The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse, Vinh Nguyen
The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse, Vinh Nguyen
List: $15.99 | Sale: $11.20
Club: $7.99

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse
A Memory of Vietnam

Author: Vinh Nguyen

Narrator: David Lee Huynh

Unabridged: 5 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/27/2025


Synopsis

An unconventional memoir of conjuring the uncertain past and a long-lost homeland, and a vital document of one family's journey through world history.

With the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the U.S. war in Vietnam ended, but the refugee crisis was only beginning. Among the millions of people who fled Vietnam by boat were Vinh Nguyen, along with his mother and siblings, and his father, who left separately and then mysteriously vanished.

Decades later, Nguyen goes looking for the story of his father. What he discovers is a sea of questions drifting above sunken truths. To come to terms with the past, Nguyen must piece together the debris of history with family stories that have been scattered across generations and continents, kept for decades in broken hearts and guarded silences.

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse takes listeners on a poignant tour of disappeared refugee camps, abandoned family homes, and the lives that could have been. As the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, this powerful memoir is timelier and more important than ever, illuminating the stories, real and imagined, that become buried in the rubble of war.

About Vinh Nguyen

VINH NGUYEN is a writer and educator. His work appears in Brick, LitHub, the Malahat Review, PRISM International, Grain, Queen’s Quarterly, the Criterion Collection and MUBI Notebook. A non-fiction editor at the New Quarterly, he curates an ongoing series on refugee, migrant and diasporic writing. He is the editor and author of three academic books, Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada; The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives; and Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience. Currently, Nguyen is a cultural consultant and consulting writer for the hit CBC sitcom Run the Burbs. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for a National Magazine Award, and he received the John C. Polanyi Prize for Literature. In 2022, he was a Lambda Literary Fellow in non-fiction at the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices.  


Reviews

Goodreads review by Veronica on May 29, 2025

my pick for the read harder prompt, "read a book about immigration or refugees". a very beautiful and unique memoir!!......more

Goodreads review by Enid on January 22, 2025

This is why we read. Magical - literally and figuratively. Creative. Poetic. Moving. Heartbreaking. Different - An interesting hybrid - part non-fiction, part fiction (magical thinking). On page 242 he sums it up beautifully when he states that: “Like my story, I am filled with unbridgeable connection......more

Goodreads review by wornoutbookmark on March 11, 2025

This is a beautifully written memoir that follows the author’s journey as he struggles to reconcile his experiences escaping Vietnam and losing his father as a child and his current adult identity. The author’s desperation to understand his tumultuous past was heartbreaking to read as it forced me t......more

Goodreads review by Mike on January 31, 2025

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins for the advance copy of The Migrant Rain Falls In Reverse. This is an excellent book. It is very poetic, very unique and very creative. The story is told in a variety of ways to tell us that his father did not make it out with the family. He wants so badly to......more

Goodreads review by Christine on May 16, 2025

It's a memoir, a novel, a poem and a tragedy all at once. A son's journey to find the father war and exile have robbed from him. A journey to "see" what happened, what could have happened, what should have happened. A cathartic attempt to tame the hurt and fill the void. Original, powerful, brilliant......more