last weekend, like many other quebecers, i finally went to see ru, the film adaptation of the novel by the same name by vietnamese-born quebec author kim thúy.
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by 1985, canada had taken in more than 110,000 vietnamese refugees , close to half of them under private sponsorship. in quebec, the parti québécois government, having established its own sponsorship program, directly sponsored 10,000 refugees from southeast asia. most of them settled in montreal.
knowing this, thúy focuses on specifics: the warm, unpretentious québécois hospitality; moments around a dinner table sharing a meal; snowshoeing in the stillness of winter woods; montreal’s shrill snow-clearing sirens; the endless darkness of a blizzard. what’s utterly foreign to her slowly becomes familiar. our familiar.
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