Writing Trauma and Postmemory in the Affect: An Analysis of The Mountains Sing (2020) by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

Abstract

This paper examines the Vietnamese author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s novel The Mountains Sing (2020) through the lens of postmemory and trauma, focusing on the traumatic affect experienced by the characters and its articulation through literary form. This multigenerational tale is situated in the precincts of the Vietnamese War, Land Reforms by the Communist government, and the Great Famine. The poignant narrative covers four generations of the Trân family and pivots around Diệu Lan and her granddaughter Húóng, who suffer distantly at the hands of American and Japanese military exploits. Since representation of trauma in literature is elusive and fragmentary, writing trauma according to La Capra ensues performativity, aesthetic responsibility and produces affect for the discerning reader. With war and its residual effects corralled in forgetting and remembering, Marianne Hirsch's ‘postmemory’ elucidates how the genealogical transmission of such a memory leaves behind a psychic strain on the subsequent generations. Besides, Nguyễn Mai, through multivocality, embodies the corporeality of trauma and creates an apprehension of self-determination. With intersections of victimhood and survival at multiple levels, women and children who are deprived of societal validation, against a backdrop of relentless atrocities, demonstrate more resilience than men in the novel. To this end, the study aims to look at the immanent foreboding, intergenerational narration, and traumatic affect in the literary work and how it imparts social agency to the vulnerable.