Family In Six Tones

A Refugee Mother, an American Daughter

Family In Six Tones
Lan Cao
RRP:
NZ$ 30.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 24.00
Paperback
h214 x 140mm - 320pg
16 Sep 2021 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9781984878182
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
After more than forty years in the United States, Lan Cao still feels tentative about her place in her adoptive country, one which she came to as a thirteen-year old refugee. And after sixteen years of being a mother, she still ventures through motherhood as if it is a foreign landscape. In this lyrical memoir, Lan explores these two defining experiences of her life with the help of her fierce, independently-minded daughter, Harlan Margaret Van Cao. In chapters that both reflect and refract her mother' s narrative, Harlan describes the rites of passage of childhood and adolescence, as they are filtered through the aftereffects of her family' s history of war and migration. Lan responds in turn, revealing her struggles to understand her American daughter. In this unique format of alternating storytelling, their complicated mother-daughter relationship begins to crystallize. Lan' s struggles with the traumatic aftermath of war--punctuated by emotional, detailed flashbacks to her childhood--become operatic and fantastical interludes as told by her daughter. Harlan' s struggle to make friends in high school challenges her mother to step back and let her daughter find her own way. Family in Six Tones is at once special and universal, speaking to the unique struggles of refugees as well as the universal tug-of-war between mothers and daughters. The journey of a refugee--away from war and loss towards peace and a new life--and the journey of a mother raising a child--to be secure and happy--are both steep paths filled with detours and stumbling blocks. Through explosive fights and painful setbacks, mother and daughter search for a way to accept the past and face the future together.
"What makes this memoir especially compelling is the way these two separate but linked perspectives illuminate silences or gaps in the stories each woman tells. For example, Cao' s probing but emotionally restrained narrative focuses on the facts of her remarkable life . . . As it celebrates the mother-daughter bond, this book reveals the added complexities that bring together refugee mothers and their American children while also maintaining a certainunbridgeable distance . . . An eloquent and affecting multigenerational memoir. "--Kirkus Reviews "Family in Six Tones is a brilliant duet and a moving exploration of the American immigrant experience. Mother and daughter speak to each other across generations and cultures, revealing and bridging their differences with patience and hard-won trust. Their astonishingly heartfelt dialogue offers a model for sharing the deeper truths that so often get ignored or forgotten. "--Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being"Startling and necessary, Family in Six Tones takes us deep into the singular bond of a mother and daughter, fiercely connected by a love wrought out of loss and the will to create anew. This memoir will forever trouble the water of the American Dream, complicating it and clarifying it of the myths and masks of survival, assimilation, and success. It reminds us that Vietnamese refugees, like so many who call this country home, are not amnesiacs. We carry within us memories of faraway places and discarded lives. Thus our dreams here are haunted, unsettled, and yet we still dream. "--Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt"Written by a Vietnam-born mother and her fiercely spirited American-born daughter, the book weaves an engrossing tale of love and pain, war, upheaval, and trauma. Even at her young age, Harlan Margaret Van Cao is a fresh new voice, with an arresting, and unnerving way with language. This is a work of breathtaking and at times gut-twisting power. "--Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Political Tribes"Family in Six Tones is a brilliant memoir in ways that are redolent with the joys of true literature, innovative inform, keen in observation and insight, shaped by two narrative voices that are distinct but are both captivating in tone and nuance and manifest humanity. The book speaks to the central theme of life: Who am I? This mother and daughter seek the answer to that question with rich complexity and unflinching honesty and in doing so illuminate the yearning for a self that drives us all. "--Robert Olen Butler, author of Perfume River and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Lan Cao is the author of Monkey Bridge and The Lotus and the Storm, and most recently of the scholarly work Culture in Law and Development- Nurturing Positive Change. She is a professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law, and an internationally recognized expert specializing in international business and trade, international law, and development. She has taught at Brooklyn Law School, Duke University School of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and William & Mary Law School. Harlan Margaret Van Cao is finishing up her senior year in high school. She was born in Williamsburg, Virginia and moved to Southern California when she was ten. She has a beautiful singing voice and plays the violin and piano.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781984878182
Published: 16 Sep 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: Pamela Dorman Books
Publisher: Penguin Adult
Format: Paperback
Height: 214mm
Width: 140mm
Pages: 320

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