What do you think?
Rate this book
She Weeps Each Time You're Born
Radiant, lyrical, and deeply moving, this is the unforgettable story of one woman’s struggle to unearth the true history of Vietnam while also carving out a place for herself within it.Vietnam, 1972: under a full moon, on the banks of the Song Ma River, a baby girl is pulled out of her dead mother’s grave. This is Rabbit, who is born with the ability to speak with the dead. She will flee from her destroyed village with a makeshift family thrown together by war. As Rabbit channels the voices of the dead, their chorus reconstructs the turbulent history of a nation, from the days of French Indochina and the World War II rubber plantations to the chaos of postwar reunification.
290 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 10, 2015
73 people are currently reading
4197 people want to read
About the author
Quan Barry
15 books536 followersBorn in Saigon and raised on Boston’s north shore, Quan Barry is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of four poetry books; her third book, Water Puppets, won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and was a PEN/Open Book finalist. She has received NEA Fellowships in both fiction and poetry, and her work has appeared in such publications as Ms. and The New Yorker. Barry lives in Wisconsin.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 158 reviews
May 28, 2017
"… they had begun calling her Rabbit, naming her for the full moon that had licked her clean. The rabbit with its innocence, its youthfulness, its long bright ears that hear everything in the realms of both the living and the dead. Rabbit because the world is full of rabbits. Rabbit because by sheer force of numbers, the rabbit walks among us unnoticed but pandemic."
Born in the war-ravaged country of Vietnam, Rabbit is pulled from the earth from her dead mother’s body and is blessed – or perhaps cursed would be more appropriate – with the gift of hearing the voices of the dead. This is not just Rabbit’s story; it is a narrative of the Vietnamese people – their suffering and tremendous loss over the course of a complex history. We learn of this history through those voices that come to Rabbit as she traverses her country with her makeshift family, a group of individuals that flee to find a place of greater safety, a place to try to begin a life that has some semblance of stability. The voices are those of the living with whom she travels and meets along the way, but also the voices of the dead that have perished during the times of French colonialism, the Vietnam War, and during the period of post-war reconstruction. It is a tragic story and one that will make you ache as you learn the misery of these people and this country.
"Everywhere the world was charred. The bones of trees stood like primordial signposts warning of pestilence and death. In the moonlight the earth looked blackened like the skin of a fish."
The author, Quan Barry, is a poet and her writing is sublime. I truly got wrapped up in the beauty of her words, despite the grim truth and sorrow of which she writes. Magical realism can be hit or miss for me, and here it was definitely a hit! I loved the way the use of a mystical element helped to illuminate the history of Vietnam. It felt like the dead were literally screaming for recognition, for their unheard stories to be told. Those stories are important and ones with which I was not previously familiar. My understanding of Vietnam history is quite basic and this book shed a lot more light on the subject and has piqued my interest in learning more. I had a bit of trouble reading this as the timeline would shift back and forth in time. This was partly due to my own ignorance regarding the history, so I just needed to focus on the year as given by the author before each section of the book. But often within a section, there would be a flashback to a previous time – so concentration is required!
I recommend this book to anyone that enjoys historical fiction and doesn’t mind a bit of magical realism, and those that savor a very lyrical prose. The beauty of Vietnam is reflected from the pages, even while your heart breaks for the Vietnamese.
"Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened."
Born in the war-ravaged country of Vietnam, Rabbit is pulled from the earth from her dead mother’s body and is blessed – or perhaps cursed would be more appropriate – with the gift of hearing the voices of the dead. This is not just Rabbit’s story; it is a narrative of the Vietnamese people – their suffering and tremendous loss over the course of a complex history. We learn of this history through those voices that come to Rabbit as she traverses her country with her makeshift family, a group of individuals that flee to find a place of greater safety, a place to try to begin a life that has some semblance of stability. The voices are those of the living with whom she travels and meets along the way, but also the voices of the dead that have perished during the times of French colonialism, the Vietnam War, and during the period of post-war reconstruction. It is a tragic story and one that will make you ache as you learn the misery of these people and this country.
"Everywhere the world was charred. The bones of trees stood like primordial signposts warning of pestilence and death. In the moonlight the earth looked blackened like the skin of a fish."
The author, Quan Barry, is a poet and her writing is sublime. I truly got wrapped up in the beauty of her words, despite the grim truth and sorrow of which she writes. Magical realism can be hit or miss for me, and here it was definitely a hit! I loved the way the use of a mystical element helped to illuminate the history of Vietnam. It felt like the dead were literally screaming for recognition, for their unheard stories to be told. Those stories are important and ones with which I was not previously familiar. My understanding of Vietnam history is quite basic and this book shed a lot more light on the subject and has piqued my interest in learning more. I had a bit of trouble reading this as the timeline would shift back and forth in time. This was partly due to my own ignorance regarding the history, so I just needed to focus on the year as given by the author before each section of the book. But often within a section, there would be a flashback to a previous time – so concentration is required!
I recommend this book to anyone that enjoys historical fiction and doesn’t mind a bit of magical realism, and those that savor a very lyrical prose. The beauty of Vietnam is reflected from the pages, even while your heart breaks for the Vietnamese.
"Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened."
December 31, 2016
Beautiful. This is a prime example of how a poet excels in the novel form. The poetry gracefully occurred throughout the book. I cannot emphasize enough the sheer gorgeous language found in this book.
The story is magical and gripping. It tells of French colonialism in Vietnam and later of the American war as well as a bit after.
I must mention my appreciation for this book, especially its placing the Vietnam experience of that period in some context and shedding light on that history, portraying both north and south tensions and perspectives, and including elements about the ethnic minorities of Vietnam and about neighboring Cambodia and Laos. Lastly, I so appreciated how non-English languages were handled. For instance, a Russian statement simply occurs in Cyrillic writing. An explanation or contextual clue follows.
I'm keeping this book and glad that I had purchased it.
The story is magical and gripping. It tells of French colonialism in Vietnam and later of the American war as well as a bit after.
I must mention my appreciation for this book, especially its placing the Vietnam experience of that period in some context and shedding light on that history, portraying both north and south tensions and perspectives, and including elements about the ethnic minorities of Vietnam and about neighboring Cambodia and Laos. Lastly, I so appreciated how non-English languages were handled. For instance, a Russian statement simply occurs in Cyrillic writing. An explanation or contextual clue follows.
I'm keeping this book and glad that I had purchased it.
dnf
February 19, 2023I really enjoyed Barry's two more recent works, but this one just isn't doing it for me.
May 1, 2017
XXX I received this novel as a Goodreads Giveaway from Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House, and Quan Barry. Thank you so much for allowing me to read this novel.
My husband is a Vietnam vet, two tours in 1964-65-66. He and I have both read this book and shared ideas, impressions, and their impact on each of us, in our own hearts. First, this is a fantastic read. For me it was a bit confusing, as the chapters jump back and forth in time. I often had to place the events in a mental time line to see the story unfurl properly. That said, this is a book I would recommend to everyone. The horror of wartime we see in our history and readings are the army-against-army World War images. The wars fought on our soil - the Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War - we see as a real but vague obstruction of daily life for a short period of time until it was over. Vietnam has been at war for a thousand years. Daily life in country is ever changing, ever uncertain, ever deadly. This book follows Rabbit and her family from the early 1960's and on through the present as they try to survive, often moving in the dark of night, often hungry and without medical assistance, always in fear. Families minus males, who have been forced into the military of both sides during the conflict and in labor camps and state run farms at any time.
The beauty, the verdant life of Vietnam and her people comes through on every page. Anyone with a connection to Vietnam, be it soldiers and their families or the Houstonian who shops west of Beltway 8, should read this book.
