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copied from : Ru (novel) Ru is a novel by Canadian-Vietnamese novelist Kim Thúy, first published in French in 2009 by Montreal publisher Libre Expression. It was translated into English in 2012 by Sheila Fischman and published by Vintage Canada.

The author
'Born in Vietnam in 1968, Kim Thúy is lawyer and author whom emigrated in Granby, Québec, Canada. In 1978, Thùy and her family left their home country for Malaysia in a fishing boat and will end up immigrating to Canada, this is the story she will tell in her novel, Ru.'

'Even though the author has always loved words and books, writing was not her first vocation. She indeed started her career as a lawyer, graduating from the Université de Montréal, and then became a legal adviser for the Canadian International Development Agency.'

'From all the difficulties and challenged encounters during this immigration and adaption journey from Vietnam to Canada, Thuy states it was her son's autism which turned her into a writer. As she declares : “Because I’m not someone who has a muse or a great talent. I don’t feel so much. But because he’s so sensitive about everything, I have to pay attention to all the senses.” '

She published four other novels, À toi (2011) co-written with Pascal Janovjak, Mān (2013), Vi (2016) and Le secret des vietnamiennes (2017).

Title
The word "ru" has significance in both French and Vietnamese. In French the word means small stream. In Vietnamese the word means cradle or lullaby.

Plot summary
The biographic novel tells the tale of a woman, An Tinh Nguyen, born in Saigon in 1968 during the Tet Offensive who immigrates to Canada with her family as a child.

'The book tells her immigration journey, starting with her childhood in Vietnam in a large and wealthy family, her time as a boat person when she left her country for a refugee camp in Malaysia, and her life as an early immigrant in Granby, Quebec. Throughout different memories and anecdotes presented vignette per vignette in the book, Thùy will introduce several themes related to forced migration and integration such as language, family and hardship.'

Migration context in Vietnam
'Vietnamese people have been forced to migrate within their country and overseas since the mid-1950s due to several conflicts. Starting with the second Indochina War, a large mass exodus occurred due to forced relocation, de-urbanization and political indoctrination. As a result of deprivations and violence caused by these wars, over 1.4 million Vietnamese people fled the country. Since most of them were fleeing in dangerous conditions, on overcrowded boats for example, the term of "boat people", to define this type of refugee migration, emerged.'

'By the end of the 1990s most of these refugees found home in the United States, as well as in other countries such as Canada, Australia, France, Great Britain and Germany. Canada accepted 60 000 Vietnamese between 1979 and 1981. By 1985, 110 000 of them had settled in Canada. Most of them describe this resettlement as quick and easy .'

Themes and points of view
'Thùy is building the plot of her novel around themes connected to forced migration and integration, such as identity, memory, language, family, motherhood and hardship. Rather than telling her story by creating a chronological account that will follow the point of view of a main character, she makes detours and ellipses to recreate a flow of memory that will recreate the atmosphere of Vietnam and pay hommage to its inhabitants.'

'Divided between a melancholy for the East and fascination of the West, the author decides to tells us the story of the people left aside, like people who stayed in Vietnam and have to leave from poverty, violence and discomfort. Thùy will also describes her adaption to a new Western lifestyle, by describing several encounters and relationships with Quebecers and their culture.'

'Her migration and integration experience in the Province of Québec will appear as mostly successful in the book even though her parents experienced a drastic lifestyle change, from being a wealthy respected family in Vietnam to work in restaurant in Canada to make ends meet. However, the novel treats this theme with both personal and collective memories and anecdotes of resilience with a triumphant final note .'

'Moreover, the fact that Ru was first written in French shows the theme of cultural adaption on another level. Indeed, Thùy follows the advice from her father "never regret what we left behind" and appears to have developed her own poetic language. Through this new acculturate voice the author will sing and recite about her life and that of "those who who have walked before her." To do so, she will developed her language where her story ends, to be able to to tell and pay hommage to her native country and her immigration experience. '

A poetic voice
'Thùy observe a poetic style, her "poetic truth", throughout a variety of 113 vignettes of different length, description, memories and narrated episodes, following the narrator's own thought and reminiscence process. The story opens in a rather traditional autobiographic manner, mentioning the birth of the author in South Vietnam and introducing key themes of the story such as family, migration and History.'

'The narrative will be shaped by different episodes, each of them including poetic comparisons and metaphors reuniting past and present. Indeed, at the very beginning, she describes her birth day as celebration as time of renewal when she says : "I first saw the light of day in Saigon, where firecrackers, fragmented into a thousand shreds, coloured the ground red like the petals of cherry blossoms or like the blood of two million soldiers deployed and scattered throughout the villages and cities of a Vietnam that had been ripped in two." Ru (p. 1) '

'This poetic voice is also highlighted by the use of French language by the author. First with the title that represents something in both Vietnamese and French, with different meaning however, it allows this association of prose and poetry to flow. Thus, one episode streams into its successor and the telling of traumatic events appears as calmed and healed by this use of the French language. The author is even able to depict the horrors of their migration journey with a sense of irony, comparing their boat to a whale for example.'

Moreover this use of the French language to write about a Canadian-Vietnamese experience happening in Québec is also to express her gratitude towards this land and its community whom welcomed her family, while questioning her nationalist sentiment as francophone Quebecer within Canada but also as Vietnamese who gave up on her mother language .

Awards and nominations
'Ru won the Governor General's Award for French language fiction at the 2010 Governor General's Awards. The English edition, translated by Sheila Fischman, was published in 2012 by Random House Canada and was a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2012 Governor General's Award for French to English translation, and the 2013 Amazon.ca First Novel Award.'

The original French edition won several awards since 2009, both in Québec and in France. Indeed Ru won the Salon du livre de Montréal's prix du grand public and France's Grand Prix RTL-Lire. The novel was also selected for the 2014 edition of Le Combat des livres, where it was defended by author and physician Jean-François Chicoine. Its English translation was selected for the 2015 edition of Canada Reads by film critic and Toronto International Film Festival programmer Cameron Bailey, and won the competition on March 19, 2015.