Expat memoirs, even (or perhaps especially) of the East Asian variety, are a venerable genre. One suspects that even in the early days, what authors presented as new and exotic, probably wasn’t really. In these days of ubiquitous travel videos on YouTube, this is probably even more the case. As a result, such books need a good raconteur or prose stylist to pass muster. Fortunately, Connla Stokes is both.
Vietnam
For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chinese. In southern China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, people used Chinese to read and write–and never thought it was odd. It was, after all, how things were done.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and what is now celebrated in Vietnam as the unification of the country. Outside of Vietnam, this anniversary is tinted with stories of exile, of loss and trauma, of surviving in a new country and culture, where Vietnamese voices often go unheard. The Cleaving is a collection of conversations between writers and artists of Vietnamese heritage, from those who have been creating for decades to those who have just published their debut novel, in which they share their experiences and reflections on this journey of survival over the last half century.
Japan is a favourite destination for tourists the world over, but one reason it appeals to Hong Kong tourists (for whom it is a particular favourite) is that Kanji allows them to more or less work things out despite not knowing Japanese at all. Zev Handel’s new book Chinese Characters Across Asia tells the story of how the Chinese writing system was adopted—and adapted—in Japan as well as Korea and Vietnam.
A new addition to the catalogue of stories about the Vietnamese diaspora, Khuê Phạm’s Brothers and Ghosts (translated, somewhat unusually, from the original German to English by Charles Hawley and Daryl Lindsey) follows the three intertwining stories of Kiều, a Vietnamese German journalist, her father Minh who arrived in Germany in 1968, and of her uncle Sơn who migrated to America in 1975 the aftermath of the war between North and South Vietnam. Kiều’s father rarely speaks about his past and the family he hardly ever sees, while Kiều herself is often too occupied with her identity as a second-generation immigrant to begin asking questions. Her family’s history and the intergenerational trauma that comes with it becomes an unspoken topic that is only unraveled after the passing of Kiều’s grandmother, which brings the two brothers Minh and Sơn together again in California. Brought together in a single volume, the stories of Kiều, Minh, and Sơn provide a snapshot of the complexity of the Vietnamese diasporic experience, and how families can grow together as well as apart.
In its revised, ten-year anniversary edition, Lotusland remains one of the only works of fiction by a US author to bridge the literary gap between the Vietnam War and contemporary Vietnam.
Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s second novel, and the first to be rendered in English by Nguyễn An Lý opens with a mysterious description.
Hô Chí Minh was also a poet. From 1890-1969, Hô Chí Minh lived many lives in his seventy-nine years, a broad range of diverse roles and contributions that have attained a continued worldwide influence, from anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninst revolutionary, Vietnamese nationalist, political leader, philosophical thinker, newspaper founder, and columnist. His complete published writings available in English runs to fifteen volumes.
In an interview subsequent to the publication of the translation into English of Thuận’s novel, Chinatown, interviewer Phuong Anh observes that the author’s main characters are searching for an answer to a question that ultimately drives that novel.
Over the course of thirty-seven fragments, an elderly man coming to an understanding of his world tells the “story” of his village: chronicles of a village serves as an indictment of History for what it leaves out. The narrator often offers a curiously romantic view of a pastoral world that is being overtaken by the outside world, and as a celebration/tribute/elegy for his father, mother, and brother.
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