Listen, Slowly

Thanhhà was born in Vietnam, and in 1975, her family fled to Florida at the end of the Vietnam War. They eventually landed in Montgomery, Alabama. When she was just one year old, her father was reported missing in action and to this day has not been found. Her mother continued to raise her and her eight older siblings to live with the hope that he might return but not to become mired in their sadness. Though they were sad their father was missing, their house was still filled with humor and laughter, a theme that Thanhhà incorporates into her novels. She says that refugee stories are already sad, and she does not want her readers to have to sit with more sadness for 300 pages. Her stories focus not just on the horrors that cause refugees to flee their homes but the happiness and the healing they experience after they escape and resettle. Thanhhà also tries to tell the true stories of refugees, which are often far different from the stereotypical images portrayed by journalists. Thanhhà says that just because a person lived through a war does not mean they saw war. For example, she never saw a gun or blood and only has happy memories from her time in Vietnam. If people want to truly understand the refugee experience, Thanhhà encourages them to get to know someone who is a refugee and listen to their story (The Bàhn Mì Chronicles).

After an Alabama journalist wrote a story about her family as refugees that was not factual, Thanhhà decided that one day she would become a journalist. However, when editors saw her journalistic work as too poetic, she decided to shift her focus and become a writer. After earning an MFA from New York University, she began an ambitious adult fiction novel that she claims was overwrought and had too many characters. Ten years later when she was standing on a playground, she had the idea to revisit the novel and write it through the eyes of a child. Harnessing her poetic voice, she rewrote the novel in verse to mimic the episodic memories a child might have from their past. The story became her debut novel, titled Inside Out and Back Again. The book is partially autobiographical and tells the story of a 10-year-old girl named Hà who lives in Saigon but is forced to flee with her family on a boat to another country, where she encounters all the chaos and disorientation of the refugee experience.

In Thanhhà’s second book Listen, Slowly, the main protagonist is not a refugee but a child and grandchild of refugees. Through a fateful trip to Vietnam, she learns about her family’s past and comes to accept herself and her heritage. Thanhhà considers her third novel, Butterfly Yellow, her most ambitious and challenging work. The young adult novel touches on the plight of the Vietnamese Boat People and tells the story of 18-year-old Hằng, who was separated from her brother in the evacuation and goes on a journey to find him. Even though Thanhhà says this is her saddest novel, she still incorporates humor in the story to balance the tragedy. She does not want her readers to walk away from the story feeling hopeless. Thanhhà hopes that through her novels, readers gain a window into the true refugee experience and understand that this is not just a problem of the past. There are still refugee and resettlement crises happening today, and there may be refugees living and working in a person’s community who need empathy and friendship (Kim, Randy. “Writing the Vietnamese-American Journey with Thanhhà Lại.” 2020).