My husband is a Vietnam vet, two tours in 1964-65-66. He and I have both read this book and shared ideas, impressions, and their impact on each of us, in our own hearts. First, this is a fantastic read. For me it was a bit confusing, as the chapters jump back and forth in time. I often had to place the events in a mental time line to see the story unfurl properly. That said, this is a book I would recommend to everyone. The horror of wartime we see in our history and readings are the army-against-army World War images. The wars fought on our soil - the Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War - we see as a real but vague obstruction of daily life for a short period of time until it was over. Vietnam has been at war for a thousand years. Daily life in country is ever changing, ever uncertain, ever deadly. This book follows Rabbit and her family from the early 1960's and on through the present as they try to survive, often moving in the dark of night, often hungry and without medical assistance, always in fear. Families minus males, who have been forced into the military of both sides during the conflict and in labor camps and state run farms at any time.
The beauty, the verdant life of Vietnam and her people comes through on every page. Anyone with a connection to Vietnam, be it soldiers and their families or the Houstonian who shops west of Beltway 8, should read this book.
April 7, 2021
Journey with Rabbit through mystical Vietnamese storytelling.
Favorite Passages:
Epilogue [2001]
This is not a story of what is missing. Some things just have yet to be found.
Along the Song Ma [1972]
This is what happens when you live in two worlds at once, he thought . . . .
________
Life is a wheel. That love should summon him again through the curtain of all these years. There are times when one must prune the tree that bears the fruit.
________
Sometimes in the quest for health, one must purposely inflict damage. The tree pruned back so that the fruit will flower.
________
Sometimes things blow shut of their own accord. The way a door creaks on its splintery wooden hinges - pain in the very sound of it. How the pain comes fluttering up in the joints, the pain permanent like new teeth. This is a moment of thresholds. The sound of doors swinging wildly somewhere in the wind.
________
He was always telling her the most beautiful stories, transforming the world before her eyes.
________
We all carry a light inside us . . .
________
. . . the fires like indigo stars twinkling on the mountainside. Wandering ghosts . . .
Brother Ghost. Sister Phantom.
________
Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
________
In a country full of ghosts, begin learning how to distinguish between the voices of the bodied and the voices of the spectral.
The Fall [1975]
In the beginning the words were all in her head along with memories of sulfurous clouds and leaf-nosed bats blessing her with their legendary wings.
________
Only one thing was certain. A great unknown was bearing down on them. Overhead the scavengers circling like a storm.
"And the Water Was Made as Glass" [1979]
The All-Seeing Lady is the one thing we take with us wherever we go. That's not to say it's wrong to dream or imagine ourselves differently. Some of us are still making peace with this stratum, the way we are merely rustlings in the world, crescents of light glinting on waves.
_________
An hour, minutes, weeks passed. They were flotsam in the river, an island of two. A beating heart sailing down a dark throat until it lands where it will.
Renovation [1986]
Among the Reindeer People there is a tale of the rabbit who had nothing to give the wanderer-god but the flesh of her own body and so threw herself into the fire and was immortalized on the face of the moon.
________
How do you prepare yourself when death is moving down the line? The man standing next to you and the man standing next to him and the man next to him all the way to the horizon. How you can see it coming but there's nowhere to run. Trees falling in a ghastly forest. Blood mingling in the dirt.
________
Overhead the daytime moon hung in the sky like a whisper.
________
She imagined bending down into an open grave and kissing a bright yellow bead on the tip of a dead woman's finger, the sudden taste of honey.
Wandering Ghosts [1996]
What you remember shapes who you are.
_________
The streets were empty, the stonework adorned in scales with intricate carved designs, mythical animals covered in scales with the haunches of lions and the faces of unicorns. Beyond that is the Forbidden Purple City . . .
_________
My family comes from the stars, Tao said. I am the last of us on earth.
_________
The room filled with a soft purple light. In the window the stars salted the sky. For both of them the pleasure was as it should be, Great-Great-Grandfather gasping at the simplicity of it.
_________
And what happens if we don't remember? What happens if we never knew? Too many of us are here in the dark because in the rush and clamor of blood and third reptilian brain takes over, the one that says I do not recognize anything of myself in you, and so you are less than nothing.
_________
Work your way toward the case that contains human fetuses, somebody's baby preserved in formaldehyde. The children are grotesque and seem to shine, their skin luminous and unfinished. Many are conjoined, some at the head, others in the body, their shapes alphabetic and strange . . .
Pick a jar off the shelf and clasp it in your arms. Sing to it. Rock it to sleep, the liquid softly sloshing like blood through the heart. Despite their monstrousness, they are unmistakably human; one with his intestines on the outside of his body floats sucking his thumb.
_________
Outside the moon had slipped behind a bank of clouds, but the room was still strangely bright. It took her a moment to realize. The light was coming from him.
_________
Moonlight pours through the empty windows. The dirt and grime blaze silver, a magical dust coating everything. There were fewer than a hundred of us when it started, the girl says. We were giving each other the sign of peace. Even when the others began to arrive and beg us to let them in, people were still greeting the new arrivals with the traditional salutations. Security. Health. Happiness. May you live a hundred years. Gracious wishes for the new spring. Peace be with you. Behind them the night lit up with fires.
_________
It was the Year of the Monkey, she says. Monkey is a trickster.
_________
In the field behind the church Rabbit can hear the sound of running water. In the distance a creek cuts along the edge of the land. Rabbit begins to walk toward it. She takes her shoes off and walks barefoot. The earth feels spongy beneath her feet. Her soles are stained a dark red, but with what she doesn't know.
By the creek, Rabbit lets the history wash over her.
_________
In your travails on earth, do not forget the wisdom of the animals. Even the Conquering Buddha lived numerous animal lives as the Monkey King, the Deer King, the Goose King, the King of the Elephants, the King of the Rats.
_________
It's dying, whispered the parakeet. No, said Rabbit. It's just manifesting the world it lives in.
_________
Life is a wheel. They way we end up where we begin. From here everything rises - the worn path, the moon with its long bright ears. Imagine water traveling back up into the sky, the sound of it climbing like a question.
_________
They were carried away by one of the epidemics, said Tu, as if sensing her vision. There were epidemics all the time.
_________
The country was less developed, the terraced hills a brighter shade of green. In the distance water buffalo lumbered through the landscape, everywhere the tops of palm trees like fireworks.
_________
The land here is littered with bones.
_________
Rabbit closed her eyes. She stood holding the bone and waiting for its story to come. She could feel the sun moving through the sky. Whole universes being born and falling dead.
Life is a Wheel [2001]
When you take her hand in yours, a symphony of voices rises from her skin, ancestors, multi-various like the branches of a tree. The world stirs in mysterious ways. For your own reasons you stopped listening to us in the years when you lost hope, but now our voices are calling you back with our stories like song.
_________
The girl brought the fish to her face the way one would a puppy. She kissed it and stroked its belly before reaching over the edge of the raft and letting it go. As it swam away Rabbit could see a trail of light left behind in the water like a comet blazing through the sky. The little girl laughed and clapped her hands together, her uneven braids bouncing on her shoulders. When she smiled, Rabbit could see the child was missing one of her front teeth, the head of the new tooth just starting to break the skin.
Favorite Passages:
Epilogue [2001]
This is not a story of what is missing. Some things just have yet to be found.
Along the Song Ma [1972]
This is what happens when you live in two worlds at once, he thought . . . .
________
Life is a wheel. That love should summon him again through the curtain of all these years. There are times when one must prune the tree that bears the fruit.
________
Sometimes in the quest for health, one must purposely inflict damage. The tree pruned back so that the fruit will flower.
________
Sometimes things blow shut of their own accord. The way a door creaks on its splintery wooden hinges - pain in the very sound of it. How the pain comes fluttering up in the joints, the pain permanent like new teeth. This is a moment of thresholds. The sound of doors swinging wildly somewhere in the wind.
________
He was always telling her the most beautiful stories, transforming the world before her eyes.
________
We all carry a light inside us . . .
________
. . . the fires like indigo stars twinkling on the mountainside. Wandering ghosts . . .
Brother Ghost. Sister Phantom.
________
Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
________
In a country full of ghosts, begin learning how to distinguish between the voices of the bodied and the voices of the spectral.
The Fall [1975]
In the beginning the words were all in her head along with memories of sulfurous clouds and leaf-nosed bats blessing her with their legendary wings.
