LAND "REFORMERS"? or MOB TYRANNY?

THE MOUNTAINS SING (Kindle ed.) 2019

Algonquin Books, 2020

By Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Review by Hugh Murray

I rarely read fiction,preferring works of history. Yet, even when I taught History, I was aware of what readers could learn from novels and in the first half of the American History course, assigned the Great American Novel, Huckleberry Finn. One acquires knowledge of mid-19^th century America almost unawares, while laughing at the antics of the characters.

The Mountains Sing is not funny, but I learned much from it. For example, I had read and heard the simple phrase “land reform” over decades in hundreds of books, newspaper articles, TV news shows, and documentaries. Stalin's collectivization of agriculture and mistreatment of kulaks in the Ukraine did present a negative impression, but that was long ago and now everyone concedes that Stalin had made some mistakes. Just after WWII, Mao's civil war against Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek was interpreted as a disagreement over Mao's desire to achieve land reform, or so many thought at that time. Land reforms in Rhodesia and more recently in South Africa meant snatching farms from whites to give to Blacks, but that was viewed as a continuation of the continent's de-colonization. A more recent television serial depicted land reform: the German “Line of Separation” showed a small German town in the defeat of 1945 divided between American and Soviet sectors (like the much larger Berlin). A large mansion and plot belongs to the count, a returning officer of the Reichswehr. His wife is shot and killed in the final days of war, and when he realizes his land is in the Soviet sector, he moves to the West. His pretty, 18-year-old daughter inherits the area and building. She falls for a young German who is poor, and whose brother is not actually kin, but an extra son taken in by his mom when the other boy's Jewish parents were taken away. Her boyfriend is in the (Communist) Party, after the Nazi defeat. The Communists begin an agenda of change: “Bauern Land statt Junker Land” - farmer's land instead of nobleman's land. The young woman is unhappy, but her boyfriend persuades her that as a couple, they can get a good plot and become regular farmers. By the end of the series, she has become the strongest defender of East Germany.

In Mountains Sing, Nguyen presents a vivid, and very different picture of land reform in North Vietnam in 1955. Unexpectedly, the family at the center of this novel is shocked when teens banging drums, and older folks, a mob, with sticks and implements to be used as weapons, arrive shouting slogans, Down with the Rich Landowners, Down with the Greedy Rich, Exploiters, etc. The scene is more akin to the 1931 film of Frankenstein, when the townspeople march on the castle of Count Doctor Frankenstein determined to destroy him and his creation. In the Vietnam story, this was a national operation directed by the Communist Party against all larger landholders it deemed unreliable. Out in the rice fields, some of the mobsters came across the brother and a son of Dieu Lan (then head of the household, and who would become the major character of the novel). The two men were beaten, tied to a tree, and tortured. They then killed one, Dieu Lan's brother. One of her hired workers was able that night to cut the rope holding her older son, and he fled. Did he make it to some safe area, or was he killed too? The mob reached her home, and she too was attacked, bound, and beaten. Her money and jewelry, stolen. That night an elderly servant quietly cut her ropes and she had to flee also. It was not easy as she took with her her three younger children and her 1-year-old baby. One omission in the novel, she does not consider trying to escape to South Vietnam. Instead, she can only think of getting help from a former teacher who lives in distant Hanoi, but a man she hasn't seen in several years.

On the run with four children, her struggle to stay alive and get to Hanoi consists of a large part of this book. Penniless, suddenly friendless, how is she going to make it? And as she walks along the national highway, she must often get off the path to avoid suspicion. She sees fires in the distance where other mobs have flamed the homes of other “exploiter” landholders. In one village, a gent with a pole wants to kick her out of the area because she is a beggar. In some instances, some will not help because they suspect she is on the list, and if they help her or her children, the Party will go after them. By this time she knew the party had a quota for killing exploiter landlords (like the American Left that loves quotas that disturb society in their own way, the VN CP had quotas to kill people).

Along her journey, Dieu Lan must leave a child with this kind lady, another with this family, another, and so on. With luck and courage, she makes it to Hanoi where new trials strain her endurance, but she learns new skills and her character keeps her coping and growing. I need not describe the entire plot, but her book provides memorable descriptions of folks in Hanoi when American bombers flew above dropping their cargoes, and for those below, the fright and then the rush to survive. I don't think I had read such a description of the bombings from the vantage of those on the ground. Hers is powerful. Also, soldiers for North Vietnam describe their war, from their viewpoint, some actions. Also being rained on by American Agent Orange (and I do not mean Trump). She includes the lies told by the victorious North Vietnamese army to those of the defeated South's ARVN, and the difficulties faced by the losing side (those who did not flee to American planes or ships, or those who did not commit suicide when Saigon fell). She describes some of the discrimination faced by black marketeers (an almost necessary ingredient in a socialist economy) and even some discrimination encountered by Northern carpetbaggers who got cushy jobs in the South.

On the negative side, it would have been better if Nguyen had given her characters an English name along with the VN name. I often did not even know the sex of some characters, though she did add clues in the dialog with “Sis” or “Uncle.”

She has one character make a decision that seems unrealistic to this Westerner. This character, a Northerner who has fled Communist oppression gets to South Vietnam and even joins the ARVN. He is helped by others who are Christian, and converts to their religion. He marries the daughter of a man with money, and has two children with her. As the government of the South begins to collapse, his father-in-law purchases a boat to get out, hopefully to America. It is for him, his wife, his daughter, her two children, and his son-in-law. He declines! I find this out of character. Instead of going with his wife and children, he wants to somehow find his mother and siblings, who may be in the North or, as far as he knows, may be dead. So he chooses to remain in VN. I find this incomprehensible. This entire book is an example of the importance of family. Well, which family, his mom, or his wife and children? I think the answer is clear, and not the one he made. Once the man has a wife and children, is that not his primary family?

Overall, Nguyen has written an excellent book.