"Kids, we are halfway through this book. Do you want me to keep reading?" resigned the patient librarian, sensing great boredom. Her fingers kept the place two-thirds of the way into Diana Kidd's "Onion Tears"."NOOOO!!" replied the emphatic and impatient chorus of 3rd graders. She interpreted their listening body language well - they were bored.
But I desperately wanted her to read on ~ she had been reading so beautifully. I wasn't Vietnamese like the main character, a primary school girl named Nam-Huong, but I was also an Asian migrant in Australia. I never risked a dangerous boat journey without parents to flee my homeland, but my family also had a recent and dramatic migration story. I was the only third grader who bawled in the library when the librarian read about Nam-Huong's grandfather sacrificing what he needed to to help his granddaughter arrive safely. Because mine would have done the same.
A shocking, powerful and heartful children's book with a hint of onions.
2 comments:
Beautiful. I haven't read it but I want to now.
Yeh, I haven't come across the book since grade three. It's weird to think that I read it the year we arrived in Australia. But I still remember it even though my English couldn't have been good. And tears fill my eyes whenever I think about it now.
A school teacher and I were talking about it and what struck her was how lonely Nam-Huong was.
I think I really identified with it. Like her, I was an outsider during a time when racism was all about the Asian Invasion. Her parents, like mine, accepted very humble and hard jobs in their adopted country.
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