Wandering Souls: A first daughter’s tale
Warning: please only read this article if you are indifferent to spoilers.
“In this piercing debut, the siblings’ faltering journey is deftly interwoven with the voice of their lost younger brother, Dao, following them from a place between the living and the dead, and the records of an unknown researcher intent on gathering the strands of their story. Wandering Souls paints a heart-wrenching portrait of a family in crisis while exploring the healing power of stories”.
Though it has been 9 months since I read Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin, the book remains ingrained in my mind. As the first daughter of a first-generation immigrant, I relate to the protagonist, Anh’s struggles, on a large scale. True to the section of the blurb referenced above, the structure of Pin’s writing allows Anh and her brothers’ (both the living, and dead’s) stories to be weaved together. This a book that grips you with its intensity and refuses to let go. Trust, you will cry whilst reading it, or at the very least, experience a plethora of emotions.
The combination of perspectives in this novel is one that lends to both a personal and historical context. Personal because we see how the living, Anh and her two younger brothers, navigate life in a foreign country as new orphans. Personal, because Pin incorporates Vietnamese culture, which allows us to experience the younger deceased brother, Dao’s wandering soul. Through Dao’s lens, Pin perfectly captivates how much we miss out on when we lose people. She takes this farther by showing us how much the deceased themselves miss out on when they become ghosts. Pin provides historical context to Anh and her brother’s stories, which transcends them fleeing Vietnam some years (in 1978) after the fall of Saigon (1975) right through to when Anh and her brothers are older with their own families in 2022. Speaking of this family, I found great delight in realising and learning that the voice behind the history provided in the book is Jane, Anh’s youngest daughter. It truly is full circle, especially when we learn more about Jane and Anh’s relationship — which I will delve into later.
A multitude of themes are explored in Wandering Souls. The key themes that caught my attention and tugged at my heart at times, were those of: resentment, spirituality, trauma, and ultimately, the struggles of a first generation daughter.
Throughout Wandering Souls, Anh’s internal monologue stresses a lot on how the innocence of youth was stolen from her and her brothers when their parents and siblings died. Anh had to quickly assume the role of both parents by raising her brothers, which explains why she was so fixated on protecting this innocence and retaining it for her brothers. For example, when Thanh, the youngest [living] brother and third-born decided he didn’t want to continue with A-Levels, it was Anh who fought for him and encouraged him to at least try to get the grades. I would go as far as arguing that this encouragement, which was verging on a plea, stemmed from Anh not wanting her sibling to be ‘robbed’ of opportunities (which have no doubt been influenced by traditional ideals) like she, herself was. Equally, this ‘plea’ derived from traditional beliefs of what a successful career looked like (with immigrant parents often believing that Law, Medicine and Finance professions were more respected), beliefs that have no doubt been shaped by western influence. It comes as no surprise that Anh adopted some of this mentality, when her own parents had initially sent her and her siblings abroad for similar opportunities because they were deemed ‘better’.
The vitriol to retain her siblings’ innocence is further strengthened when Anh’s projection continues to translate into resentment towards her brothers. An argument with one of her brothers [Minh], when they were young adults living in their one-bedroom flat in London, shows Anh admitting that she felt as though her brothers had stolen 7 years of her life. Albeit the unfairness of this blame, this is all too raw and common of communications between siblings where at least one was not allowed the room to literally be a child. Of course, this speaks volume to the frustrations and struggles of the first-born daughter (in this case) in an immigrant household — a phenomenon I am sure many in similar shoes can resonate with.
Operation Wandering Soul is a twisted disrespect to the dead in Vietnamese culture. The operation was a psychological warfare and propaganda created by U.S forces in 1967, during the Vietnam War, that pandered to the restlessness of the deceased because their souls continued to wander the earth due to improper burials. Thanks to Wandering Souls, I not only came to realise the true meaning of the title, but I also became educated on the importance of showing respect to the dead in Vietnamese culture — this is something Pin frequently points to through her references to food in the novel. I fervently believe this is a motif that should not be ignored when reading the book.
An improper burial would mean the dead were not buried in their hometown — meaning that their souls, like Dao the deceased brother, would wander aimlessly in pain and suffering in the concentration camps. This is a fact that was crucial within the culture and U.S. forces were all too aware of this information. Heartachingly, due to the circumstances of the book, it took 55 years for Anh and her brothers to put their late family members to rest properly. The reality is, that this in itself was a privilege, since many more people were unable to bury their loved ones at all. If you are wondering why Operation Wandering Soul came into play, or what the benefits of this was for the U.S. army, you can read more here.
Wandering Souls is nuanced in its navigation of trauma and how it can be passed down generations. For instance, throughout the novel, we see how Anh’s relationship with sleep suffers at the hand of the trauma she faced when her parents and siblings passed away. Where her brothers were eventually able to sleep more peacefully at night, we see that Anh had more restless nights, sometimes hearing the cries of the other refugees she crossed the sea with when fleeing Vietnam. As such, she became a ‘night owl’ Equally, Anh’s youngest daughter, Jane, was complex. It is made clear to us that Anh disapproves of her daughter’s decision to study Philosophy at university, branding it a “useless degree”. The irony is, I would go as far as arguing that the skills Jane picked up from her degree allowed Anh to get closure with her family (towards the end of the book, she and her brothers were united with their long-lost cousin Thach, who was raised in America).
Albeit its complexities, Jane and Anh had a shared, diffracted relationship with sleep. For Jane, her sleep suffered as a result of being emotionally impacted by her ancestors’ death. Of course, we need to remember that Anh, as much as she became acclimatised to the UK, is still a first generation immigrant, therefore she struggled to understand how or why Jane had insomnia when she had an objectively ‘good’ and privileged life. Genetically inherited family trauma is a concept that Pin touches on in this novel; it is also explored in great detail by Mark Wolynn in It Didn’t Start With You. As I have noted earlier, it is Jane who helped heal Anh emotionally and Pin crafts this beautifully in Wandering Souls.
This thought-provoking novel is one that is worth your time and money. It will mentally stimulate you whilst educating you. Cecile Pin did her big one with this debut and deserves her flowers.
