When it comes to war, the peace that follows never comes easy. It’s easy to view war through the historical lens of the armies that won or the nations that prevailed, but it is the individual who bears the real weight of the aftermath. For those directly affected by armed conflict, be it a soldier or an innocent civilian, finding peace proves to be much more difficult.
That search for harmony or, at the least, a semblance of inner peace, is at the heart of C.L. Hoang’s books. Whether it’s his first novel, his travel memoir, or his most recent collection of short stories, the local writer seems to specialize in what it means to search for catharsis among the trauma of conflict.
“These books allow me to bring some kind of closure to all of this,” says Hoang from his home in Carmel Mountain Ranch. “There will always be things that are left unresolved for all of us, but in my mind, I’m hoping that the stories I write will help people who are still struggling with it — to help them come up with some kind of closure, however small or minimal.”
For Hoang, the conflict in question is the Vietnam War. He grew up in Saigon throughout Vietnam’s initial conflict with France, as well as the eventual American intervention throughout the early ‘60s and ‘70s. He eventually immigrated to the U.S. in 1974 when he was 18 to attend the University of California, Berkeley. He expected to return home after his studies, but almost as soon as he arrived, Saigon fell. He wouldn’t return to Vietnam for over 40 years.
“It had a huge emotional impact on me,” says Hoang, who wrote about the experience of eventually returning to his native country in “Rain Falling on Tamarind Trees,” a travelogue of his experiences on the trip. “Coming back, I decided I wanted to write all those stories that had been in the back of my mind. They all came rushing forward.”
Hoang ultimately decided to finish his travelogue before tackling the fictional stories that make up the recently released “In the Shadow of Green Bamboos.” The result is six stories that are, as Hoang puts it in the preface of the book, a mix of “real-life anecdotes, personal memories, and childhood dreams and reminiscence.”
The stories vary in subject and perspective. In the story “In a Land Called Honah-Lee,” for example, a Vietnam vet runs into the son of someone he served with while visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. In “Of Crickets and Dragons,” a 6-year old Vietnamese boy attempts to lead a normal, imaginative childhood despite the fact that war is being waged all around him.
If the stories in “Green Bamboos” have one thread in common, it’s that they all ultimately center on the protagonist having to ultimately come to terms with their respective experiences during the Vietnam conflict.
“I kept debating with myself on what was the best way to approach this, but I finally settled on presenting it as short stories,” says Hoang. “It allowed me to take a snapshot of the days and lives of survivors of the war. It allowed me to look at them in a more intimate way, because it’s just one moment in their lives. And in those moments, it allows them a certain amount of healing.”
Some of the characters from Hoang’s first novel, “Once Upon a Mulberry Field,” return in the stories in “Green Bamboos.” Still, he says it isn’t necessary to read one in order to understand the other.
“For me, I tried to wrap it up with ‘Mulberry Field,’ but it took me six years to write that book,” says Hoang, who adds that he often received emails from readers asking if there would ever be a sequel to “Mulberry Field.” “I tried to make that first book as comprehensive as possible, but it was impossible to include everything. I always felt there was so much more that I’d like to write about.”
“I got to be so invested in those characters and it’s not like life just went on for them,” Hoang continues. “They still have to struggle through it. So I wanted to bring back some of them and show how they’re still coping with it.”
In many ways, the struggles of Hoang’s fictional characters are emblematic of the struggles of war survivors in general. He often speaks to veteran’s groups and finds that, while the experiences are unique to them, his own experiences with the conflict help him form a bond with the vets. Within that “kinship,” as he calls it, they share a moment of peace or, at the least, a mutual understanding of a trauma that often can’t be left behind.
“For a lot of vets, after they came back, not talking about it was almost a way of protecting their families from all of that,” Hoang says. “They didn’t want to tell their families about their experience, so they kept it bottled up.”
In this, Hoang seems to acknowledge the simple truth that for those who’ve survived war, finding peace is often a series of temporary feelings within a lifelong quest.
“A lot of the burdens of the past are pushed back to back of their minds,” Hoang says. “It takes a certain something to bring back those memories. Maybe it was something that someone said or something that was shown on the news, or even a book they read. It almost forces us to try to resolve those loose ends or those issues we have.”
“In the Shadow of Green Bamboos” by C.L. Hoang (Willow Stream Publishing, 2020; 196 pages)
Combs is a freelance writer.
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