As a children's book person, I love stories that bring new horizons to young people and in the process, often, to me. Sometimes a book provides a look backward (a new persepctive on history and culture)... good historical fiction. A wonderful such book is The Land I Lost: Adventures of a Boy in Vietnam, by Quang Nhuong Huynh, published in 1986. Set in Vietnam in the decades before the American war, it is a story of the author's growing up time in the midst of his extended family. The family farms rice and lives in a village where cooperation among farmers is central to their lives. The qualities prized in the water buffalo which are much a part of a family's labors are a combination of mountain-bred buffalo and lowland buffalo: aggression and patience. The young narrator accompanies his father to a distant village to purchase a buffalo which they hope will be ideal for them; the boy hopes the buffalo will be a playmate as well as a great help to the family. They find just such such a one! The story is filled with vignettes that bring the Vietnam countryside alive -- forays into the jungle where snakes and other animals lurk, tasks that necessarily fill a young boy's life, such as bringing water from the river for the family.
When it was evident in our own travels that water buffalo are very much a part of agrarian life in Vietnam today, I asked our guide Huy if what I had learned about the family's water buffalo held true, if the same qualities were prized. He understood my question right away and said yes: the "strength" of a highland buffalo combines with the "skill" of a lowland buffalo to produce a valued family beast. I also asked about the wildlife found in the countryside and highland areas, so much a part of the book. He replied that much of the wildlife in the countryside was depleted, sometimes entirely, by the use of Agent Orange, the herbicide and defoliant used by the U. S. military in Vietnam in the 1960s. We have long been painfully aware of the tragic affects in loss of life and birth defects among human beings as a result, I had not, frankly, considered the result for the creatures of the countryside. New understanding and perspective for me.
So yes: historical fiction can surely be an invaluable stepping stone to understanding a new land, a different time -- the ways a culture continues and the changes a country undergoes.
When it was evident in our own travels that water buffalo are very much a part of agrarian life in Vietnam today, I asked our guide Huy if what I had learned about the family's water buffalo held true, if the same qualities were prized. He understood my question right away and said yes: the "strength" of a highland buffalo combines with the "skill" of a lowland buffalo to produce a valued family beast. I also asked about the wildlife found in the countryside and highland areas, so much a part of the book. He replied that much of the wildlife in the countryside was depleted, sometimes entirely, by the use of Agent Orange, the herbicide and defoliant used by the U. S. military in Vietnam in the 1960s. We have long been painfully aware of the tragic affects in loss of life and birth defects among human beings as a result, I had not, frankly, considered the result for the creatures of the countryside. New understanding and perspective for me.
So yes: historical fiction can surely be an invaluable stepping stone to understanding a new land, a different time -- the ways a culture continues and the changes a country undergoes.
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