For as long as she can remember, Dieu Thi Mai, 41 years old, of Dac Nong, Vietnam, has done and known nothing else but epics. For 26 long years, she has collected, translated, recited and taught epics to people in Tay Nguyen, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

Mai inherited this tradition from her father, fondly calling it the “epic gene.” Dieu Kau, Mai’s father, spent 50 years collecting and preserving more than 54 sets of epics, including the epic cycles of the M’Noang ethnic people. This is the biggest collection in the Central Highlands. In fact, six of this large collection have been printed and released, including the popular Chuyen Co Xua or The M’Nong Tales.

Kau was the first person in Dac Nong to translate Ot Ndrong (the M’Nong epics) into Vietnamese. At the young age of 18, Mai was named the best epic singer in the Central Highlands. According to the head of the Dac N’Rung Women’s Association, no one at that time could understand why she followed her father’s steps in reciting epics at so young an age. But she recited epics so passionately that people cried watching and listening to her.

To date, Mai already has 12,000 pages of epic handed down from her father. Moreover, she has a large collection that she has compiled herself, including three completed sets of epic books and more than 16,000 folk songs adapted from epic stories. According to Mai, the M’Nong youth can no longer recite the Ot Ndrong. But she believes that holding an Ot Ndrong class will bring back the people’s interest and passion for the epics. She hopes that the state will address this cultural issue, putting up a school for teaching epics and allowing her to record an old artist in Dac Nong reciting the Ot Ndrong.