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A review by spinesinaline
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
4.0
Thanks to PHRC and NetGalley for an e-ARC to review! Find more reviews at https://spinesinaline.wordpress.com
The story is centred around Tiến, a young Vietnamese-American kid. He and his parents take out books from the library and read them aloud to each other as a way for his parents to practice English (based on the author’s own experience with his parents!).
This book is really about communication as Tiến struggles to talk to his parents about being gay (even trying to research with the librarian what the word is in Vietnamese). His mom faces a similar struggle in trying to find ways of sharing her experience of immigrating to the States and the trauma she faced, as well as feeling lost between two cultures. She feels that she’s forgetting the Vietnamese stories she grew up with and still doesn’t feel completely at home in America.
The author is able to tackle this communication barrier so beautifully as the characters read aloud from their book of fairy tales, finding different ways to relate these fantastical stories to their own feelings and experiences in hoping that the message gets across. These fairy tales are not the Disney-fied version (and from multiple cultures!) so be prepared for more gruesome depictions.
It is quite short and I would’ve loved more but the author does specifically says in the afterword that he wanted to write a “very short story” so I can respect that! I absolutely LOVE reading the author’s thoughts after the book and learning how personal this story was to the author, the intention of his approach in telling this story about immigrants, and getting more insight into the art choices (like clothing from different time periods to represent the stories told by specific characters).
The story is centred around Tiến, a young Vietnamese-American kid. He and his parents take out books from the library and read them aloud to each other as a way for his parents to practice English (based on the author’s own experience with his parents!).
This book is really about communication as Tiến struggles to talk to his parents about being gay (even trying to research with the librarian what the word is in Vietnamese). His mom faces a similar struggle in trying to find ways of sharing her experience of immigrating to the States and the trauma she faced, as well as feeling lost between two cultures. She feels that she’s forgetting the Vietnamese stories she grew up with and still doesn’t feel completely at home in America.
The author is able to tackle this communication barrier so beautifully as the characters read aloud from their book of fairy tales, finding different ways to relate these fantastical stories to their own feelings and experiences in hoping that the message gets across. These fairy tales are not the Disney-fied version (and from multiple cultures!) so be prepared for more gruesome depictions.
It is quite short and I would’ve loved more but the author does specifically says in the afterword that he wanted to write a “very short story” so I can respect that! I absolutely LOVE reading the author’s thoughts after the book and learning how personal this story was to the author, the intention of his approach in telling this story about immigrants, and getting more insight into the art choices (like clothing from different time periods to represent the stories told by specific characters).