#24 The Boat (2007)- Nam Le
We get to the final and title work of this great Nam Le
short story collection. We come full
circle from the first story “Pride” where the young Vietnamese writer is told
to write about what he knows, to write an “ethnic" story about “boat people.”
Nam Le brings emotion to all of these stories and as any good writer we wonder
how much of what he writes is imagined or remembered (if not literally than
culturally).
A group of refugees attempt to escape post war communist Viet
Nam. They are 200 aboard a ship built
for 15. The journey is scheduled to take 2 days
but a storm and broken engines turn their trip into a 13 day harrowing ordeal. Mai, a young woman traveling alone befriends a
slightly older young woman with a 6 year old child, Troung.
As starvation, dehydration and fever sets in, the deceased
are dumped into the water for the sharks to eat. Voices and whispers appear on the wind as
they drift through “the fields of the dead, those plots of ocean where
thousands had capsized with their scows and drowned.”
Mai’s life flashes before her as her past and her present
weave a mesh of emotions. All this is
encapsulated by Troung who has become a symbol for everything Mai tries to
cling to. His stolid face reminds her of her father, and of the dead-calm of
their past experience. The Boat trip is
about loss, loss of war, loss of childhood, loss of innocence, loss of hope…loss
of life. After such is lost, what lives on?
Well, thats it for Le. I highly recommend the collection. Perhaps later in the year i'll look for some of his other works.
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