Here's a true dumb American confession: I have a hard time with historical novels that take place outside of the U.S. I'm not much of a history buff, and I find it takes a skillful, engaging author to both situate and dazzle me with beauty at the same time. Quan Barry, as it turns out, is just that kind of author. In her debut novel, "She Weeps Each Time You're Born," the Saigon-born poet guides us through the history of modern Vietnam with a deft mix of folklore, magical realism and stories of struggle and hardship that feel yanked right out of history.
The book spans three turbulent decades, beginning with the unusual birth of a girl named Rabbit along the Song Ma River at the height of the Vietnam War, "under the full rabbit moon six feet below ground in a wooden box, her mother's hands cold as ice, overhead the bats of good fortune flitting through the dark." By 2001, when the narrative ends, she has become a living legend — in a "silvery room inside Rabbit's head," she hears and acknowledges the voices of the dead.
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