Quiet As They Come
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Heartbreaking tales of ordinary people lost between the extraordinary circumstances of history. Bitter and beautiful all at once."—Sandra Cisneros
"We call it naturalization, but these bright, authentic, well-made stories both personalize and illuminate just how unnatural the first twenty years in America felt for thousands of Vietnamese families who fled to San Francisco to escape the Vietnam War. Angie Chau writes with humor, intensity and forgiveness about lives full of danger, insult, momentary reprieve, unending tenacity and undying hope."—Pam Houston
"Quiet As They Come is a beautifully rendered, intimate, and dramatic story of family and country. Each character is drawn with such honesty and generosity, such insight and imagination. Angie Chau has impressed and enthralled me and I was very sorry to come to the last page."—Karen Joy Fowler
“Quiet As They Come announces the arrival of an astonishing literary talent with a great deal to say about the intricacies of family life, coming of age, emigration, and—above and—above all—the treasures buried in the human heart.”—Carolina De Robertis, author of The Invisible Mountain
Quiet As They Come is a beautiful and at times brutal portrait of a people caught between two cultures. Set in San Francisco from the 1980s to the present day, this debut collection explores the lives of several families of Vietnamese immigrants as they struggle to adjust to life in their new country, often haunted by the memories and customs of their old lives in Vietnam. While some are able to survive and assimilate, others are crushed by the promise of the "American Dream." No matter their fate, you will never be able to forget the people you meet in this remarkable collection.
Angie Chau was born in Vietnam and has since lived on three continents and an island. She graduated with a master's degree in creative writing from the University of California, Davis where she also taught undergraduate fiction and was the fiction editor for The Greenbelt Review. She has been awarded a Hedgebrook Residency and a Macondo Foundation Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Indiana Review, Santa Clara Review, Slant, and the anthology Cheers to Muses. In 2009, she won the UC Davis Maurice Prize in Fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Serenely stirring stories from Vietnamese-American Chau track the breaking asunder of an extended Vietnamese boat family newly arrived in California in the 1970s. Fleeing the Vietcong and relocated to San Francisco, the family of aunts, uncles, and cousins has assumed catchy Western names like Sophia (Loren) and Marcel , harboring many secrets in their bewildering new life in America. In "Hunger," the troupe of cousins gather their pennies and heads for the pool on July 4, braving verbal abuse from a hostile white neighbor while sharing a single slice of pizza. In "The Pussycats" a young mother, Kim, whose soldier husband, Duc, is imprisoned in Saigon, mistakenly takes her daughter to a porn flick with the title of a children's movie, setting in motion sexual desire for a married friend in her ESL class. Duc shows up after 10 years, in "Taps," as a hollowed-out victim of torture and trauma, now grievously unrecognizable. Well intentioned but misunderstood ("as quiet as they come"), Chau's characters, in portraits that radiate dignity and depth, seek freedom but find crushing loneliness.
