Word: duong
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Because so much of Hang's story is in her past, Duong interweaves flashbacks with the present time. The reader must visualize the story as the grown Hang travels on a train to Moscow to visit Uncle Chinh. The technique becomes annoying in the almost immediate realization that the past is much more interesting than the present. When Hang recalls the past, she seems to do so in graphic color; the present appears bleak and bland in contrast. Perhaps Duong uses this pattern intentionally, for it correlates to her own life, in which once hopeful and passionate support of communism...
...original Paradise of the Blind in Vietnamese, Nhung Thien Duong Mu, was published in Hanoi in 1988 and had considerable circulation before it was banned. The novel, first translated into French, is purported to be the first Vietnamese novel translated and published in America. Based on a comparison of various parts of the translation with the original, it appears the translators remain true to, if not enhance, Duong's provocative voice. Since she began writing at 28, Duong has achieved literary acclaim in Vietnam, but her style and skills still lack polish. Her upbringing is not that of a writer...
...author's credibility arises from the point that she, too, is a survivor of war, communism and men. An appeal to readers' curiosity is, of course, that Duong, unlike other critics of the Hanoi regime, has supported communist ideals and is not an expatriate. Still living in Hanoi with her children, Duong is a veteran of both the Vietnam War and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979. As a volunteer soldier in the Communist Youth Brigade, she fought in the Central Highlands beginning in 1967. At the same time, Americans her age were receiving their draft notices. Her fervent...
...four of Duong's novels as well as some shorter works have been banned in Vietnam, even after the Vietnamese Communist Party announced a more relaxed policy towards writers in 1987. In addition to Paradise, works such as Untitled Novel (translated excerpts available in the March 1993 issue of Grand Street magazine) and Beyond Illusions, and other voicings critical of the Hanoi regime earned her imprisonment...
...Paradise of the Blind is not laden with heavy and vengeful political criticism. In fact, people who have regarded her works simply as vehicles for political dissent disappoint Duong. She has written a novel of disillusionment--not only with the corruption and ironies of the Communist Party and society, but also disillusionment with the strength of blood ties so embryonic to Vietnamese culture, with childhood on the poverty-stricken outskirts of Hanoi, with women's sacrifices, and with life. An intensely moving novel, Paradise transcends the boundaries of its setting...