The Mountains Sing

The Mountains Sing is a novel of incredible scope, and that scope is made clear from the first chapter, ironically the book’s shortest. Though a brief vignette, "The Tallest Mountains” introduces the reader to the novel’s two main characters: Hương, the novel’s true narrator, and Diệu Lan, her grandmother whose voice Hương assumes in nearly half the novel’s chapters. Through the two pearls of wisdom that Hương recalls from her grandmother, Chapter 1 also establishes two critical elements. Diệu Lan’s assertion that “[t]he challenges faced by Vietnamese people throughout history are as tall as the tallest mountains” (2) establishes that this will be a novel of immense tragedy, while her promise that, “when our ancestors die, they don’t just disappear, they continue to watch over us” (1) presages the transcendent familial connections that will help its characters persevere all the same.

This scope is emphasized on a temporal scale before the events of the second chapter even begin to play out. Nguyễn subtitles each chapter by presenting the place and time its events occur. It is immediately clear, then, that, although both chapters take place in Hanoi, Chapter 2 jumps back four decades from Chapter 1. Flipping forward to Chapter 3 reveals that events from even earlier in time figure into Nguyễn’s novel, and the shift in location to the central province of Nghệ An indicates that the story of the Trần family will encompass a wide range, both temporally and spatially, of modern Vietnamese history. The impressive span of time and abundance of characters are established even earlier, though, with the sprawling Trần family tree, which is presented prior to Chapter 1, with members born as early as 1900.

The family’s name, Trần, is itself a reinforcement of the importance and universality Nguyễn believes this family’s story holds, particularly for the people of Vietnam, which she makes clear in her dedication: “For the millions of people, Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese, who lost their lives in the war” (v). One of the most common surnames in Vietnam, Trần invokes the Trần Dynasty, which presided over a golden age in northern Vietnam from 1225 to 1400. The Trần Dynasty even attained a then-uncommon degree of unity with southern Vietnam, although, tellingly for Nguyễn’s novel, tensions with the south would play a large role in the Trần Dynasty’s downfall. Still, having codified the Vietnamese language and repelled two invasions by the nearly unstoppable Mongol Empire, the Trần Dynasty holds a uniquely exalted place in the Vietnamese imagination, and so, in naming the central family of her novel Trần, Nguyễn imbues their experiences and the lessons that can be drawn from them with greater resonance and relatability while establishing the importance of names as one of the novel’s central motifs.

Throughout Chapter 1, Hương narrates in present tense, and she continues this for the first section of Chapter 2 despite having jumped backward in time from the opening chapter. As the 2012 setting appears to be the vantage point from which Hương is telling her story, present tense is a logical choice here. However, the decision to stick with it when relating an episode from the distant past only to switch suddenly to past tense after she and Diệu Lan survive the air raid merits consideration. While Hương presents the remainder of her own chapters (except for the short final chapter, which takes place even later than the first) in past tense, present tense does appear again during Diệu Lan’s chapters, specifically when Diệu Lan breaks out of her own memories to address her granddaughter, to whom she is purportedly telling her life story. Decisions like these speak to Nguyễn’s willingness to upend traditional storytelling conventions to make Hương’s narrative more tangible, Diệu Lan’s narrative unfold more organically within her granddaughter’s story, and the parallels between both women’s experiences more apparent.

The present-tense opening scene from Chapter 2 fulfills all three of these purposes. The imagery-rich opening paragraph roots the reader immediately in a quaint and evocative moment from Hương’s childhood: “Grandma is holding my hand as we walk to school. The sun is a large egg-yolk peeking through a row of tin-roofed houses” (3). Hương’s observation that “[t]he sky is as blue as my mother’s favorite shirt” (3), her subsequent curiosity about the location of her mother and father, and Diệu Lan’s deft decision-making amidst the bombing raid employ stream-of-consciousness. This technique simulates young Hương’s actual thought process and stimulates the reader’s curiosity about the older woman’s story, all while linking Hương’s experiences to the tragedies she will soon learn of her grandmother’s younger days. By the time the narration assumes Diệu Lan’s voice at the start of Chapter 3, the boldness with which Nguyễn has unfolded her story up until that point makes this shift entirely believable.