________
Only one thing was certain. A great unknown was bearing down on them. Overhead the scavengers circling like a storm.
"And the Water Was Made as Glass" [1979]
The All-Seeing Lady is the one thing we take with us wherever we go. That's not to say it's wrong to dream or imagine ourselves differently. Some of us are still making peace with this stratum, the way we are merely rustlings in the world, crescents of light glinting on waves.
_________
An hour, minutes, weeks passed. They were flotsam in the river, an island of two. A beating heart sailing down a dark throat until it lands where it will.
Renovation [1986]
Among the Reindeer People there is a tale of the rabbit who had nothing to give the wanderer-god but the flesh of her own body and so threw herself into the fire and was immortalized on the face of the moon.
________
How do you prepare yourself when death is moving down the line? The man standing next to you and the man standing next to him and the man next to him all the way to the horizon. How you can see it coming but there's nowhere to run. Trees falling in a ghastly forest. Blood mingling in the dirt.
________
Overhead the daytime moon hung in the sky like a whisper.
________
She imagined bending down into an open grave and kissing a bright yellow bead on the tip of a dead woman's finger, the sudden taste of honey.
Wandering Ghosts [1996]
What you remember shapes who you are.
_________
The streets were empty, the stonework adorned in scales with intricate carved designs, mythical animals covered in scales with the haunches of lions and the faces of unicorns. Beyond that is the Forbidden Purple City . . .
_________
My family comes from the stars, Tao said. I am the last of us on earth.
_________
The room filled with a soft purple light. In the window the stars salted the sky. For both of them the pleasure was as it should be, Great-Great-Grandfather gasping at the simplicity of it.
_________
And what happens if we don't remember? What happens if we never knew? Too many of us are here in the dark because in the rush and clamor of blood and third reptilian brain takes over, the one that says I do not recognize anything of myself in you, and so you are less than nothing.
_________
Work your way toward the case that contains human fetuses, somebody's baby preserved in formaldehyde. The children are grotesque and seem to shine, their skin luminous and unfinished. Many are conjoined, some at the head, others in the body, their shapes alphabetic and strange . . .
Pick a jar off the shelf and clasp it in your arms. Sing to it. Rock it to sleep, the liquid softly sloshing like blood through the heart. Despite their monstrousness, they are unmistakably human; one with his intestines on the outside of his body floats sucking his thumb.
_________
Outside the moon had slipped behind a bank of clouds, but the room was still strangely bright. It took her a moment to realize. The light was coming from him.
_________
Moonlight pours through the empty windows. The dirt and grime blaze silver, a magical dust coating everything. There were fewer than a hundred of us when it started, the girl says. We were giving each other the sign of peace. Even when the others began to arrive and beg us to let them in, people were still greeting the new arrivals with the traditional salutations. Security. Health. Happiness. May you live a hundred years. Gracious wishes for the new spring. Peace be with you. Behind them the night lit up with fires.
_________
It was the Year of the Monkey, she says. Monkey is a trickster.
_________
In the field behind the church Rabbit can hear the sound of running water. In the distance a creek cuts along the edge of the land. Rabbit begins to walk toward it. She takes her shoes off and walks barefoot. The earth feels spongy beneath her feet. Her soles are stained a dark red, but with what she doesn't know.
By the creek, Rabbit lets the history wash over her.
_________
In your travails on earth, do not forget the wisdom of the animals. Even the Conquering Buddha lived numerous animal lives as the Monkey King, the Deer King, the Goose King, the King of the Elephants, the King of the Rats.
_________
It's dying, whispered the parakeet. No, said Rabbit. It's just manifesting the world it lives in.
_________
Life is a wheel. They way we end up where we begin. From here everything rises - the worn path, the moon with its long bright ears. Imagine water traveling back up into the sky, the sound of it climbing like a question.
_________
They were carried away by one of the epidemics, said Tu, as if sensing her vision. There were epidemics all the time.
_________
The country was less developed, the terraced hills a brighter shade of green. In the distance water buffalo lumbered through the landscape, everywhere the tops of palm trees like fireworks.
_________
The land here is littered with bones.
_________
Rabbit closed her eyes. She stood holding the bone and waiting for its story to come. She could feel the sun moving through the sky. Whole universes being born and falling dead.
Life is a Wheel [2001]
When you take her hand in yours, a symphony of voices rises from her skin, ancestors, multi-various like the branches of a tree. The world stirs in mysterious ways. For your own reasons you stopped listening to us in the years when you lost hope, but now our voices are calling you back with our stories like song.
_________
The girl brought the fish to her face the way one would a puppy. She kissed it and stroked its belly before reaching over the edge of the raft and letting it go. As it swam away Rabbit could see a trail of light left behind in the water like a comet blazing through the sky. The little girl laughed and clapped her hands together, her uneven braids bouncing on her shoulders. When she smiled, Rabbit could see the child was missing one of her front teeth, the head of the new tooth just starting to break the skin.
May 21, 2021
3.75 ! I know the summary says that the book is set during wartime Vietnam but I still wasn't expecting it to be so heavy. I'm not fond of novels written by poets because the prose tends to be to flowery without any actual depth but quan barry's writing has a quiet radiance to it, and even the most serious scenes are done so beautifully. Some sections (bà's terres noires episode, the final chapter) are so breathtaking you can tell they were written by a poet. Liked this a lot it's very different than what I usually read and I'm glad I did.
February 20, 2023
"Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened."
This book has Quan Barry's gorgeous and lyrical prose -- which I loved from When I'm Gone Look For Me In The East -- but this time steeped in a haunting darkness.
Rabbit came into the earth underground, dug out of her mother's coffin under the light of a full rabbit moon. She grew up hearing the voices of the dead - and in 1970s Vietnam, the dead were everywhere. Rabbit and her makeshift family are thrust into internal displacement, and as they traverse the country the old and the dead recall tales of colonization, war, postwar reunification, the desperation of the "boat people" who fled the country by sea. We see the mark that survival left on those who lost their loved ones, and we see the importance of uncovering what was lost and buried.
When I say this book was haunting, that's really the best word I can think of to describe it. The whole thing felt like a ghost story, dark and magical, steeped in Vietnamese folklore. Quan Barry's prose paints the whole story with an immersive dark ambiance that feels like a dream under the silvery glimmer of a full moon. The topic is one that works well with this tone; with so many atrocities committed during those years, there would have been a lot to feel haunted by. And the need to recover those who were lost was very real. I read an interview with the author where she recounted returning to Vietnam in 2010 and learning that the country had an "official psychic" who was bit by a rabid dog when she was five years old and awoke from a coma hearing the voices of the dead, and helped find the remains of soldiers and civilians who were lost in the war.
I would definitely recommend that readers check content warnings before jumping in. There is violence, death, gore, some weird sex stuff. It was challenging at times, to say the least.
But for those who like weird, dark, magical realism, who don't mind a little death, and who are ok with not always fully understanding what's going on -- then this is definitely one to pick up.
I feel like I'm probably going to do some research around Vietnamese mythology and the history of the war, and then try to give this a second read to see what I might have missed on the first go.
4.25 stars (might adjust up to 4.5 as I think more about it)
This book has Quan Barry's gorgeous and lyrical prose -- which I loved from When I'm Gone Look For Me In The East -- but this time steeped in a haunting darkness.
Rabbit came into the earth underground, dug out of her mother's coffin under the light of a full rabbit moon. She grew up hearing the voices of the dead - and in 1970s Vietnam, the dead were everywhere. Rabbit and her makeshift family are thrust into internal displacement, and as they traverse the country the old and the dead recall tales of colonization, war, postwar reunification, the desperation of the "boat people" who fled the country by sea. We see the mark that survival left on those who lost their loved ones, and we see the importance of uncovering what was lost and buried.
When I say this book was haunting, that's really the best word I can think of to describe it. The whole thing felt like a ghost story, dark and magical, steeped in Vietnamese folklore. Quan Barry's prose paints the whole story with an immersive dark ambiance that feels like a dream under the silvery glimmer of a full moon. The topic is one that works well with this tone; with so many atrocities committed during those years, there would have been a lot to feel haunted by. And the need to recover those who were lost was very real. I read an interview with the author where she recounted returning to Vietnam in 2010 and learning that the country had an "official psychic" who was bit by a rabid dog when she was five years old and awoke from a coma hearing the voices of the dead, and helped find the remains of soldiers and civilians who were lost in the war.
