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Bygone Saigon

Kim Thuy, one of the first to reach Canadian shores from war-torn Vietnam, tells Anam Rizvi about her debut novel.

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Fleeing her home in Vietnam's war-torn city of Saigon at the age of 10, Kim Thuy did not know what lay ahead of her. Packed in a ship with a family of thirteen, she reached the shores of Malaysia where she lived in refugee camps and later moved to Quebec. She has worked as a seamstress, a vegetable picker, a lawyer, a restaurateur and is now a debutant author, whose novel Ru has been honoured with the Governor General's Literary Award in Canada.

Ru, a word that means 'a little stream' in French and 'a lullaby' in Vietnamese, is an apt name for an immigrant's tale that cradles the two worlds and inhabits the two languages. Kim, in fact, derived the title from the name of her restaurant, Ru Denam, meaning a small stream of Vietnam.

Ru, loosely based on Kim's own life, is a chronicle of the journey of An Tinh. "The story is mine but I picked details and took creative licence," she said during a visit to Mumbai last week.
Like Kim, An Tinh also finds her way to Quebec, learns French and falls in love with languages and literature.

Autism, child sexual abuse, motherhood, interracial offspring and the immigrant's problems are some of the issues the 141-page novel addresses. But these are not too many, believes the author. "It is all a part of life. We are all of these people. As we grow older, we are someone's sister, mother, niece, aunt etc. We earn to juggle these roles. If something touches and moves me, it finds a place in my writing," she said in an interaction during a book reading here.

Her uncle was the person who introduced her to literature. She was a teen when she read Margaret Duras' The Lover and learnt it by rote, quoting it whenever possible.

Regaling the audience with anecdotes from her life, she recalled how the writing bug bit her: "I used to fall asleep at red lights while driving home from my restaurant late into the night. In order to keep awake, I started chewing watermelon seeds but they were destroying my teeth.

"Then, I started writing at red lights in order to keep awake. As I grew to enjoy it, the detours increased."

She remembers the refugee camp in Malaysia, the sardine and rice she had to eat even though she was allergic to seafood, and the dirt and lice that were a part of their lives. "We were so filthy, we would try our best not to touch each other. When we reached Canada, a welcoming party was present and they embraced us. We were shocked," she said.

Kim has studied translations, worked as a lawyer at a prominent firm in Canada and opened her own restaurant. "Law gave me the ability to be precise, cooking taught me patience. Every word counts in my novel. The reader can understand that every word, every syllable has been nurtured, touched and cherished," she said of the poetic prose of her book.

"If I'd not had one of the experiences that I have had, the novel would not be the same."

A foreigner to the French language in which she chose to write the novel in, she moulds the words lyrically and measures them so that they flow like the quiet stream the title of the novel denotes.

Ru has been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. An English edition, translated by Sheila Fischman, was published in 2012 and is a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2013 Amazon.ca First Novel Award.

Kim, it appears, works in five-year cycles and changes professions every five years. Time will tell what she will embrace next.

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