Listen, Slowly

Published in 2015, Listen, Slowly is the second novel from Thanhhà Lại, a Vietnamese American author who incorporates her experience as a refugee into her work. The novel was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, and one of NPR’s Best Books of 2015. This middle-grade novel is the follow-up to her debut Inside Out and Back Again which won the National Book Award and Newbery Honor.

Thanhhà’s next book was a YA novel titled Butterfly Yellow, and her most recent work is a children’s book titled Hundred Years of Happiness. Thanhhà currently lives in New York with her family and teaches at the Parsons New School of Design. In 2005, Thanhhà started a non-profit organization called Viet Kids which purchases bicycles for impoverished children to ride to school. The organization also provides food and supplies, so the children do not have to attend school feeling hungry or exhausted.

The source material used for this guide comes from the 2015 ebook edition from HarperCollins. This guide refers to the author as Thanhhà, which is her surname and comes first in Vietnamese.

Plot Summary

The book’s front matter contains a map of Vietnam that traces the locations of important moments in the narrative.

Twelve-year-old Mai Le lives in Laguna Beach, California, and she cannot wait for summer to start. With plans to put aside her academics for the summer and do nothing but lounge on the beach drinking mango smoothies with her best friend Montana and watching for her boy crush, Mai is poised to have the ultimate California summer. However, when her father announces she must accompany her grandmother, whom she calls Bà, to their ancestral country of Vietnam, Mai throws an epic teenage tantrum. Despite her protestations, Mai finds herself on a cross-continental flight with her father and grandmother headed towards Vietnam and six weeks full of uncertainty and dread.

Mai does not consider herself Vietnamese despite her family’s roots, and what she does know of the country’s difficult history she learned from history books or documentaries, as her family members are reluctant to share their experiences. Her Bà is Mai’s closest tie to her Vietnamese roots, and Bà has shared much of their culture with her granddaughter. Yet one mystery hangs over the family: After being taken as a prisoner of war, Ông, Mai’s grandfather, disappeared without a trace, and Mai’s grandmother raised her seven children alone without ever knowing what happened to him. Now a detective claims to have a witness—a guard from the prison who was the last to see Ông alive—who may hold clues about what happened to him.

When Mai first arrives in Vietnam, she is overwhelmed by the different sights and smells. She and her grandmother are smothered by relatives offering food and attention when they reach Bà’s small village. All the relatives are talkative and attentive to Mai and Bà, but Mai notices one girl off to the side who does not seem to fit in with the others. With a buzz cut, tan skin, and ragged trousers, the girl stands out against her delicate-skinned family members. Most strange is the warty frog the girl keeps as a pet. After stuffing her face with Vietnamese cuisine, a family member introduces the odd girl to Mai as Út. Though the girls have trouble communicating, Mai is happy to meet someone close to her age.

Despite making a friend, Mai cannot stop thinking about all she is missing back home. After one phone call home to Montana and looking at pictures on social media, Mai suspects her supposed friend back home is making a move on her crush. As each day passes and Mai has little to occupy her time, she rehashes the phone call in her mind obsessively and sees the days ahead of her stuck in the sweltering boredom of Vietnamese village life.

Mai remains secretive about her ability to understand Vietnamese, but the more time she spends with Út, the less she can conceal it. Eventually, Mai learns that Út can write in English, and the two begin to swap notes to communicate. With Anh Minh’s constant lessons on the Vietnamese’s beauty and myriad inflections, Mai begins to appreciate the second language she has ignored. She decides when she returns home to California, she will take Vietnamese language classes and learn to read and write in her ancestral tongue.

Mai hopes their trip will be over as soon as they can meet with the detective and the guard, but when they arrive and meet with the detective, he tells them the guard does not want to travel to Bà’s village and instead she must come to the south to meet him. Bà refuses, and the detective must convince the guard that Bà is too old and frail to travel. After waiting for what feels like forever, the guard finally travels to meet Bà and tell her his story. Mai is captivated as he tells his harrowing story of forced labor during the waning days of the Vietnam War. Soldiers brought Ông to help the guard dig a tunnel to a water source, and the men bonded through the backbreaking labor and their nightly escapes above ground, where they basked in the fresh air and open sky.

One night, a desperately ill and weak Ông decided he would not return to the tunnel, and as American helicopters swirled above, the guard was forced to leave him behind. Ông’s body was never found, but the guard promises he left a note behind for Bà. However, he cannot bring the message to her and claims she must travel south to see it. Feeling helpless, Mai decides she and Út must take action to help. When Mai finds the detective’s journal and sees an address for the guard’s home in Hanoi, she begins to hatch a plan. Út fakes an injury from a broken braces bracket, and Mai pretends she has a lingering head injury from her illness. Út’s mom sends them to Hanoi to see a dentist relative. There, they hope to find the guard, get more information about Ông’s message, and hopefully find closure for Mai’s grandmother.

With Anh Minh as their chaperone, the girls travel to the bustling city of Hanoi, and Mai learns the thrill of speeding through the crowded streets on a moped. Mai and Út sneak out at night to catch glowing frogs, and Mai experiences all the unique food and culture of Vietnam’s capital city. Most importantly, Mai decides Vietnam is a place she could call home. They bravely approach the guard’s house and ask to speak with him, but he is not home. Locals direct them to a café where they find the guard and the detective, and Mai pleads with him to help her grandmother.

Finally, the detective plans for Mai and Bà to travel south to Saigon to see the message. Mai is sad to leave her new friends and family in the village but hopes the trip to Saigon will bring the journey to an end—not for her sake but for Bà’s. They spend several days sightseeing in Saigon, where Bà shares many memories from her past. They are reunited with Mai’s father, and all three travel with the detective to the tunnel where the guard and Ông worked together. Once they see all the preparations made for them to access the tunnel, they understand the detective’s delay. After an arduous crawl through the mud, they find Ông’s message, which is simply the list of his seven children’s names. It is the way he signed off each letter he sent home.

Feeling sad but satisfied, the family returns to Ông’s village to conduct a memorial service, but Mai’s father must quickly return to his mountain clinic to finish seeing clients. He gives Mai the option to return home immediately, but despite receiving a note from her crush Kevin, she chooses to stay for 12 more days to keep Bà company. Her aunt Cô Hạnh hosts a goodbye party, and Mai spends most of it with Út. They read to each other in English and Vietnamese, and they agree to exchange language lessons during the time they have left together.