I would definitely recommend that readers check content warnings before jumping in. There is violence, death, gore, some weird sex stuff. It was challenging at times, to say the least.
But for those who like weird, dark, magical realism, who don't mind a little death, and who are ok with not always fully understanding what's going on -- then this is definitely one to pick up.
I feel like I'm probably going to do some research around Vietnamese mythology and the history of the war, and then try to give this a second read to see what I might have missed on the first go.
4.25 stars (might adjust up to 4.5 as I think more about it)
August 28, 2019
The abstruse, time-skipping, cerebral narrative style of this book did not work for me it all. I had a really difficult time following what was going on, and no part of this reading experience was enjoyable for me. I'd give this a 1-2 for my reading experience, but I don't want to be unfair because this isn't a bad book -- I just wasn't the right reader for it.
March 7, 2015
Poetic and mystical a story of Vietnam and its people from the French occupation through the Vietnam/American war. This is the story of a girl, Rabbit, who is born and buried alive with her dead mother, Little Mother. When she is found three days later, Rabbit is able to hear the dead speak. We learn of the reeducation camps, the struggles between north and south Vietnam, life living in floating communities, the rubber plantations such as Terres Noires, the disformed fetuses from chemicals the parents were exposed to, and the journey of refugees by land and boat fleeing to and from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. At times the book is raw and shocking with details of the war and the voices of the dead wanting to tell the story of what happened at their site. The story can be hard to follow because within chapters, paragraphs blend in and out of other segments of the overall story.
Mystical each in their own way are Ba, the mother of Tu, whom a Frenchman once extinguished a cigarette on her breast leaving a scar; Lam, the medicine man, who has copper wires driven through the palms of his hands and is the friend of Ba's with whom he shared the dragon fruit; An the man with the brown right eye and blue left eye who asks Tu to remember him in his prayers; Qui whose mother, Huyen, aborts Qui's fetus because war is no time to have a child and Qui's breasts forever leak milk; Tu with the red diamond birth mark on his face who is the father of Rabbit; the Plain of Jars in Laos.
http://plainofjars.net/index.htm
"In the long river, fish swim off without a trace / Fated in love, we can wait a thousand years / Who tends the paddy, repairs its dike / Whoever has true love shall meet / But when?"
"In the truck bed the prisoners stand shoulder to shoulder, their arms held out in front of thrm where, in lieu of rope, someone has speared a length of copper wire through the center of their hands, the men strung together like fish on a line, each man wired to the other. Already their hands are growing green and useless."
"And when you see him, the man you have always loved, as you invariably will, your love riding in the back of a truck with wire running though his palms under the hot September sun, don't cry out. Don't acknowledge his presence. His swollen hands sewn to his neighbor's, his back riddled with fresh welts."
"How the Americans would send fighter jets to bomb an area, houses and roads and animals all destroyed for the sake of a single bridge. Little did they know that by nightfall the rivers were again being crossed. By light of the moon the peasants would stand shoulder to shoulder in the muddy waters, then bend over, their backs like wooden planks. Entire villages were lined up, even the elderly, each becoming a single stone in the human road. The the NVA would roll a series of bicycles over the living bridge, bicycles loaded with rice and ammunition and medicine."
"Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon and the truth. Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened."
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/07/3843458...
Mystical each in their own way are Ba, the mother of Tu, whom a Frenchman once extinguished a cigarette on her breast leaving a scar; Lam, the medicine man, who has copper wires driven through the palms of his hands and is the friend of Ba's with whom he shared the dragon fruit; An the man with the brown right eye and blue left eye who asks Tu to remember him in his prayers; Qui whose mother, Huyen, aborts Qui's fetus because war is no time to have a child and Qui's breasts forever leak milk; Tu with the red diamond birth mark on his face who is the father of Rabbit; the Plain of Jars in Laos.
http://plainofjars.net/index.htm
"In the long river, fish swim off without a trace / Fated in love, we can wait a thousand years / Who tends the paddy, repairs its dike / Whoever has true love shall meet / But when?"
"In the truck bed the prisoners stand shoulder to shoulder, their arms held out in front of thrm where, in lieu of rope, someone has speared a length of copper wire through the center of their hands, the men strung together like fish on a line, each man wired to the other. Already their hands are growing green and useless."
"And when you see him, the man you have always loved, as you invariably will, your love riding in the back of a truck with wire running though his palms under the hot September sun, don't cry out. Don't acknowledge his presence. His swollen hands sewn to his neighbor's, his back riddled with fresh welts."
"How the Americans would send fighter jets to bomb an area, houses and roads and animals all destroyed for the sake of a single bridge. Little did they know that by nightfall the rivers were again being crossed. By light of the moon the peasants would stand shoulder to shoulder in the muddy waters, then bend over, their backs like wooden planks. Entire villages were lined up, even the elderly, each becoming a single stone in the human road. The the NVA would roll a series of bicycles over the living bridge, bicycles loaded with rice and ammunition and medicine."
"Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon and the truth. Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened."
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/07/3843458...
July 6, 2022
“A man and a woman meet in a barren landscape. The man is a dragon, the woman a fairy. Why they love each other we cannot say. What their congress looks like we do not know. In time the woman lays one hundred eggs, each one the soft pale color of mercy. There is joy and happiness followed by much sorrow as often occurs with pairings of this kind. Eventually the man and woman accept that they can no longer be together, their love poxed by the stars. The man is of earth, the woman water. She takes fifty of their children to the sea, he takes the others to the mountains. Such are the origins of the Vietnamese people”.
- She weeps each time you’re born by Barry Quan
.
.
It pained me to say that I found the story was very difficult to follow. It went back and forth, shifting characters and perspectives as ‘Rabbit’ which is the main character has an ability to see random images, visions and even hearing voices of the dead. We are seeing the decades of Vietnam history went by in linear manner via Rabbit Narration with multiple of supposed ‘Ghosts’ that appeared to her. I wanted it to be interesting, i wanted to love the story but alas it didn’t help me to be engaged with the premise of the story. Magical realism usually can be a hit or miss for me but unfortunately this time, its a miss. Don’t get me wrong, the writing is gorgeous given that Quan Barry is a poet. The details and the descriptions of the events, scents and even a person was real and it felt like I was right there - seeing and experiencing it. We traveled with Rabbit and her family surviving whatever ordeals they have to face from the early 1960s to the present day. The horror of the wartime, the starvation, the family members being taken, the uncertainty and living in a constant fear. I would like to highlight that going into the book without any prior knowledge of Vietnam’s history might not be the best idea. As it is a historical fiction, having a familiarity on the division of North and South Vietnam, the time which Japanese and French occupied the country and eventually the attempt of the American military to stop communism might help in grasping the POV of Vietnamese people. Ultimately, i would say that this book is not for everyone. I learned a lot especially when it focuses on the perspective of southern Vietnamese people, the reunification impact, what is lurking inside these reeducation camps and the life under the Communist government BUT I would not call it easy reading. Overall, if you are a fan of Magical realism and historical fiction, this is for you. You must TRULY LOVE the combination of both for you to enjoy this book.
- She weeps each time you’re born by Barry Quan
.
.
