Stay up all night with 'Storm Memories!'

I like the ending of the first essay in the book, which the author used as the general title for the book: Storm Memories! The satire and humor of the two old farmers, Mr. Cu Nay and Mr. Met Him, every time a storm swept through, sowed in the hearts of the people of Tuyen Hoa (old Quang Binh , now Quang Tri) in particular and the Central region in general, a new motivation for life and optimism, like the song "while there is skin, hair grows, shoots and trees sprout" , encouraging each other to rise up from devastation and collapse.

- Ảnh 2. — Cover 1 and cover 4 of the book *Storm Memories!*

"The story of storms and floods has become a horror that haunts me all my life. Some people jokingly call storms and floods a specialty, a specialty that is terrifying to think about, but like a lingering consciousness that makes anyone far from home sob. Without such a joke, I would not have been able to stay in this land," Luong Duy Cuong wrote the ending with a heartfelt confession. Perhaps, he confided in a reality of storms that everyone knows, but sometimes cannot imagine the full ferocity if one does not live in it, to see that human fate in the face of natural disasters is truly too fragile.

With the memoir White Night in the Flood Zone , the picture of the storms and floods in the Central region seems to run through deep grooves, cutting into the reader with a knife forged from a perfect alloy. The knife of thermodynamics, atmospheric circulation, clouds and wind... gather from the earth and sky to form a storm, then the damage caused by humans, the flood after flood due to the water source from upstream, submerging everything in a scene of devastation.

I think both of Cuong's memoirs about storms and floods are full of the fury of nature and the enduring resilience of people, not only in his hometown.

Therefore, he loved nature passionately and fiercely declared war on deforestation, such as the memoirs "Encountering Bach Ma Son" about the Bach Ma mountain range, "On the Northwest Arc" about Pha Din Pass, Nam Rom River... Gianh River passed through my life with not only beautiful memories of my childhood that made me restless all my life, but the author also expressed an eternal, deep love for the far-away underground stream, going back to the source in the majestic Truong Son mountain range.

In the book, there are two memoirs that seem to be able to overlap if separated into four parts, which are Master's Martial Arts and Meeting Bach Ma Mountain . The author talks about the Master, capitalizing the word in the true sense, when mentioning the 7th degree black belt master Suzucho Nguyen Van Dung in Hue City (owner of Nghia Dung Karate-Do school), who has trained many generations of students over the years, including Luong Duy Cuong.

In both of those notes, he

Dung is present in both roles: teaching martial arts and teaching humanity. Very touching reading!

But there is another special thing, the storm of the heart bursting out on the page. I have read, loved, hurt and admired the memoir Red Phoenix of Nam Chu . I love the beautiful and innocent student years in the stormy cold of his homeland, as if I saw in them me, my friends of the time. I feel the pain of hunger, poverty and mourning when several classmates unfortunately passed away in their early youth due to hardship, having to "jump ship" and then having an accident. I admire a generation of students who left their school chairs, carrying backpacks to the battlefield, forgetting themselves at the border: "On the day of the military transfer, everyone was dressed up in new uniforms, their faces proud and proud in front of those who were let out later and the watery eyes of the female students. Many hibiscus and sweet potato flowers hastily picked from their home gardens were attached around the military vehicles, hastily hiding the vague love affairs of their student years". Then: "Not long after the friends left, the news of their deaths came back. Then Dung, Binh, Tan... the "gangsters" of Nam Chu from back then now reported their deaths one by one...". So, 33 years later, the author returned with emotion: "Nam Chu is now covered with green fruit gardens, still gloomy like an immortal witness. At the foot of Nam Chu, there is a new high school opening". It sounds like a new page of life, for him to continue with the feelings of love in the memoirs Purple when you come back, Every year when summer comes , so excited that... he doesn't want to close the book!

No wonder, poet Van Cong Hung, a senior classmate of the author at Hue University, wrote in the introduction: "Luong Duy Cuong took me to each of his memories, to enjoy, to share and to be filled with emotions. Each story is a period of life, a land, I had such an interesting "word tour "!". Van Cong Hung also commented heartily: "There is a characteristic of journalists in poor provinces, that when they go far away and grow up, they all ache and are tormented by their homeland. Their writings about their homeland, about their memories, about those difficult days are the most touching, trembling lines... and therefore the most haunting."

I know why I am so restless and haunted by Cuong's homeland and people!

As for me, my hometown is in Quang Tri, what's the difference, let alone now we're in the same province?

Storm Memories!, a collection of memoirs by journalist Luong Duy Cuong published by the Writers' Association Publishing House at the end of June 2025. He is currently an editor of the Lao Dong Newspaper, and has published many books such as: The South Central Coast , go and write (Reportage - memoir, 1996); Mysterious True Spirit (Reportage - memoir, 2015); Investigative Writing (Research, 2015); Giving the People a Piece of Cake (Press Commentary, 2019).