Listen, Slowly
Thanhha Lai
2015, 260 pages
Fiction – Children’s
Twelve-year-old Mai is looking forward to spending the summer at the beach in California with her best friend and her secret crush. Instead her parents force her to accompany her grandmother, Ba, to Vietnam to discover her roots. Ba has engaged a detective to search for her husband who was listed as MIA in the war. She doesn’t believe he is still alive but doesn’t feel in her heart that he’s gone. Okay, so go to Vietnam, find the detective and get closure and then come home.
Except, of course, it couldn’t be that simple. From the moment she steps off the plane Mai knows she is in a different world. The searing heat and humidity, a plethora of maybe relatives, and huge mosquitos greet her and Ba. She doesn’t know the geography or the language, so one of her cousins translates for her. Through Ba’s stories and getting to know her maybe relatives and seeing how the old are treated with respect, Mai begins to realize that maybe Vietnam isn’t going to be as awful as she thought and maybe she will stay for the whole summer.
This is a book written from a young girl’s perspective and captures the Vietnamese culture through the lives and hearts of the people.
Kathy Dill
Concord Public Library
Visit CPL at concordpubliclibrary.net.
