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Wave
I remember how you were, not how you are. We were we until we became you and I. Midori and Âu Cô are international university students tasting freedom from family for the first time. They discover Melbourne and each other. All is well until the tsunami that swamps their world... Midori and Âu Cô are international university students in Melbourne. They play at being silver dragons birthing pearls from their mouths. They are united by loneliness. Midori’s parents are killed by the tsunami in Fukushima and soon after Midori and Âu Cô witness a university shooting. Midori ends up in a psychiatric hospital, not able to cope with the double blow.Âu Cô is courted by a Vietnamese-Australian boy (Dzung) who has also survived the shooting. Dzung is unaware of Midori and Âu Cô’s relationship and pressured by his parents asks Au Co to marry him. Midori is silenced and unable to out herself and Âu Cô she understands too well the pressures of family. Âu Cô accepts since her own family wants to migrate to Australia. Midori absconds before the wedding to the Blue Mountains. She suicides close to the Three Sisters. Âu Cô is left to work through her guilt.
- GenresContemporary
97 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 29, 2017
'Once there was a dragon that lived in the sea, her body formed sinewy by the beating of waves. She fell in love with the breeze above the water line that arced and kissed the ocean and the ground. Little did she know that it was a wind dragon that had caught her fancy because she was invisible in the sunlight.'
A beautifully written and heartbreaking story about love and grief. The Wave begins with two young women who bond over creating dragons in a universe of their own making as they also share warmth in different languages (respectively Vietnamese & Japanese) while falling in love in Australia. It was great to read from the perspectives of international students as this point of view is so important. Âu Cô and Midori both bring nuanced observations to their experiences of student and diasporic family life in Australia.
This is also a story with a heartbreaking bend due to the retrospective lens. I should have realised this aspect of the story much earlier on as the novel does opens with Âu Cô observing the Buddhist 49 days of mourning. Therefore, note that this has a tragic ending for the lovers involving loss due to suicide (Trigger warning for this trope). The Wave also deals with the complexity of depression, hospitalisation and PTSD from Midori’s perspective. Âu Cô’s grief and complex family pressures are shared too.
Though I must note that Midori and Âu Cô’s experiences are not representative of all QPoC experiences but only highlight their particular stories. For any readers seeking QPoC diasporic stories with a light romantic ending, I recommend Not Your Sidekick by C.B Lee.
A beautifully written and heartbreaking story about love and grief. The Wave begins with two young women who bond over creating dragons in a universe of their own making as they also share warmth in different languages (respectively Vietnamese & Japanese) while falling in love in Australia. It was great to read from the perspectives of international students as this point of view is so important. Âu Cô and Midori both bring nuanced observations to their experiences of student and diasporic family life in Australia.
This is also a story with a heartbreaking bend due to the retrospective lens. I should have realised this aspect of the story much earlier on as the novel does opens with Âu Cô observing the Buddhist 49 days of mourning. Therefore, note that this has a tragic ending for the lovers involving loss due to suicide (Trigger warning for this trope). The Wave also deals with the complexity of depression, hospitalisation and PTSD from Midori’s perspective. Âu Cô’s grief and complex family pressures are shared too.
Though I must note that Midori and Âu Cô’s experiences are not representative of all QPoC experiences but only highlight their particular stories. For any readers seeking QPoC diasporic stories with a light romantic ending, I recommend Not Your Sidekick by C.B Lee.
February 21, 2017
In The Wave, Hoa Pham gives us another heartfelt story about the immigrant experience. This novella is about two girls, Au Co from North Vietnam and Midori, from Fukushima, Japan. They meet while studying at an Australian university. The girls become close and soon become lovers.
Midori is the guardian of her little brother, having lost their parents in the Fukushima tsunami. Au Co is separated from her family by distance and does not feel any closeness to the local Vietnamese community, made up of southerners who resent her being from the north. The girls make up for their isolation by weaving fantasies about dragons falling in love, which they tell to one another and to the little brother.
This idyllic existence cannot last and the real world soon intervenes, in the form of a traumatic event at the uni and a marriage proposal for one of the girls. As their fantasy lives unravel, Au Co and Midori are faced with some hard choices about their future path in life.
This is an eloquent novel, well-told, but still sparingly written. Hoa Pham manages to be both poetic and direct, and her relatively brief stories manage to convey a lot. Her tales are both matter-of-fact and contain fantasy elements that could seem out of place in the hands of a less capable writer. It's an unusual style, but she brings it off with charm and ease.
Midori is the guardian of her little brother, having lost their parents in the Fukushima tsunami. Au Co is separated from her family by distance and does not feel any closeness to the local Vietnamese community, made up of southerners who resent her being from the north. The girls make up for their isolation by weaving fantasies about dragons falling in love, which they tell to one another and to the little brother.
