invested in this book’s characters had I first read the earlier books in the trilogy. But even without that background material, I have to say that this little 89-page novella makes for a powerful reading experience. The fall of South Vietnam was a tragedy for everyone involved, but especially so for those unable to get out of the country before it was overwhelmed by the enemy. The lucky ones were airlifted along with the last of the American troops whom were themselves scrambling to get out before it was too late. The unlucky ones left behind, if they really wanted to leave, had to risk everything in a desperate attempt to escape the country by sea. These boat people, if they managed to survive the sea and attacks by pirates, ended up in refugee camps from which they hoped to immigrate to a country willing to offer them a fresh start.Mimi was one of the lucky ones. Now living in Houston after a successful career as a Washington D.C. attorney, she lives in self-imposed isolation as a working writer. She has no friends, and expects to hear from no one – until a reminder from her past arrives one day to shake up her world. A lone, oversized postcard from Thailand, something she had never expected to see again, waits for her amidst the day’s junk mail, and causes Mimi to flashback to 1988 when the cards first began arriving.The one-of-a-kind postcards, obviously produced by an artist of some talent, are signed by a person calling himself “Nam,” a name that means nothing to Mimi. The brief, but intimate, messages written on each of the cards make Mimi determined to learn the identity of her mysterious correspondent. For the next ten years, she will search for the meaning of the cards and the identity of their creator. Postcards from Nam is a blunt, eyes-wide-open look at what it was like for first generation South Vietnamese refugees and their children to begin life in the country that had failed to stop the communist invaders from North Vietnam. The families of former army officers, politicians, government workers, businessmen, and others tied to the U.S. effort, reorganized themselves into new communities in the U.S. from which they drew financial and moral support. All well and good, but not everyone arrived with a clear conscious about the past. Some lived in fear that, if the whole truth about them were discovered, they would have to face the wrath of others seeking personal revenge for old wrongs. Mimi’s efforts to identify the sender of her mysterious postcards force her to remember things about her childhood she had long suppressed, a process that gives the reader terrific insights into the life she left behind and into the assimilation challenges she faced in this country.Rated at: 4.0