Where the Wind Leads by Vinh Chung

If I know you personally, chances are I've already recommended this book to you. For the rest of you, that's what this review is for.

Vinh Chung, the fifth child in a wealthy family, was born in Vietnam just months before America pulled out of the war and the country fell to the communists. In a matter of days, his family lost everything they had worked for years to build and accumulate--their home, their business, their savings. For three years, they eked out a living before deciding it was too dangerous and crippling to raise a family under such circumstances. They risked everything to leave Vietnam.

But in leaving, they traded one danger for another: they found themselves on a Malaysian beach where no one wanted them, then abandoned in the middle of the ocean, then very nearly capsized by pirates. Eventually, miraculously, they made it to America (Arkansas, to be exact) where Vinh's father took menial jobs to support his family. He ended up foregoing his own dreams so his children (who numbered eleven by the time it was all said and done) could have a chance. And they took that chance and ran with it.

I haven't read a story that inspired me this much in a long time.

I had three realizations while reading it:

First, I guess I knew almost nothing about the Vietnam War. And because this story largely takes place after the war, I still know almost nothing about it. But now I know that I don't know anything about it. And I can also see why it was such a controversial war.

Second, refugees must be in the top tier of brave, heroic, determined individuals. I mean, right? Vinh's family's situation was impossible. They couldn't stay in Vietnam, but they couldn't leave either. And when they finally did leave, they put themselves at the mercy of other individuals and governments and countries, and no one wanted them. At one point, Vinh said, "Once again we were powerless, unable to control our direction or destiny. The Malaysians had the big ship, and we were consigned to the tiny boats; we danced behind them like wooden puppets on strings. They could take us anywhere they wanted, at any speed they wanted, for as long as they wanted and we had no way to stop until they allowed us to." That must be such a terrifying feeling--to know that you have no control over your own life and yet realizing that the only way you can possibly make it to the other side is by giving it everything you have. And I'm not even talking about when they actually finally make it to America. That's a whole other endeavor--finding a job, supporting a family, learning a new language and culture and customs, missing family members who were left behind, encountering racial prejudices, and being relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Third, hard things are somewhat easier to handle when seen through the lens of a young child. Vinh was a very young child when all of this was happening (I think he was three years old when they left Vietnam). His memories of the hardships and tragedies they faced are very dim. He said, "I have no memory of Bac Lieu or Soc Trang or our little farm with its ducks and geese and pigs. My very first memory in life is the moment I was dropped into that warm ocean water on the beach in Malaysia." Of course, he fills in those details with memories from his parents and older siblings, but because of this emotional distance, some of the atrocities aren't as soul-sucking as they might be otherwise. And I wonder if he kept this innocent filter over the top on purpose so that the story sounded of hope rather than misery. (But still, no matter how you spin it, there are some things, like towing 293 people out into the middle of the ocean and then abandoning them with no supplies, that can't be given much of a silver lining.)

Beyond those things, the book surprised me in two ways.

First, Vinh Chung was quite funny. At first, I thought it was a little cheesy, but after just a few chapters, I found it completely endearing. Also, I was kind of amazed that he could find anything to joke about in such a dark, hopeless situation. Granted, this was written almost forty years after the fact, but still. Some might look at it and think that his humor was inappropriate given the gravity of the topic, but I think it helped ease some of the tension, and also, I think you can't overestimate the strength that having a sense of humor can give you both in the present moment and also after it's all over while you're still dealing with the repercussions. Here are a couple of examples to give you a little taste:"

"One night my mother dreamed she was in the marketplace in Soc Trang along with our entire family. Grandmother Chung wasn't there--it was a dream, not a nightmare--nor was my uncle or his family." (Grandmother Chung may have ruled the family with a bit of an iron fist.)

The humor was a mixture of slap-stick, dry, and sarcastic:

"My father couldn't wait to try out his brand-new rice cooker, but when he went to plug it in, he discovered that Singapore used a different voltage and his rice cooker would not work in America--a fact the merchants back in Singapore had somehow forgotten to mention. Oh well. At least he could listen to his boom box. Oops." 

And second, I was not expecting Vinh's story to have a deeply spiritual undertone. But it did. His whole family converted to Christianity after arriving in America as a result of some miracles they experienced on their journey, as well as a dream his mother received and also the community they found in the church they joined.

Vinh said, "There are times when an apparent coincidence is so incredible and so perfectly coordinated that it forces us to wonder whether there must have been purpose behind it." And it may have been this, more than his humor or innocence, that made this story feel so hopeful. Vinh's family was able to see God's hand in their lives, and they expressed their gratitude for it. They worked hard, they didn't complain about the unfairness of their lives, and they rose above it all in a beautiful, miraculous way.

I hope you'll give this book a try.

The Invisible Girls by Sarah Thebarge

For me, buying books gives me the same kind of thrill that buying shoes gives to other women. I love looking at the shiny cover and crisp pages and hearing the spine creak open for the first time.

But as much as I love buying new books, I have pretty strict criteria for what I'll buy: I have to have already read and loved it and think that at some point down the road I might want to reread it. (Or, it needs to look really pretty on my bookshelf.) (Or, it needs to be by a favorite and well-trusted author.)

