From Laborer to Author

From Laborer to Author: The Flowers in Heaven Are Rooted in Hell is the biography of an astonishing - and stubborn - man. Hoa Minh Truong changed his life around because of the English he learned in a re-education camp after Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. English was strictly banned when the Vietcong launched a counter-revolution culture campaign by collecting English books in a public place and burning them. Learning English was dangerous in re-education camps, but Hoa risked his life and promised to write his true story if he survived. His mother revealed a pocket dictionary was still hidden under the bed. She tore off dictionary pages and then stuck them with rice glue to appear like newspapers. This paper wrapped his food supply, and as he ate, he quietly learned word by word. If another inmate or Vietcong discovered his secret, the penalty was death or torture. In 1981, after five years of studying the dictionary, he was released from the camp because of illness. In 1982, he escaped and came to a Malaysia refugee camp, resettling a year later in Australia. It took twenty-five years, but Hoa wrote his first book, The Dark Journey, in 2010. He wrote Good Evening Vietnam a year later, and now he submits From Laborer to Author. Hoa Minh Truong volunteered for the South Vietnamese army and was among the 500,000 defeated troops sent to re-education camps. He resettled in Western Australia, where he became a journalist. He has never returned to his homeland. Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/HoaMinhTruong