It pained me to say that I found the story was very difficult to follow. It went back and forth, shifting characters and perspectives as ‘Rabbit’ which is the main character has an ability to see random images, visions and even hearing voices of the dead. We are seeing the decades of Vietnam history went by in linear manner via Rabbit Narration with multiple of supposed ‘Ghosts’ that appeared to her. I wanted it to be interesting, i wanted to love the story but alas it didn’t help me to be engaged with the premise of the story. Magical realism usually can be a hit or miss for me but unfortunately this time, its a miss. Don’t get me wrong, the writing is gorgeous given that Quan Barry is a poet. The details and the descriptions of the events, scents and even a person was real and it felt like I was right there - seeing and experiencing it. We traveled with Rabbit and her family surviving whatever ordeals they have to face from the early 1960s to the present day. The horror of the wartime, the starvation, the family members being taken, the uncertainty and living in a constant fear. I would like to highlight that going into the book without any prior knowledge of Vietnam’s history might not be the best idea. As it is a historical fiction, having a familiarity on the division of North and South Vietnam, the time which Japanese and French occupied the country and eventually the attempt of the American military to stop communism might help in grasping the POV of Vietnamese people. Ultimately, i would say that this book is not for everyone. I learned a lot especially when it focuses on the perspective of southern Vietnamese people, the reunification impact, what is lurking inside these reeducation camps and the life under the Communist government BUT I would not call it easy reading. Overall, if you are a fan of Magical realism and historical fiction, this is for you. You must TRULY LOVE the combination of both for you to enjoy this book.
November 4, 2024
No one should die without their story being told, yet in a country racked by war upon war, the voices of unquiet souls desperate to be heard come to number untold millions. This tale of Vietnam through the eyes of struggling peasants has been called “magical realism” in all the blurbs, though I sense that its supernatural elements have less to do with magic than with religious spirituality; its numinous imagery and the cruel events of its plot create a poetry, in the sense of words bodying forth emotional truths which transcend the level of the letter. This book was a chance find for me; I am glad I encountered it.
December 17, 2021
Nicely written but I found it unfocused. I wished it would stay in its more dreamy mode associated with the children. But it returned to the elders’ backstory of time in the war, which rightly was a grinding tale of misery. I gave up about halfway.
May 6, 2016
This review first appeared in the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketco...
Here's a true dumb American confession: I have a hard time with historical novels that take place outside of the U.S. I'm not much of a history buff, and I find it takes a skillful, engaging author to both situate and dazzle me with beauty at the same time. Quan Barry, as it turns out, is just that kind of author. In her debut novel, "She Weeps Each Time You're Born," the Saigon-born poet guides us through the history of modern Vietnam with a deft mix of folklore, magical realism and stories of struggle and hardship that feel yanked right out of history.
The book spans three turbulent decades, beginning with the unusual birth of a girl named Rabbit along the Song Ma River at the height of the Vietnam War, "under the full rabbit moon six feet below ground in a wooden box, her mother's hands cold as ice, overhead the bats of good fortune flitting through the dark." By 2001, when the narrative ends, she has become a living legend — in a "silvery room inside Rabbit's head," she hears and acknowledges the voices of the dead.
And Vietnam is filled with these dead, their bodies and ghosts and voices. It's "[a] nation of people who have been dying from war for over a thousand years. Everywhere their faces buried in the road." The novel is framed by a chorus of the dead, each chapter introduced with their eerie narration. They unroll the developing legend of Rabbit, the folklore and spirituality of Vietnam. They observe and they wait: "So many of us still here sleeping in the earth until someone decides it is time to sort us out and take us home."
Death pervades every section of the novel, which is structured around vivid snapshots of Rabbit's life at critical moments of Vietnam's history. She and her family flee south after the end of the war ("people pushing south as if just the word south could save them"); they try to escape with a crew of Cambodian refugees. She listens to both the living and the dead, and other narratives embed themselves in her experience — her grandmother's time at a rubber plantation in the days of French Indochina, an ex-prisoner's trials at a re-education camp.
Rabbit's gift allows her to bring a measure of peace and resolution to the rustling dead: "The simple act of someone hearing them, an acknowledgment, and then they can go wherever it is they go." Her acknowledgment is humane and apolitical, and as her psychic abilities bring her to prominence, she poses a threat to the war's northern victors, who would rather ignore the southern dead.
The novel is haunting and beautiful, its power multiplied by Barry's mastery of language. Her prose reads at times like poetry ("the innumerable flames like a flock of moons," "[t]he sound of the bees' thrumming a dark electricity"); at other times, it pierces, clear and spare ("Nobody said anything. And with that, they began to suspect one another."). She pulls off both a mystical talking parakeet and a page-long sentence written in the second person, both tricks I know better than to try at home.
With "She Weeps Each Time You're Born," Barry does her own part in acknowledging her homeland's dead. Like Rabbit, she taps into history and makes sure they are not forgotten. Through her voice, they are counted, their stories told. Our only task is to listen.
Here's a true dumb American confession: I have a hard time with historical novels that take place outside of the U.S. I'm not much of a history buff, and I find it takes a skillful, engaging author to both situate and dazzle me with beauty at the same time. Quan Barry, as it turns out, is just that kind of author. In her debut novel, "She Weeps Each Time You're Born," the Saigon-born poet guides us through the history of modern Vietnam with a deft mix of folklore, magical realism and stories of struggle and hardship that feel yanked right out of history.
The book spans three turbulent decades, beginning with the unusual birth of a girl named Rabbit along the Song Ma River at the height of the Vietnam War, "under the full rabbit moon six feet below ground in a wooden box, her mother's hands cold as ice, overhead the bats of good fortune flitting through the dark." By 2001, when the narrative ends, she has become a living legend — in a "silvery room inside Rabbit's head," she hears and acknowledges the voices of the dead.
And Vietnam is filled with these dead, their bodies and ghosts and voices. It's "[a] nation of people who have been dying from war for over a thousand years. Everywhere their faces buried in the road." The novel is framed by a chorus of the dead, each chapter introduced with their eerie narration. They unroll the developing legend of Rabbit, the folklore and spirituality of Vietnam. They observe and they wait: "So many of us still here sleeping in the earth until someone decides it is time to sort us out and take us home."
Death pervades every section of the novel, which is structured around vivid snapshots of Rabbit's life at critical moments of Vietnam's history. She and her family flee south after the end of the war ("people pushing south as if just the word south could save them"); they try to escape with a crew of Cambodian refugees. She listens to both the living and the dead, and other narratives embed themselves in her experience — her grandmother's time at a rubber plantation in the days of French Indochina, an ex-prisoner's trials at a re-education camp.
Rabbit's gift allows her to bring a measure of peace and resolution to the rustling dead: "The simple act of someone hearing them, an acknowledgment, and then they can go wherever it is they go." Her acknowledgment is humane and apolitical, and as her psychic abilities bring her to prominence, she poses a threat to the war's northern victors, who would rather ignore the southern dead.
The novel is haunting and beautiful, its power multiplied by Barry's mastery of language. Her prose reads at times like poetry ("the innumerable flames like a flock of moons," "[t]he sound of the bees' thrumming a dark electricity"); at other times, it pierces, clear and spare ("Nobody said anything. And with that, they began to suspect one another."). She pulls off both a mystical talking parakeet and a page-long sentence written in the second person, both tricks I know better than to try at home.
With "She Weeps Each Time You're Born," Barry does her own part in acknowledging her homeland's dead. Like Rabbit, she taps into history and makes sure they are not forgotten. Through her voice, they are counted, their stories told. Our only task is to listen.
September 4, 2020
She Weeps Each Time You're Born was my selection for my book club, which meant I was responsible for leading our discussion about it. When I got to the end of the book, I could barely make sense of what I'd read and had no idea how we were going to talk about it. I ended up reading a lot a lot of Wikipedia articles and other web pages about Vietnam and Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War, and Buddhism, and then re-reading the whole book. On my second time through, I was much better equipped to recognize more of the symbolism and was less thrown off by the unexpected shifts in timeline, and I could appreciate that there was a lot of deep meaning in this book. However, the book assumes that the reader has a deep knowledge of Vietnamese culture, religion, and history, and it doesn't provide much help to someone coming to it without that background.
The book is about a woman, Rabbit, who can hear the spirits of the dead. She was born in 1972, in the last years of the Vietnam War, and her country is bursting at the seams with dead people who want to tell their tales, be heard, and move on toward their next life. It's an interesting sideways way to talk about the ravages of war on a country, by focusing on how saturated the land is with the voices of the dead, but for me the magical elements in the book made the horrors feel fuzzy and distant; in spite of how important place and history are to this book, the book didn't make the Vietnam War feel real to me at all. I knew that Rabbit was devastated by her interactions with these spirits, but I couldn't feel the devastation myself because the focus was too much on Rabbit and her magical ability.
