Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb, 310 p.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement is a book as lovely as its title. Hung is an elderly, much-loved Hanoi street vendor, survivor of the "American War" and of the lean and dangerous times (especially for artists and their communities) before that in the early days of Vietnamese Communism. His pho is as legendary as the shop he owned in more prosperous times, a well-known gathering place for the poets, artists, and revolutionaries of The Beauty of Humanity Movement, a fictionalized version of the Nhan Van-Giai Pham Affair, which believed in communism but only to the point that it could allow for creative freedom and individualism. Many of its members, both fictionally and historically, lost their livelihoods, or were maimed or killed, some of them in reeducation camps. Few escaped. One exception is the painter-father of Maggie, a young Vietnamese American curator who has come to Hanoi to find out anything she can about her father's work and his disappearance at the end of the Vietnam War. Tu, a young tour guide, and his father Binh are, by circumstance but not blood, family to Hung. Together, this foursome pieces together Hung's memories of Maggie's father and find some of his art. In the process they also restore dignity to the old man's life. This is a beautifully written story that sheds so much light on what I was too young to understand as a child growing up during the Vietnam War. Highly recommended.

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