C.L. Hoang's Blog, page 7
June 1, 2014
Book Award for "Once upon a Mulberry Field"
It's a wonderful feeling to receive positive feedback on something you have poured yourself into for years, even when recognition wasn't what motivated you in the first place. I was the lucky recipient of such good news when I got notification last week that my six-year labor of love, Once upon a Mulberry Field, had been selected as a finalist in the 2014 National Indie Excellence Book Awards for Historical Fiction.The NIEA was established in 2007 in Los Angeles, California to recognize excellence in independent publishing. It is open to all English language books available for sale, including small presses, mid-size independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. The competition is judged by independent experts from all aspects of the book industry---publishers, writers, editors, book cover designers, and professional copywriters.
“The Indie Excellence® Winners & Finalists recognize the books that demonstrate an indefinable synergy of elements that makes for overall excellence.”
Although prior to publication my first-draft manuscript had been chosen as a finalist in the 2012 San Diego Book Awards (Unpublished Novel category), this is the first time the book has garnered some national recognition. It is an honor for me, and it gives me a boost of confidence that I am on the right track. But just as important, I hope it will bring Mulberry Field a little attention from the reading public out there---another nudge on the great wall of exposure and publicity that I'm only beginning to scale.
After all, one big reason why I began writing was to reach other people and to share what I write with them. Awards or not.
Once upon a Mulberry Field
May 25, 2014
The Title of my Book
I’ve often been asked: “Where did the title of your book,
Once upon a Mulberry Field,
come from?”
The short and simple answer has always been: It was derived from the two famous lines in the Vietnamese masterpiece popularly known as Truyện Kiều (The Story of Kiều) by the celebrated poet Nguyễn-Du (1766-1820).
At the risk of getting scolded by his admirers for perverting the purity of his exquisite poetry, I’ve attempted, as faithfully to the original spirit as I could, to translate those two lines that most of us with Vietnamese heritage can still recite even in our sleep:
Mulberry fields forever where the blue sea once was . . .
A new season of upheaval has cloaked my heart in sorrow
In the Far East in the old days, mulberry plants constituted an important crop second only to rice. Their young leaves were harvested and fed to silkworms to produce the most alluring and coveted product that had ever emerged from the Orient. As such, there had been mentions of mulberry fields in oral and written records stretching back to the earliest times. One such legend, which inspired the renowned verse by Nguyễn-Du, claimed that the ancient world was subject to regular cycles of profound changes. Every few thousand years or so, it said, mulberry fields would turn into blue seas, and blue seas into mulberry fields. The world as known would vanish–completely erased and rearranged.
For so many people and in so many ways, the Vietnam War had been a life changer. In trying to recapture memories of those days gone by, I couldn’t put out of my mind the beautiful simple rhymes of Nguyễn-Du–and the fact that the world of my youth had actually existed once upon a time, not so terribly long ago.
Hence the title of my book, and the theme of my website:
www.mulberryfieldsforever.com
The short and simple answer has always been: It was derived from the two famous lines in the Vietnamese masterpiece popularly known as Truyện Kiều (The Story of Kiều) by the celebrated poet Nguyễn-Du (1766-1820).
At the risk of getting scolded by his admirers for perverting the purity of his exquisite poetry, I’ve attempted, as faithfully to the original spirit as I could, to translate those two lines that most of us with Vietnamese heritage can still recite even in our sleep:
Mulberry fields forever where the blue sea once was . . .
A new season of upheaval has cloaked my heart in sorrow
In the Far East in the old days, mulberry plants constituted an important crop second only to rice. Their young leaves were harvested and fed to silkworms to produce the most alluring and coveted product that had ever emerged from the Orient. As such, there had been mentions of mulberry fields in oral and written records stretching back to the earliest times. One such legend, which inspired the renowned verse by Nguyễn-Du, claimed that the ancient world was subject to regular cycles of profound changes. Every few thousand years or so, it said, mulberry fields would turn into blue seas, and blue seas into mulberry fields. The world as known would vanish–completely erased and rearranged.
For so many people and in so many ways, the Vietnam War had been a life changer. In trying to recapture memories of those days gone by, I couldn’t put out of my mind the beautiful simple rhymes of Nguyễn-Du–and the fact that the world of my youth had actually existed once upon a time, not so terribly long ago.
Hence the title of my book, and the theme of my website:
www.mulberryfieldsforever.com