Okay, so maybe my criteria isn't that strict (for more on this subject, watch Episode 2 of The Book Blab where Suzanne and I discuss our book buying habits). The point is, I have criteria.

When The Invisible Girls was selected for my book club in May, neither of the library systems I use had a single copy, so I was in a predicament. It wasn't a book I'd read, loved, or wanted to reread. It wasn't a gorgeous edition. And it wasn't by an author I'd ever read (or even heard of) before. I try really hard to read every book we pick for book club, but the fact that I was going to have to purchase this book in order to read it was a major deterrent (cheap-skate, right here).

Luckily, my friend, Jen (who's now famous on this blog), came to my rescue and bought the book herself, read it, and then loaned it to me, so I avoided having to agonize over my book-buying standards.

It's a beautiful fall afternoon in 2012 when Sarah Thebarge starts playing peekaboo with a little Somali girl on the train into downtown Portland. She's with her sister and mother, and during the train ride, Sarah finds out they are refugees, there are three more daughters at school, their father has left them, and this woman has no family support in this vast city. Sarah is drawn to help and gets the woman's address before they part ways.

But of course, meeting a Somali family on a train is far from the beginning of Sarah's story. So she backs up to her childhood and young adulthood, where the reader learns that she grew up in a fundamentalist culture with very clear boundaries between male and female roles and a harsh view of God. In spite of that, she had big dreams and went to college and eventually earned an advanced degree at Yale and began course work on another. But then, at the young age of 27, she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, and everything changed.

Sarah tells her story by moving back and forth between her past (focusing specifically on her years with breast cancer) and the present (with the Somali family). As you can imagine, her cancer diagnosis completely rocked her faith and her relationship with God. She moved to Portland for a fresh start following her treatments, and as she reached outside herself to help this struggling family, her heart gradually healed and her faith was renewed.

When Sarah goes to the family's home for the first time, she is shocked by what she finds: the rooms are empty of furniture except for a couple of mattresses; the girls are all sitting on the dining room floor, dipping moldy bread in ketchup; the whole apartment is dark and dismal. During subsequent visits, she discovers even more oversights in their basic necessities: no soap, no toilet paper, no cleaning supplies of any kind; the apartment is freezing because they don't know how to use the thermostat; they've been burning all their food because Hadhi has been been setting the oven to broil.

So it's little things like that (which, when you add them all up, turn into really, really big things) that Sarah begins to help them with. At times, she's overwhelmed, and I don't blame her. I'm a little bit of a germaphobe, and, as much as I don't like to admit it, I don't know if I would have been able to get past the unsanitary conditions and continue to go back for more.

But Sarah did, and I really respected and admired her for that. I was also impressed with the way she balanced giving and teaching and encouraging (and even, stepping back). She could have walked in on that first day and thought, We've got to do something fast (like, buy soap!), but she helped very carefully, always making sure not to undermine Hadhi's authority and trying to do things that would also foster independence rather than dependence. She was a mentor in every sense of the word, and that is exactly what this family needed--just someone to be on their side in a country where they were essentially invisible.

Even when things were hard and she felt overwhelmed, Sarah looked forward to going over the family's apartment every few days because she felt such an instant connection with each of the girls, especially the four-year-old, Lelo, who was lively and rambunctious and always full of mischief. Early on in their relationship, she told them she loved them, and I really liked this perspective she shared,

"Past experience had made me wary of saying I Love You to people. I learned the hard way that those words complicate most relationships, and leave you open to more rejection and more pain than if you left them unsaid. But saying I Love You to these girls wasn't like accidentally spilling a fine wine; it was like pouring water on parched ground. They seemed as starved for attention and affection as they were for food."

I think anytime you have an experience helping someone and then write a book about it, you run the risk of it seeming a little self-serving (were you helping because you wanted to or because you thought it would make a great book deal?), but I never got that impression with this book. I think this was due, in part, to Sarah's own struggles and trials (she never comes across as having a perfect life), but also because, in the end, you see how much this refugee family helps Sarah in her own healing process.

But on top of that, any money that Sarah makes on this book goes into a college fund for these five sisters (of course, after I learned that, then I felt really good about my stinginess), and I think that will be such a gift.

About four months into Sarah's friendship with Hadhi and her girls, Hadhi gets very sick and has to be taken to the ER. It is hard for her to communicate her symptoms, and so they get a Somali interpreter on the phone to help. The interpreter introduces herself, "Hi, my name is Lelo." Sarah and Hadhi both perk up at the name because it is the same as Hadhi's fourth daughter (the mischievous one). In that moment, Sarah catches a glimpse at a future for these girls--a future that is far from fear or insecurity or deprivation. It gives her hope, and it's at that point that she realizes she wants to do anything she can to make that future a reality.

I really, really enjoyed this book, and it made me want to overcome some of my own fears and inhibitions and look for ways to help people in similar circumstances in my own community.

Content note: a little bit of language, mostly said by the girls who picked it up at school and didn't realize they were saying anything bad.