The Evergreen Country: A Memoir of Vietnam
by Thuong Vuong-Riddick
Paperback (Non-fiction)
8.5" x 5.25" · 208 pages
Release Date: September 2007
ISBN 9780978344009
The Evergreen Country: A Memoir of Vietnam is a startling and beautiful memoir by Vancouver's Thuong Vuong-Riddick. We learn of how her Chinese family must struggle to overcome difficulties during the rise of the Viet Cong in Northern Vietnam and their eventual journey to Southern Vietnam where war would soon follow them. This memoir tells the little known story of how Chinese born families struggled to maintain their dignity and their lives while being persecuted by rapidly changing political forces.
“In the style of a travelogue and a memoir, this elegantly written volume tells the saga of the author’s extended family from focal ancestry to the present as her family adapts to and eventually triumphs over the whirlwind of historical forces that beset Vietnam in the 20th century. Meticulously researched, written from a grassroots, personal level, Dr. Vuong-Riddick’s book captures the many cultures, legends, religions, customs, architecture, landscape, and even the sounds and aromas of a civilization that is one of the most complex in the world. Drastically different from dry political accounts of this tragic country, the reader is fêted with a unique blending of ethnic Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese traditions and mentality overlaid with French and American cultural influences. With its subtle and implicit contrast between Vietnamese and North American ways of life and social mores, The Evergreen Country is as much an enjoyable read for general audiences as an important reference for university courses on Southeast Asian History, Cultural and Social Anthropology, Diaspora Literature, and Asian Canadians.”
Thuong Vuong-Riddick
Thuong Vuong-Riddick was born in Hanoi and studied in Paris. In 1969 she emigrated to Canada and taught French literature at the University of Montreal, McGill University and the University of Victoria. As a child in Vietnam she learned first Chinese, Vietnamese and eventually French. She didn't fully learn English until she moved to Canada. She has published Two Shores/Deux rives with Ronsdale Press in 1995. The Evergreen Country has been in progress for many years as she chose to write it in English. She is now retired from teaching and continues to live in Victoria, B.C.
