Press Release:
Behind the Red Curtain: a Memoir, by Hồng-Mỹ Basrai
Coming April 2020 from Los Nietos Press
Los Nietos Press is pleased to announce the upcoming release of a book-length memoir by Southern California author Hồng-Mỹ Basrai, to be published in April 2020
Behind the Red Curtain begins in Saigon in 1975 as South Vietnam falls to the Communist North Vietnamese. In the voice of a young teenager, the author unfolds the story of her family in a world turned upside down with the political re-making of the country. In breath-taking detail and with a keen insight into the souls of her family and the many other people she encountered, Hồng-Mỹ writes about the gradual disappearance of all aspects of her former life and the impact it had on all those around her. The family’s struggle to survive, their several attempts to escape and the imprisonment that they experienced is laid bare in heart-breaking intimacy, yet the connection to the universal themes of dislocation and the will to struggle for survival are never lost.
Within the larger events that affected a whole country and its people, this story is also about youth. The author’s anguish over her shortcomings, her self-doubt and needs are the same as those experienced by every youth growing up. And the author’s ability to maintain a sense of humor throughout all of this, her ability to connect on a person-to-person basis with all around her and her constant sensitivity to the culture and traditions of Vietnam make this memoir an amazing read. In this tale of pain and poetry, readers cannot help but simultaneously cry hot tears and roll with laughter.
Born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam, Hồng-Mỹ Basrai (née Lê) is fluent in Vietnamese and French. Hồng-Mỹ’s love for literature and languages was evident from a very young age. Transplanted at twenty-two to Southern California, she picked up English and improvised with the borrowed language to make it her own. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from California State University, Pomona and an informal degree in self-taught English. She is a member of the Writers Club of Whittier. Hồng-Mỹ ‘s writings can be found in Eastlit Literary Journal, 2011 Writing from Inlandia Anthology, East Jasmine Review, and Invisible Memoirs “Lionhearted”.
Follow this book on Facebook at @BehindtheRedCurtainaMemoir
Clifton Snider, faculty emeritus at Cal State University Long Beach, is the internationally celebrated author of ten books of poetry. A career retrospective of his work, Moonman: New and Selected Poems, was published to great acclaim by World Parade Books in 2012. He has published four novels, including his first historical novel, The Plymouth Papers (Spout Hill Press, 2014). A Jungian/Queer literary critic, his book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On, was published in 1991, and he has published hundreds of poems, short stories, reviews, and articles internationally. He pioneered LGBT literary studies at CSULB. His work has been translated into Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian.
This second collection of poetry continues Trista Dominqu’s tour through the blue-collar working class Southern California that moves beneath the glitz of Hollywood, the money Santa Monica and the Chrome skyline of Downtown. In poems such as “So Cali”, “Working Class Blue” and “45 minutes of Spanglish” she explores the world of steel-toed shoes, tattooed forearms, skate parks and mills South East of the city epicenter.
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