Rabbit, we gradually come to realize, is an incarnation of Quan Am, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. Other characters seem to also be symbols; Rabbit's mother-figure Qui might represent the country of Vietnam, and Arun, the always-smiling Cambodian who has magical powers of his own, could possibly be Lokeśvara, a Cambodian equivalent of Quan Am. But I don't have the knowledge to unravel all of the symbolism in this book because it relies too much on a culture I don't know enough about. On my second read through I could only make sense of enough to recognize that there was skill and meaning here even though I still couldn't understand most of it.
This book was a two-star read on my first time through, and probably closer to a four-star read when I came back to it after doing some research. However, it used one of my pet-peeve plot devices: the author put herself into the story (by name! it's really obviously the author herself!), and what's worse she seems to have made herself a sort of savior, appearing in Rabbit's life at a time that Rabbit has stopped listening to the spirits. Her appearance (even if through no deliberate action or intention of her own) wakes Rabbit up and causes her to start using her powers again. I can understand where the author was going by introducing one of the children relocated from Vietnam to America in Operation Babylift, showing that these Vietnamese Americans are part of the complicated history of Vietnam and that their voices are integral to the long process of healing after the war, but I really wish she had fictionalized the character rather than making herself a character in the book.
The book is about a woman, Rabbit, who can hear the spirits of the dead. She was born in 1972, in the last years of the Vietnam War, and her country is bursting at the seams with dead people who want to tell their tales, be heard, and move on toward their next life. It's an interesting sideways way to talk about the ravages of war on a country, by focusing on how saturated the land is with the voices of the dead, but for me the magical elements in the book made the horrors feel fuzzy and distant; in spite of how important place and history are to this book, the book didn't make the Vietnam War feel real to me at all. I knew that Rabbit was devastated by her interactions with these spirits, but I couldn't feel the devastation myself because the focus was too much on Rabbit and her magical ability.
Rabbit, we gradually come to realize, is an incarnation of Quan Am, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. Other characters seem to also be symbols; Rabbit's mother-figure Qui might represent the country of Vietnam, and Arun, the always-smiling Cambodian who has magical powers of his own, could possibly be Lokeśvara, a Cambodian equivalent of Quan Am. But I don't have the knowledge to unravel all of the symbolism in this book because it relies too much on a culture I don't know enough about. On my second read through I could only make sense of enough to recognize that there was skill and meaning here even though I still couldn't understand most of it.
This book was a two-star read on my first time through, and probably closer to a four-star read when I came back to it after doing some research. However, it used one of my pet-peeve plot devices: the author put herself into the story (by name! it's really obviously the author herself!), and what's worse she seems to have made herself a sort of savior, appearing in Rabbit's life at a time that Rabbit has stopped listening to the spirits. Her appearance (even if through no deliberate action or intention of her own) wakes Rabbit up and causes her to start using her powers again. I can understand where the author was going by introducing one of the children relocated from Vietnam to America in Operation Babylift, showing that these Vietnamese Americans are part of the complicated history of Vietnam and that their voices are integral to the long process of healing after the war, but I really wish she had fictionalized the character rather than making herself a character in the book.
March 22, 2015
I really wish that Goodreads would let you use half stars to rate books because I feel like 3 stars is mediocre (which this book is not) but I have trouble giving it 4. This is not really one of those "couldn't put it down" reads. On the contrary, you have to take your time and really concentrate. There is minimal punctuation which can be confusing when people say something or there is a flashback in the middle of a 'present day scene', but you do get used to that after a bit. The book itself is less than 300 pages and (while you should by no means rush through it) is difficult to read if you take too long of a break in between sittings. Lots of characters pop up at various times and if you're not on-point then you will be sitting there trying to place where and when you know that person from...
I immensely enjoyed how much political and cultural meat went into the book. There were several times that I took a break from reading in order to research a particular event or place which was mentioned (being an American born in the 80s, I have minimal exposure to Vietnam other than 'the war'). The imagery used was fantastic and the main character, Rabbit, was very likeable and made me want to follow her journey.
At the end though, I am left wondering if perhaps I am too stupid to thoroughly appreciate this book? There were numerous, ongoing mythological themes that I feel like the author was trying to blend into the story but I sometimes had trouble connecting. And that was particularly evident in the end. While all of the reviews I've seen on here praise the depth and beauty of this book, I almost want to read it a second time to see if it has more of an impact. Either way, a beautiful way of showing the struggles and people of Vietnam.
I immensely enjoyed how much political and cultural meat went into the book. There were several times that I took a break from reading in order to research a particular event or place which was mentioned (being an American born in the 80s, I have minimal exposure to Vietnam other than 'the war'). The imagery used was fantastic and the main character, Rabbit, was very likeable and made me want to follow her journey.
At the end though, I am left wondering if perhaps I am too stupid to thoroughly appreciate this book? There were numerous, ongoing mythological themes that I feel like the author was trying to blend into the story but I sometimes had trouble connecting. And that was particularly evident in the end. While all of the reviews I've seen on here praise the depth and beauty of this book, I almost want to read it a second time to see if it has more of an impact. Either way, a beautiful way of showing the struggles and people of Vietnam.
February 22, 2017
i'm obsessed
ok see, this book is beautifully written, which isn't a surprised considering the author's a poet, but it's also beautiful because it's so comprehensive in its articulation of vietnamese history sans americanisms. it tells of a history long before the americans came, and long after they left.
it's a book about VIETNAM. and i like history written in such a poetic, opaque style because i'm captured by the country, its history and its people. i know jack about vietnam aside from the vietnam war and i feel compelled to learn more. and more. THE SYMPATHIZER is on my tbr and I can't wait.
also the SEA region is so popular among western solo backpackers because it offers really budget-friendly travel, and i'm a travel enthusiast myself so i've obviously been low-key planning a huge trip around SEA for awhile, but now i think i need to take a step back. one day when i walk in vietnam i need to acknowledge being american and understand being vietnamese (metaphorically bc i am not actually vietnamese & have no ties to vietnam) - whether as a northerner, a southerner, an ethnic minority, or otherwise. i need to really feel it, in the all-encompassing way that rabbit hears the dead.
ok see, this book is beautifully written, which isn't a surprised considering the author's a poet, but it's also beautiful because it's so comprehensive in its articulation of vietnamese history sans americanisms. it tells of a history long before the americans came, and long after they left.
it's a book about VIETNAM. and i like history written in such a poetic, opaque style because i'm captured by the country, its history and its people. i know jack about vietnam aside from the vietnam war and i feel compelled to learn more. and more. THE SYMPATHIZER is on my tbr and I can't wait.
also the SEA region is so popular among western solo backpackers because it offers really budget-friendly travel, and i'm a travel enthusiast myself so i've obviously been low-key planning a huge trip around SEA for awhile, but now i think i need to take a step back. one day when i walk in vietnam i need to acknowledge being american and understand being vietnamese (metaphorically bc i am not actually vietnamese & have no ties to vietnam) - whether as a northerner, a southerner, an ethnic minority, or otherwise. i need to really feel it, in the all-encompassing way that rabbit hears the dead.
November 2, 2015
Ok, quite honestly, I'd give this 1.5 stars. It wasn't bad enough for me to quit listening, but I didn't really enjoy it. I reserve 1 stars for books I can't finish.
I do believe this books suffered from me "reading" it as an audio book, as I didn't really like the reader and the book jumped around in time and was quite confusing in audio.
I may edit this review after the book group - maybe I missed something. But I doubt it.
I do believe this books suffered from me "reading" it as an audio book, as I didn't really like the reader and the book jumped around in time and was quite confusing in audio.
I may edit this review after the book group - maybe I missed something. But I doubt it.
June 27, 2017
The writing was exquisite. I would want to read passages to Dave "listen to this sentence, its magical". The author is a poet and this is her first novel. The book is set in Vietnam and is about a young girl who is born under mysterious circumstances and can hear the voices of the dead. Highly recommend!
