Musing on Two Sisters

What happens to children caught in the tight corner at the juncture of the working class and the educated class? The engaging novel Two Sisters explores that question by beckoning you to enter the world of two young girls growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s in Vietnam. We veritably hear their poignant stories as the narrator follows Ha and Vy from their tiny cottage on the grounds of the mansion their father’s family owns through neighborhood friendships, trials at school, rocky relationships with their father’s family, a visit to their mother’s humble birth home, and on into the broader society.

Ha’s and Vy’s father passed away a few years ago. Although he was from an educated family, he fell in love with a beautiful woman from a rural and uneducated family. The relatives of their father had never accepted his marriage to their humble mother and were frustrated that she and her daughters were now part of their family. To accommodate them, their father’s parents and siblings afforded them a small cottage without electricity and allowed the mother to work as a servant for the food and home they received. At the beginning of the novel, we picture the young girls in their dark cottage, doing all chores and homework before night fell. As the story progresses, that actual darkness in their environment is mirrored in the experiences of their lives.

The trajectory of their lives is foretold in the first pages of the book, when at Christmas time instead of quivering with excitement, they “dejectedly sit down on the porch to swallow their sorrow, blending in with the surroundings, taking in their solitude and familiarity.” At the same time, their Young Aunt wears her Vietnamese dress with two long panels, “separated at the waist, flowing gracefully in the gentle breeze. Young Aunt wears her hair high up in a bun, exposing her elegant white neck and her pearl necklace that shines like a string of tiny glass ornaments.” That dichotomy weaves its way through the whole novel, underscoring the timeless tale of the haves and have-nots, the in-group and the out-group, the bullies and the bullied, the oppressed and the oppressors.

However, in this tale we see and feel not only the pain and anguish of the mother and her daughters, but also of their relatives, the ones who inhabit the “big house.” The reader may believe that we need to be cheerleaders for the sisters, but in the intricate interplay of this family, we need to support each character in some manner. Each has their own pathos. It is that interplay that moves the girls into adolescence, the aunts into maturity, and the family into a realization. In the final pages of the book, Ha queries, “Don’t you think [we] should be helped and loved, rather than despised and hated? . . . Is it true that we cannot love each other if we don’t understand each other?”

Between the first and last pages lie poignant and profound experiences that define the lives of Ha, Vy, their mother and relatives. And in that definition, we have an intricate glimpse into Vietnamese society, culture, mores, and history.

The power of the novel lies in the author’s deep understanding of the norms that governed Vietnam society in the 50’s and 60’s as well as the emotional development of young girls in that environment. She implants us into a city teeming with all of its pretentiousness and privilege coupled with the pain of poverty, takes us into rural Vietnam and introduces us to a more humble and modest life, and injects us deeply into the passions, desires, agonies, fears, resourcefulness, and ingenuity of the two sisters. The altering and developing relationships of the family members are mesmerizing, ensuring the book will seldom rest for long on a bedside table.

This is one of many books written in Vietnamese by Cung Thi Lan. It is the second book Diem-Tran Kratzke has translated from Vietnamese into English. Together the two authors paint a vivid picture of the landscape, society, social system, and culture that defined Vietnam fifty years ago.

It’s a place worth the visit through the pages of Two Sisters.

                                                 ------  Jane Cruz