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My Heritage is a story of love and separation, friendship and conflict, hope and endurance, life and death through the eyes of three generations of the author’s family. It shows the influence of historical and mythological figures, language and poetry on the lives of ordinary Vietnamese. It brings to life traditional festivities in villages, revolutionary activities in French colonial towns, mass destruction in provinces subjected to ‘US free bombing’, chaos in the cultural melting pot of Saigon, and sufferings under the Communist regime.
From the late 1930s to the early 1940s Minh Hien’s grandfather was the Village Chief of Cultural Activity and her granduncle was the Chief of their ancestral village in North Vietnam. Her grandmother was a tobacco merchant. In order to attend school, her father lived with Grandaunt Trinh, who was one of the richest women in Ho Chi Minh’s ancestral land. When Vietnam was divided in 1954, her father fled the Communist-dominated North, leaving behind his wife and baby son.
Minh Hien’s mother was born in Quang Tri, the first province on the southern side of the Ben Hai River. She lost her father at the age of eight. Bound by family tradition, she worked selflessly for her extended family.
Minh Hien was born in central Vietnam and grew up in Saigon. 1975 saw the Fall of Saigon. In 1977, her brothers were forced to live as fugitives and finally escaped from Vietnam. In 1981, at the age of seventeen, she herself fled her country in a small boat.
My Heritage ‘not only recounts the events, persons and places that featured in Hien’s life; it gives the reader an unforgettable insight into daily life, into the strong web of relationships and friendships that form the framework of one girl’s story and of her country’s strength. The detail is amazing, and it lets the reader experience through each of the senses the sights, sounds, and even foods of Hien’s homeland … The horrors of the War, its aftermath, the subsequent lack of freedom and the loss of all once held dear – these form the matrix out of which the family’s dangerous escape is narrated. Yet through all the fear and constant tension, the inherent strength and love of Hien’s parents and siblings shine forth. It is hard to put the book down as the net tightens around the boys and the father bargains for their escape with everything he has earned in a lifetime.’ Catherine Hammond, Editor.