July 11, 2017
This book had a lot of potential, but the movement back and forth in time within the different time periods made it difficult to fully grasp the symbolism or in some cases, to engage with what was happening in the moment.
February 24, 2015
I don't really have words for this yet. It's lovely and magical and horrific and surprising and beautiful.
April 24, 2020
so beautiful, and so important. it is as if the writer took vietnam’s history and told it in the words of our people.
November 26, 2021
It makes me a little sad to say that I didn't like this book. I really enjoyed Barry's second novel, We Ride Upon SticksWe Ride Upon Sticks, so I was looking forward to this one. It is beautifully written and addresses a serious and heartbreaking subject—the effects of the Vietnam War on the Vietnamese people; however, I found that the plot didn't engage me at all. It took me an unheard of 2 weeks to finish it, because I literally never thought about it at all when I was not reading it. In addition to that, the nature of the book involved a lot of depictions of brutality, which was probably not the best for me right now.
March 11, 2019
Beautiful characters, but I read it in disjointed sessions and didn't appreciate the metaphors and tying threads. Marked three of the books cited as to read for a deeper insight into daily life in Vietnam.
November 11, 2021
Exceptional. Beautiful. A tragic history wrapped in magical realism.
September 28, 2025
4.75/5
January 8, 2016
Quan Barry’s She Weeps Each Time You’re Born is a poetic, magical exploration of 20th century Vietnamese history, told through the lens of one family group. This is a debut novel by a poet, and it shows. Not that the book is ever flowery or excessively descriptive—it’s more like Barry has chosen each word with careful thought, as one might when crafting a poem. Because of this, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born gives off every impression of a skillfully crafted piece of art, which does much to accentuate the otherworldly qualities of the protagonist and her story.
This protagonist is Rabbit, born in 1972 just as the United States’ soldiers are withdrawing from Vietnam. Born in the midst of an evacuation, Rabbit is left for dead along with her mother, and eventually buried with her. Days later, Rabbit is rescued by her Vietcong father, Tu, Tu’s mother, and Rabbit’s adoptive mother, Qui, as well as Qui’s mother, Huyen. This makeshift family spends the next several decades migrating across the newly reunified Vietnam, and making several escape attempts in the process. Along the way, Rabbit’s strange ability to commune with the dead allows the novel to reveal a fuller glimpse of Vietnam, from Rabbit’s grandmother’s work on a French rubber plantation in the 1940s to Tu’s fighting in Cambodia to another man’s time in a jungle reeducation camp.
The dead in Vietnam call out to Rabbit, and she can give them peace by hearing their stories, but at what cost to herself. There are some stories the government would like to remain buried and unheard, and Rabbit’s choices eventually come down to forced silence or exile from her homeland. In these ways, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born comments beautifully on the power of history and the suppression of truth. Aside from basic knowledge of a war that ended 40 years ago, how many in the United States are aware of what happened in Vietnam in the decades since 1972? How many Vietnamese have been kept ignorant of their own heritage?
What Quan Barry does with this book is powerful and important, but that’s not to say the story itself isn’t good—it is. Barry’s writing is dark and eerie and honest, and the novel’s structure is uniquely effective in criss-crossing Vietnam both physically and chronologically. From all technical standpoints, this is an extremely good book, and I do not want to discount that in any way. (The only thing that gave me pause was the author’s self-insertion as a character in the prologue and epilogue.) Yet so much of this story is wrapped up in history and bloodshed that it’s impossible to read She Weeps Each Time You’re Born without feeling the weight of the book’s contents.
In any case, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born is a strong, lyrical novel. Quan Barry gives a voice to a history the world has tried to forget, as well as telling a story that’s spellbinding in its creative interweaving of magic, myth, and realism. From where I’m sitting, this is absolutely not a book to be missed.
This protagonist is Rabbit, born in 1972 just as the United States’ soldiers are withdrawing from Vietnam. Born in the midst of an evacuation, Rabbit is left for dead along with her mother, and eventually buried with her. Days later, Rabbit is rescued by her Vietcong father, Tu, Tu’s mother, and Rabbit’s adoptive mother, Qui, as well as Qui’s mother, Huyen. This makeshift family spends the next several decades migrating across the newly reunified Vietnam, and making several escape attempts in the process. Along the way, Rabbit’s strange ability to commune with the dead allows the novel to reveal a fuller glimpse of Vietnam, from Rabbit’s grandmother’s work on a French rubber plantation in the 1940s to Tu’s fighting in Cambodia to another man’s time in a jungle reeducation camp.
The dead in Vietnam call out to Rabbit, and she can give them peace by hearing their stories, but at what cost to herself. There are some stories the government would like to remain buried and unheard, and Rabbit’s choices eventually come down to forced silence or exile from her homeland. In these ways, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born comments beautifully on the power of history and the suppression of truth. Aside from basic knowledge of a war that ended 40 years ago, how many in the United States are aware of what happened in Vietnam in the decades since 1972? How many Vietnamese have been kept ignorant of their own heritage?
What Quan Barry does with this book is powerful and important, but that’s not to say the story itself isn’t good—it is. Barry’s writing is dark and eerie and honest, and the novel’s structure is uniquely effective in criss-crossing Vietnam both physically and chronologically. From all technical standpoints, this is an extremely good book, and I do not want to discount that in any way. (The only thing that gave me pause was the author’s self-insertion as a character in the prologue and epilogue.) Yet so much of this story is wrapped up in history and bloodshed that it’s impossible to read She Weeps Each Time You’re Born without feeling the weight of the book’s contents.
In any case, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born is a strong, lyrical novel. Quan Barry gives a voice to a history the world has tried to forget, as well as telling a story that’s spellbinding in its creative interweaving of magic, myth, and realism. From where I’m sitting, this is absolutely not a book to be missed.
March 16, 2015
Many thanks and much appreciation to Pantheon Books New York, for the ARC of "She Weeps Each Tine You're Born: A Novel" by award winning author/poet Quan Barry for the purpose of this review. Barry was born in Saigon, and raised in Boston, MA. Quan Barry is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her poetry and writing have been featured in many notable publications.
The novel, reflective of the other Vietnam: the river people/tribes that inhabit the Mekong Delta. Not allowed by law to congregate in large numbers, the villages were smaller, consisting mainly of women and children who cared for their elders. They fished, farmed, cleared the jungle, engaged in logging. The houses floated on the river sometimes. The noticeably absent men, may have been in the military, employed elsewhere, working on the rubber plantations, or possibly in re-education camps.
Cambodian refugees, blended in with the general population, and avoided speaking, as to not betray where they were from. Conversation as we know it in our society, was non-existent in that part of Vietnamese culture. The story appeared to be disjointed, it was hard to follow: Barry only allowed the perceptions and observations of these villagers and that of the main character Rabbit. Rabbit, an unknown woman seer, had visions, impressions, and heard the voices of the dead, which appeared to her at random.
(From the book)... "Rabbit's head suddenly filled with a silvery light.. Someone had died right there in the pilothouse. It had happened recently. And now someone was trying to talk to her, a spirit desperate to be heard. She closed her eyes. Please, the voice said. Take whatever you want, then the sound of a fishing knife...."
(From the book)... "Among the Christians forgiveness is everything... In the Eastern cosmology the Lady will come to you and bathe your wounds and listen to your suffering, but she will absolve you of nothing. Absolution comes in the next life if you live within the path."
The writing was really beautiful, and the lyrical descriptions of the land and nature, the customs, culture of these invisible people, and even the senseless violence (sometimes leading to death) were breathtaking. It helps to have prior knowledge of the division of North and South Vietnam, the Japanese and French occupation, the arrival of the American military forces that attempted to prevent the spread of communism. Maps were included, dates and timelines would have been helpful as a reference point for this rare and unique novel and reading experience.