This idyllic existence cannot last and the real world soon intervenes, in the form of a traumatic event at the uni and a marriage proposal for one of the girls. As their fantasy lives unravel, Au Co and Midori are faced with some hard choices about their future path in life.
This is an eloquent novel, well-told, but still sparingly written. Hoa Pham manages to be both poetic and direct, and her relatively brief stories manage to convey a lot. Her tales are both matter-of-fact and contain fantasy elements that could seem out of place in the hands of a less capable writer. It's an unusual style, but she brings it off with charm and ease.
July 6, 2015
Not so much about International Students as about the devastation tragic events have. Midori has already lost her parents in a natural disaster, and now another tragic event happens. Her friend Au Co organises her priorities but her friend and lover, Midori is lost. Full of beautiful symbolism and prose. Well worth reading
July 11, 2024
4.5/5
Don't be fooled by the size of this compact little novella. Hoa Pham includes a whole novel's worth of emotion, narrative arc, and thematic resonance in less than 100 pages. Following the stories of three characters: a young Japanese boy who has recently lost his parents in the Fukushima disaster; his sister, a student studying in Australia, who has been tasked with taking care of him; and her lover, a Vietnamese student who is torn between the desires of her heart and the wishes of her parents.
This is by no means an easy read. It is tragedy layered on top of tragedy on top of tragedy. But the writing is so beautiful and poignant that I am grateful to have read it.
CW: death, suicide, gun violence
Don't be fooled by the size of this compact little novella. Hoa Pham includes a whole novel's worth of emotion, narrative arc, and thematic resonance in less than 100 pages. Following the stories of three characters: a young Japanese boy who has recently lost his parents in the Fukushima disaster; his sister, a student studying in Australia, who has been tasked with taking care of him; and her lover, a Vietnamese student who is torn between the desires of her heart and the wishes of her parents.
This is by no means an easy read. It is tragedy layered on top of tragedy on top of tragedy. But the writing is so beautiful and poignant that I am grateful to have read it.
CW: death, suicide, gun violence
April 17, 2024
CW: Suicide, Death of a Parent, Depression, PTSD, Racism, Forced Institutionalization, Medical Content, Stalking
4.5/5 Stars
This book is... intense. It's heavy, it's painful and it's gonna tear your heart out. So would I read it again? Hell yeah.
4.5/5 Stars
This book is... intense. It's heavy, it's painful and it's gonna tear your heart out. So would I read it again? Hell yeah.
July 24, 2016
So very sad, but gorgeously written. I was expecting some literary fiction-type plotless mediation on the difficulties of being an Asian international student in Australia, and I sort of got that, but mostly I was swept up in a very intense and intimate lesbian romance. Usually this would be very much My Thing, but within the first twenty-ish pages I had the dawning realisation that , and I don't deny that this doesn't happen, or that there's no truth to what the characters experience in these kinds of narratives . . . but I really hate that trope. It's an awful narrative relic from the past carrying all sorts of awful connotations and baggage that is still haunting the present.
Also, though I don't quite have fully-formed thoughts on this point, this book viewed families, and to a certain degree communities on the whole, as stifling and destructive. Again, I don't doubt that there's some element of truth to this, but I found it unfair.
Also, though I don't quite have fully-formed thoughts on this point, this book viewed families, and to a certain degree communities on the whole, as stifling and destructive. Again, I don't doubt that there's some element of truth to this, but I found it unfair.
August 6, 2016
The Wave is a terrific book, beautifully written and thought-provoking.
Australian born of Vietnamese descent, Hoa Pham writes perceptively about the psychological impact of life outside societal norms. In The Wave, her sixth novel, her characters are lesbian lovers from Japan and Vietnam, free to express their love in the less constricting Australian environment, yet feeling alienated from it because they do not belong. At the same time they are hidebound by compelling Asian traditions which derail their already fragile relationship.
The psychological pressure on these young women engulfs them in a wave of tragedy both literal and metaphorical. They meet as international students while studying at an Australian university where Midori, from Fukushima, Japan, finds herself walled in by indifference.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/08/06/t...
Australian born of Vietnamese descent, Hoa Pham writes perceptively about the psychological impact of life outside societal norms. In The Wave, her sixth novel, her characters are lesbian lovers from Japan and Vietnam, free to express their love in the less constricting Australian environment, yet feeling alienated from it because they do not belong. At the same time they are hidebound by compelling Asian traditions which derail their already fragile relationship.
The psychological pressure on these young women engulfs them in a wave of tragedy both literal and metaphorical. They meet as international students while studying at an Australian university where Midori, from Fukushima, Japan, finds herself walled in by indifference.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/08/06/t...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews