Author Michelle Robin La talks with host Fred Klein about her first book Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands. The book is a memoir based on her husband’s life growing up in war-torn Vietnam. Literary Gumbo: Michelle Robin La from Literary Gumbo on Vimeo.
(This excerpt from Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands is a first-place winner in the Southern California Genealogical Society’s 2014 GENEii Family History Writing Awards and appears in the 2015 Summer edition of The Searcher) After dinner, Má decides who’s coming to the countryside in the morning. I try to go whenever I can. I’d rather swim and fish all day…
The Santa Barbara News-Press Books section featured Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands in “Finally free: New book details Santa Barbara man’s childhood in Vietnam during and after the war” on 17 April 2015. Alternately hopeful and sometimes heartbreaking, Michelle Robin La’s comprehensive 487-page debut is based on her husband’s childhood in his native country during and after the Vietnam War.…
While sad at times and occasionally horrific, overall the story is one of resilience and inspiration and adds to a growing counter-narrative of Vietnamese-Americans as courageous survivors, not victims. –Sharon Simonson, SV1World.com reviewing Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands. Read the full article here.
Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands: A Boy from the Mekong Delta is the true story of a boy growing up in the midst of the Vietnam War and his struggle for freedom after the Communist takeover. Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands is available at Amazon in print and Kindle versions, as an iBook, on Google Play, and…
On the 29th of April 1975, helicopters evacuated people from the roof of the U.S. Embassy before the fall of Saigon. Twelve-year-old Luong La stood on a dock on the bank of the Mekong River and watched the entire Navy go out to the ocean that day. Here’s his story of the days leading to South…
