Dust child by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

A ‘dust child’ is an unwanted child, an Amerasian, the child of an American soldier and a Vietnamese woman, during the Vietnam War. There were many such children, often abandoned, lost in a world that scorned them. The character, Phong, experiences additional racism as the child of a black American. He tries repeatedly to navigate the demanding application process for a visa to America, hoping to provide a better life for his family.

Author Nguyen alternates point of view by including the story of Dan, a white Vietnam veteran, and his wife Linda, travelling to Vietnam, ostensibly to work through the trauma that continues to plague him. However Dan also makes it an opportunity to search for the bar girl Kim, a girlfriend he rejected once she became pregnant. He wants to know what happened to his child.

A third thread of the story takes us back into the past, as we learn about the lives of the bar girls, Kim (real name Trang) and her sister Quynh, who have come to Sai Gon to earn money for their ailing and debt-ridden parents working the ricefields.

Nguyen includes conversations in Vietnamese, the meaning generally apparent from context. However when Phong meets and seeks help from the American Dan, the language barrier becomes very real as each struggles to communicate in their own language. The frustrations and misunderstandings are compounded as Phong realises that his interpreter is not translating all that he wants to say. He is left desperately trying to decipher facial expressions. It is a very poignant scene, and powerfully puts across the difficulties of communication between different language speakers.

The three threads of the story gradually draw together as people’s lives intersect. Each provides another perspective of the trauma of the Vietnam war and the impact for soldiers, civilians and children. ‘Dust child’ reflects the many traumatic stories that Nguyen heard whilst working for an organisation that helped unite Amerasians with their parents. Her book is a plea for ‘more compassion, more peace, more forgiveness and healing’. It is a multifaceted portrayal of the war and its aftermath, and exposes the ongoing human cost of war beyond the deaths and injuries.

Themes: Vietnam War, Trauma, Racism, Lost children, Exploitation, Prostitution.

Helen Eddy