Tell My Sister Where I Am and Other Stories

Tell My Sister Where I Am and Other Stories by Hanhtiet Le and Barbara Penner tells the vivid account of one woman's experiences of war and its aftermath, tearing families apart, and making neighbours out of strangers.

Excerpt from Tell My Sister Where I Am and Other Stories:

Grandmother summons me. I tiptoe to her and stand straight but small, stare at my ten toes lined up taut in the sand. Her lecture on disobedience rains down on me. Her voice is stern, her face severe, and in her grip is steel. She squats, wielding a kitchen cleaver in a chopping motion over my feet, touching my toes. She raises the blade. It hovers, about to...

"I will chop off your feet so you cannot run off again."

Wide-eyed, fear holds my breath. She swings. UUGH! The knife-edge bites into the earth far from my quaking feet. I am flabbergasted by Grandmother's abysmal aim.

"You didn't do a very good job," my cheeky self thinks and as the tension snaps, I am overtaken by fits of laughter.

Grandmother cannot contain herself at the sight of hysterical me. She doubles over. Till tears drip from our chins, we laugh and laugh together.

Never, in our wildest dreams, could we have imagined where those feet would take me.

Dettagli