1992's Pulitzer Prize winning book a marvel of assuming identities

 

When I happened to catch a one-line synopsis of this book telling me it was a short story anthology about Vietnam, it didn't quite prepare me for what it actually was.

This is a collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants in America, specifically Louisiana, though the location doesn't factor into the stories nearly as much as the people do. And it's the people whose tales are told that is most remarkable. While the author Robert Olen Butler's name is listed right on the front, I double-checked a couple of times in the early going to see if he was actually the editor instead, or had in some way compiled these stories, because the array of personas he writes from are dizzying.

Now, Butler served in Vietnam, so even though these stories take place in the U.S. he's obviously informed by personal experience. But to write from the perspective of a man, a woman, a child, an elder - there's no cap on who Butler can inhabit to tell captivating stories. 

The idea that a white, male, American could sympathetically write multiple stories from a wide swath of Vietnamese points of view was fascinating enough; the stories themselves, sweet, funny, and aching, are the final touch to this unique work.