Showing results by narrator "Quyen Ngo" in All Categories

From the internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, a propulsive and moving tale of wartime love, family, and loss, as an American GI, two Vietnamese bargirls, and an Amerasian man are forced to make decisions during and after the Việt Nam War that will reverberate throughout each other’s lives.

Duy, Phong, Minh, and Edmond have been best friends since childhood. Now, as young men running their families’ formidable businesses, they make up Saigon’s most powerful group of friends in 1928 Vietnam’s elite society. Until one of them is murdered. In a lavish mansion on a hill in Dalat, all four men have gathered for an evening of indulgence, but one of them won’t survive the night.

Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran have made a good life for themselves in Toronto, but their landlord has just jacked up the rent of their family-run nail salon, Sunshine Nails, and it’s way more than they can afford. When Take Ten, a glamorous chain offering a more luxurious salon experience, moves into the neighborhood, the Tran family is terrified of losing their business—and the community they’ve built around them.

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North.

A chronicle of the divergent journeys of a father, who fled post-war Vietnam on a small boat to find refuge in the United States, and his American-born daughter, who ventures to Vietnam as an adult, capturing the stark contrast between their perspectives on their shared homeland, as they search for common ground and a path toward mutual healing.

Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.

Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last minute.

In 40 CE, in the Au Lac region of ancient Vietnam, two daughters of a Vietnamese Lord fill their days training, studying, and trying to stay true to Vietnamese traditions. While Trung Trac is disciplined and wise, always excelling in her duty, Trung Nhi is fierce and free spirited, more concerned with spending time in the gardens and with lovers. But these sister's lives—and the lives of their people—are shadowed by the oppressive rule of the Han Chinese. They are forced to adopt Confucian teachings, secure marriages, and pay ever‑increasing taxes.

Best-selling novelists Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan present an elegant, international anthology of erotica that explores the diverse spectrum of desire, written by winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN Awards, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Edgar Award, and more. There are stories of sexual obsession and sexual love, of domination and submission. There’s revenge sex, unrequited sex, funny sex, tortured sex, fairy tale sex, and even sex in the afterlife.

A powerful memoir of resilience, friendship, family, and food from the acclaimed chefs behind the award-winning Hy Vong Vietnamese restaurant in Miami. In 1975, after narrowly escaping the fall of Saigon, pregnant refugee and gifted cook Tung Nguyen ended up in the Miami home of Kathy Manning, a graduate student and waitress who was taking in displaced Vietnamese refugees. This serendipitous meeting evolved into a decades-long partnership, one that eventually turned strangers into family and a tiny, no-frills eatery into one of the most lauded restaurants in the country.

A Vietnamese mermaid caught between two worlds. A siren who falls for Poseidon’s son. A boy secretly pining for the merboy who saved him years ago. A storm that brings humans and mermaids together. Generations of family secrets and pain. Find all these and more in this gripping new collection that will reel you in from the very first word! Welcome to an ocean of hurt, fear, confusion, rage, hope, humor, discovery, and love in its many forms.

When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father. But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations.

A poignant coming-of-age story told in two alternating voices: a California teenager railing against the Vietnamese culture, juxtaposed with her father as an eleven-year-old boat person on a harrowing and traumatic refugee journey from Vietnam to the U.S.

More and more people - especially millennials - are turning to religion as a source of comfort and solace in our increasingly chaotic world. But rather than live a cloistered life of seclusion, the Daughters of Saint Paul actively embrace social media, using platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to evangelize, collectively calling themselves the #MediaNuns. In this collective memoir, eight of these Sisters share their own discernment journeys, struggles and crises of faith that they’ve overcome, and episodes from their daily lives.

In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world of itchy dresses and run-down apartments is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited.

From the very beginning, there was something different about this child... An ultrasonic voice. Fantastically elastic limbs. Super-magnetic powers. But it wasn’t until the child took her first steps that she became: THE BLUR! Nothing can stand in her way as she takes the world by storm: always on the move and darting into danger! All too soon, she is zipping through the days, and zooming over the years…

A stunning debut, showcasing the love between grandparents and grandchildren, the challenges of memory loss, and the joy that sweet reminders of a faraway home can bring, from award-winning, bestselling author Thanhhà Lại.

No doubt you can be close to someone who's very different from you. Ginger is excitable; she leaps into action, throwing herself headfirst into any project. Chrysanthemum is cooler-headed; she likes to plan, she's organized. She makes lists. Yet they are cousins, close as two beans in a pod. But planning Grandma's birthday together is a pretty huge challenge. There are presents to buy, decorations to pick, and a special birthday cake to bake. Together. How they manage it is a testament to affection being stronger than differences.

When Simone is awakened by her mom as a wildfire threatens their home, it is the beginning of a life-changing journey. On their way to take shelter in a high school gym, the family passes firefighters from a prison unit battling the fire. Simone’s mom tells her that when she was a girl in Viet Nam, she was forced to evacuate her home after a flood. Joined by other children sheltering in the gym, Simone, a budding artist, encourages everyone to draw as a way to process their situation.

On April 24, 1975, the last flight out of Saigon, Vietnam carried over 400 people to the United States, six days before Saigon’s surrender to the North Vietnamese Army. Kristen Giang was a little girl, on that flight with family, and here in this story she shares all the emotions of the decision to flee from the perspective of someone eight years old; Playing a game of space-explorers to protect herself and her sister’s eyes from tear gas; sneaking a stuffed animal into the family’s overstuffed suitcase for comfort.