Steph | bookedinsaigon’s Reviews > The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family > Status Update

TIL that the French outlawed the locally-made wines and pushed imported French ones on their colonial subjects and required each village to buy a certain amount of alcohol regularly so that the French could line their coffers and I am MAD.

Now I’m seeing how the Vietnamese’s strong office hierarchies may have had a foundation in French colonial practices.

Now *this* is a book in which the impact of French colonialism on the Vietnamese is front and center.

Ooh wowww, I'm getting Wild Swans / The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois / The Covenant of Water vibes. A multigenerational family saga (this one's nonfiction!) with very smooth prose. Nice.