Also established and reinforced in Chapter 1 and the opening scene of Chapter 2 are several of the novel’s major themes, symbols, and motifs: the aforementioned importance of names as Hương explains that her grandmother calls her Guava “to guard me from evil spirits” (3); the symbolism of birds, with Hương noting their conspicuous absence in the moments before the bombing begins (3); the devastation of war, which has both deprived Hương of her parents and uncles and which directly threatens Hương and Diệu Lan that very day; the power of fate and value of religion as Diệu Lan trusts that “we’ll only die if Buddha lets us die” (6); and the necessity of love, undeniably present in this cross-generational relationship and so potent that, despite the terror of the raid, Hương feels that, “[a]s long as I can inhale [Grandma’s] scent, I will be safe” (5). Moreover, through deliberate and artful use of her writing talents in crafting these two moments, Nguyễn provides a first visceral look at another of the novel’s central themes: that of art as salvation, a theme she also promotes through frequent use of figurative language and alternating the narration between these two characters.

This final theme is prominent across these first chapters as Hương repeatedly turns to art to mitigate her loneliness and fear. One of literature’s most tangible impacts on Hương is its facilitation of her adoption of Diệu Lan’s anti-nationalist humanism. At first, disturbed by the thought of “read[ing] something from the country that bombed us” (58), Hương hesitates to accept Little House in the Big Woods when Diệu Lan brings it home as a gift. However, Diệu Lan’s assertion that “not all Americans are bad” (58) opens Hương’s mind. The book itself convinces her that Americans are not so different from Vietnamese, a notion that already existed as subliminal intuition for Hương, as evidenced when she witnesses the crowd berating the American pilot: “I shuddered, wondering what would happen to my parents if they faced their enemy” (13).

Unsurprisingly, books are a major source of this outlook for Diệu Lan in her own youth. She is immensely grateful to Master Thịnh and the worldly perspectives he brings to her home. She notes the influence of his books, crediting them for teaching her to value her romantic and aesthetic autonomy and for persuading her parents to encourage such independence. Reflecting on the traditional practice of teeth-blackening, she notes gratefully, “Master Thịnh’s books had given me other ideas of beauty” (30). This humanism also is born out in her experiences with foreigners, as she expresses her instincts toward the Japanese soldiers who occupied Vietnam in her younger days with an empathy that parallels that of her granddaughter toward Americans: “I’d seen with my own eyes how polite Japanese soldiers were. […] They played with my children, kicking featherballs high into the air, laughing just as Vietnamese boys laughed” (34).

Unfortunately, the dehumanizing impact of war causes some Japanese soldiers to treat her father with immense cruelty. Diệu Lan remains charitable in her perception of invaders despite experiences like this one; this is a testament to her powers of empathy and forgiveness and an indication of her constant reckoning against the forces of fate and tradition. She accepts that much in life is beyond her control, as seen when she embraces Buddha’s control over their survival in Chapter 2’s opening scene, or when she greets the destruction of their homestead with a Vietnamese proverb that translates as “Good luck hides inside bad luck” (44). However, Diệu Lan’s parents inspire her with the courage to resist fate and tradition when these forces defy her sense of logic or amount to arduous burdens. In addition to the rejection of traditional standards of Vietnamese beauty and courtship, Diệu Lan’s mother’s refusal to accept Túc’s morbid predictions for her daughter set up Diệu Lan’s lifelong struggle against this fortune and pursuit of a more favorable one. Similarly, her father’s insistence that Diệu Lan “drive the buffalo cart, as a way of telling [her] that women could be in charge” (174) establishes a nonconformity with gender roles that gives her the strength she needs to survive the Land Reform and the independent spirit necessary to support her family through an illicit yet productive career. While some disdain her for this maverick streak, it is this element of her character that buttresses the relentless ability to love that is at her core.

Diệu Lan’s incredible capacity for empathy might be her greatest gift to her descendants, but members of this family echo and parallel one another in a variety of ways. While the novel’s structure emphasizes the similarities between Diệu Lan and Hương, likenesses between other characters, particularly women, are underscored by Hương’s habit of misidentification. When her aunt comes to visit, Hương mistakes her for her mother, “burying [her] head into [her] aunt’s chest, searching for [her] mother’s warmth” (42) even after realizing her mistake. When her mother finally does return, Hương is initially convinced she “must be a ghost whose grave was unearthed by the storm” (70), suggesting these parallels even transcend the boundary between life and death. Although she soon accepts that this figure is her mother, Ngọc is so broken and helpless that her relationship with Hương is flipped, and thus Hương finds her own identity transposed with her mother’s. Moreover, Hương intuitively draws connections between people who appear unrelated, as happens when the American pilot makes her think of her own parents. These spiraling interpositions are yet another reminder of the pan-Vietnamese and even universal core of Nguyễn’s story.