The novel, reflective of the other Vietnam: the river people/tribes that inhabit the Mekong Delta. Not allowed by law to congregate in large numbers, the villages were smaller, consisting mainly of women and children who cared for their elders. They fished, farmed, cleared the jungle, engaged in logging. The houses floated on the river sometimes. The noticeably absent men, may have been in the military, employed elsewhere, working on the rubber plantations, or possibly in re-education camps.
Cambodian refugees, blended in with the general population, and avoided speaking, as to not betray where they were from. Conversation as we know it in our society, was non-existent in that part of Vietnamese culture. The story appeared to be disjointed, it was hard to follow: Barry only allowed the perceptions and observations of these villagers and that of the main character Rabbit. Rabbit, an unknown woman seer, had visions, impressions, and heard the voices of the dead, which appeared to her at random.
(From the book)... "Rabbit's head suddenly filled with a silvery light.. Someone had died right there in the pilothouse. It had happened recently. And now someone was trying to talk to her, a spirit desperate to be heard. She closed her eyes. Please, the voice said. Take whatever you want, then the sound of a fishing knife...."
(From the book)... "Among the Christians forgiveness is everything... In the Eastern cosmology the Lady will come to you and bathe your wounds and listen to your suffering, but she will absolve you of nothing. Absolution comes in the next life if you live within the path."
The writing was really beautiful, and the lyrical descriptions of the land and nature, the customs, culture of these invisible people, and even the senseless violence (sometimes leading to death) were breathtaking. It helps to have prior knowledge of the division of North and South Vietnam, the Japanese and French occupation, the arrival of the American military forces that attempted to prevent the spread of communism. Maps were included, dates and timelines would have been helpful as a reference point for this rare and unique novel and reading experience.
March 21, 2015
“Sometimes things blow shut of their own accord. The way a door creaks on its splintery wooden hinges—pain in the very sound of it. How the pain comes fluttering up in the joints, the pain permanent like new teeth. This is the moment of thresholds. The sound of doors swinging wildly somewhere in the wind" (15).
“…the air sulfurous and filled with thunder and lightning. Each time one hit, brightness like hell itself” (21).
“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened” (33).
“She can hear the old honey seller’s heart beating, the sound filling her small head though no one else hears it, not even the heart itself” (52).
“Only one thing was certain. A great unknown was bearing down on them. Overhead the scavengers circling like a storm” (53).
“...Ba’s mouth awkwardly hitching up and down like a puppet with a broken string, one side of her face frozen” (56).
“...the soft pale color of mercy” (65).
“...their faces etched by sun and swifter sharper things” (68).
“Le Cheval is full of ore; you are just a secondary cargo” (69).
“All over the splintery boards of the pier you notice rusty stains that theoretically could be anything” (70).
“The woman’s face is dark and lined, her own badge weathered and dangling around her neck like a battered soul” (70).
“It’s all a metaphor, but for what you are unsure” (72).
“...but all he could hear was the sound of the river flexing beneath him” (96).
“Some of us are still making peace with this stratum, the way we are merely rustlings in the world, crescents of light glinting on waves” (98).
“Only a fool puts his heart into things” (104).
“The moon lay on the water like a hole filled with fire” (106).
“Fishermen had cut open crocodiles to find bicycle tires in their stomachs, one with an entire French tea set tarnishing in its guts” (109).
“What the world is trying to teach you: the only permanence is impermanence” (114).
“In fifteen minutes the moon would be out, sailing through the heavens, the world left dripping, cleansed” (174).
“Too many of us are here in the dark because in the rush and clamor of blood the third reptilian brain takes over, the one that says I do not recognize anything of myself in you, and so you are less than nothing” (223).
“...everywhere the tops of palm trees like fireworks” (247).
“…the air sulfurous and filled with thunder and lightning. Each time one hit, brightness like hell itself” (21).
“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened” (33).
“She can hear the old honey seller’s heart beating, the sound filling her small head though no one else hears it, not even the heart itself” (52).
“Only one thing was certain. A great unknown was bearing down on them. Overhead the scavengers circling like a storm” (53).
“...Ba’s mouth awkwardly hitching up and down like a puppet with a broken string, one side of her face frozen” (56).
“...the soft pale color of mercy” (65).
“...their faces etched by sun and swifter sharper things” (68).
“Le Cheval is full of ore; you are just a secondary cargo” (69).
“All over the splintery boards of the pier you notice rusty stains that theoretically could be anything” (70).
“The woman’s face is dark and lined, her own badge weathered and dangling around her neck like a battered soul” (70).
“It’s all a metaphor, but for what you are unsure” (72).
“...but all he could hear was the sound of the river flexing beneath him” (96).
“Some of us are still making peace with this stratum, the way we are merely rustlings in the world, crescents of light glinting on waves” (98).
“Only a fool puts his heart into things” (104).
“The moon lay on the water like a hole filled with fire” (106).
“Fishermen had cut open crocodiles to find bicycle tires in their stomachs, one with an entire French tea set tarnishing in its guts” (109).
“What the world is trying to teach you: the only permanence is impermanence” (114).
“In fifteen minutes the moon would be out, sailing through the heavens, the world left dripping, cleansed” (174).
“Too many of us are here in the dark because in the rush and clamor of blood the third reptilian brain takes over, the one that says I do not recognize anything of myself in you, and so you are less than nothing” (223).
“...everywhere the tops of palm trees like fireworks” (247).
May 28, 2015
She Weeps Each Time You're Born is so obviously written to fulfill some literary fiction bingo card, I can't even hate on it too hard for the content. You've read one by-the-numbers post-colonial epic of memory and cultural history intended to flatter enlightened American audiences, you've read them all. What I can hate is the prose, which perplexingly enough, every other reviewer has praised for being poetic and luminous. Hmm, I must have the wrong copy.
Pop quiz time!
Identify which of the following two passages illustrates "Barry's mastery of language" (LA Times): (emphasis mine)
A. Here?
B. Or here?
Pop quiz time!
Identify which of the following two passages illustrates "Barry's mastery of language" (LA Times): (emphasis mine)
A. Here?
The last time Tu had been with them, the sound of the couple's long nights of love filling the air which in a culture of one-room households it was taboo for anyone to acknowledge. For as many nights as it lasted Ba lay in her corner pretending not to hear the rhythmic noises and small groans coming from their mat but remembering her own nights of pleasure long ago in a world at war, hoping they were being careful but knowing that they weren't.(Wherein Grandma takes a break from her dread at daughter-in-law's wartime pregnancy, in order to explain her own culture anthropologically. With clauses that may or may not have been randomly pieced together by committee to resemble sentence-like products.)
B. Or here?
Son sighed and swung the sampan toward the stars of the Black Tortoise. He thought of the things Huyen had told them about the river. The Mekong was a series of rivers that originated in the icy mountains of Tibet and reached the South China Sea through a network of tributaries south of Saigon. It branched and forked and twisted for almost three thousand miles, the dark brown surface deceptively calm. Anywhere two or more branches met there was a dangerous current as the two rivers became one. At its widest, the Mekong stretched more than seven miles from shore to shore.(Wherein kid should quit the profession of fishing and take up writing Wikipedia articles.)
February 27, 2016
I picked this book for book group at the recommendation of an employee at the wonderful Boswell Books here in Milwaukee. It was a bit out of my comfort zone, but I'm so glad to have listened to that enthusiastic bookseller. This is a lovely book, difficult to read at times because it is about the war in Vietnam and the terrible, unbelievable, unrelenting toll such conflict exacted on the people who were involved, even passively because of their mere presence. It's interesting to read about that war from a perspective other than that of ours and how it affected us: the Americans, the outsiders.
There are a lot of reviews about this book online (npr.org has one that features Q&A with the author), so I don't need to duplicate those efforts. I'm a little apprehensive about the book discussion next week because I don't want it to become a history lesson - I want to talk about the book, the characters, how the author did what she did, and all of the magical elements she introduced.
There are a lot of reviews about this book online (npr.org has one that features Q&A with the author), so I don't need to duplicate those efforts. I'm a little apprehensive about the book discussion next week because I don't want it to become a history lesson - I want to talk about the book, the characters, how the author did what she did, and all of the magical elements she introduced.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 158 reviews