SOURCE: Truong, Monique T. D. “The Reception of Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain: Ventriloquism and the Pulitzer Prize.” Viet Nam Forum 16 (fall 1997): 75-94.

In the following essay, Truong examines Robert Olen Butler's characterizations of Vietnamese Americans in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

The white man is always trying to know into somebody else' business. All right, I'll set something outside the door of my mind for him to play with and handle. He can read my writing but he sho' can't read my mind. I'll put this play toy in his hand, and he will seize it and go away. Then I'll say my say and sing my song.¹

—Zora Neale Hurston

[Robert Olen Butler's] depictions of Vietnamese-Americans are as moving as Amy Tan's of Chinese-Americans; and Butler's is the greater artistic achievement because he had to exercise far more imagination...