diaCRITICS will periodically have guest blogs. Dave Lieberman wrote this post in June 2011 for Stick A Fork In It at OCWeekly. His impassioned list of six recommendations for “would-be connoisseurs of Vietnamese food” is a useful primer on appreciating Vietnamese cuisine, for those needing some gentle (if even admonishing) instruction in the arts.

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Bánh bèo, the pride of central Vietnamese food

Dear would-be connoisseurs of Vietnamese food:

We’ve never met, but I’ve read your body of work on Yelp. Some of you really get it, and I bookmark places I think look likely. The nice thing about Vietnamese food is that no matter how often I eat it, there’s more to learn–and I’ve been introduced to more than one favorite by sites like Yelp and Chowhound. Some of you are making your first forays into a new cuisine, an admirable step, made more admirable by admissions like “perhaps I don’t understand” when you are panning a dish…

… and then there are those of you who make reading Little Saigon-area reviews an exercise in frustration. Your M.O. seems to be peremptory dismissal of an entire cuisine because you went one time with firm guards up against having a good time. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that Yelp reviews have a concrete effect on businesses, and not everyone has the finely-tuned crap detector I’ve developed in years of reading that site. Following these few suggestions will make your experience better and my time on Yelp better spent.

1. Please stop with the dog jokes.

Not funny anymore. Not that it ever was. Seriously.

​”What do you call a man walking a dog in Garden Grove?” “A vegetarian.” Oh, how droll. Did you think that up all by yourself, or did it come from a time capsule from thirty-plus years ago, when ignorant jokes about Vietnamese refugees were all the rage? If the meat was poor quality, say so in your Yelp review, but don’t intimate that it might have died with a woof instead of a moo. It’s a tired stereotype, and it just makes you look bigoted and stupid when you say it. No Vietnamese restaurant in California serves dog meat. Get over it.

2. Learn to order what everyone else is ordering.

Not available in every Vietnamese restaurant--sorry.

Vietnamese restaurants are specialists, much mores than Americans. A phở shop sells beef (or chicken) noodle soup and not much else. A Central Vietnamese restaurant is going to specialize in food from the region around Huế and Đà Nẵng, which means the most likely soup on the menu is bún bò Huế. Complaining on Yelp that they don’t sell phở (or they do, and it’s bad) when they’re not a phở shop is like walking into Kentucky Fried Chicken and bitching that they don’t serve hamburgers. Vietnamese restaurants here in Orange County trumpet their specialities on the windows. When in doubt, look at what the Vietnamese families in the restaurant are eating; chances are, they’ve ordered what the restaurant is known for. If that fails, look for the words đặc biệt on the menu–it means “house special”.

3. The Vietnamese know there’s more to a cow than ribeye.

Don't fear the tendons...

By far the biggest complaint about Vietnamese food–not the restaurants, but the food–is that it’s full of scary, squiggly bits. Yes, you can get phở tái (rare slices of filet mignon) or phở chín (brisket), but you’re missing out on some of the seminal parts of phở. By complaining about it, you’re reducing your credibility–and if you really hate all those internal bits of non-steak meat, please don’t order them. Chicken with bones in is tastier than boneless chicken (and if you’re one of those people for whom even chicken drumsticks are too exotic, you are frankly beyond help).

4. Get over the fish sauce quick.

Divine elixir, given as a boon to a grateful people.

Yes, it smells awful. Yes, if you try and deglaze a pan with fish sauce, you are going to have to evacuate for 200 feet in any direction. Yes, it’s honestly made by taking a big pile of fish and salt and pressing out the resulting liquid. It’s also the backbone of Vietnamese cooking, and Vietnamese cooks know how to use it to best effect. That dish of pinkish-orange fish sauce isn’t pure fish sauce; it’s been mixed with water, chiles, garlic, sugar and limes and is the best dipping sauce on the planet. It doesn’t taste like a bottle of plain fish sauce smells. The best part is the people who whine about the saucer of nước chấm, but have absolutely no problem eating Thai food, which uses just as much of the stinky elixir as Vietnamese food.

5. Learn to love the herbs.

Rau thơm, or the "make it your own" plate.

Rare is the Vietnamese meal that doesn’t involve herbs. The French, with their love of tarragon, parsley and marjoram, have absolutely nothing on the leaf-mad Vietnamese. Plates of varied herbs, appropriate to the dishes ordered, appear on tables for the sole purpose of punching up the food to your liking. Comments on Yelp like “they forgot to dress the salad” miss the point. Some of those herbs are familiar–cilantro, basil and mint–and some aren’t as familiar. Some have an odd flavor–there’s one whose English name is usually rendered as “fish mint” for a reason–but they’re not meant to be eaten by themselves. If you don’t dress your food with the herbs, you’re missing the glory of Vietnamese food.

6. You aren’t going to change the service model.

The way service works in most non-high-end Vietnamese restaurants (which is most of them) is this: you pick what you want from the menu, you order it, it’s delivered, you get up and pay at the counter. Period. There will be no introductions, there may not be smiles, and frankly complaints about the food are not likely to result in the bill being adjusted. There may or may not be checks on your general dining welfare; if you want something, wave the waitstaff over politely. Writing screeds about how they didn’t dance attendance on you, French Laundry-style, is counterproductive. Everyone knows the rules in that restaurant except you, which means the issue is more than likely you.

And a special note to people complaining about the English skills of the waitstaff: this is a valid point to bring up in a review, but the second that’s paired with a comment about the rudeness of the service, I always have to wonder whose fault it was.

Looking for some good Vietnamese cookbooks? these are diaCRITICS certified:

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Dave Lieberman blogs about food—in his ‘Stick a Fork in It’ column—at OCWeekly.

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please like, share, and comment on this post! An Open Letter To Yelp Reviewers of Vietnamese Restaurants

Sonny Le, previously featured in his piece about his journey from Viet Nam and 25 Hawkins Road, now shares his feelings, thoughts about being a Vietnamese far from Viet Nam during Tết, the Vietnamese lunar new year.  His reflections center on the song “Xuân Này Con Không Về,” which Sonny calls the song of millions of Vietnamese.  Read, listen, watch.

Xuân Này Con Không Về

The above, my 1st for YouTube, is meant for my family in Viet Nam, who now finally has high-speed internet access at home, but hopefully you, especially overseas Vietnamese, can also appreciate it.

With the exception of the New Year’s pictures, which came from Wikipedia, all other pictures are mine, taken mostly in the early 1990s and scanned in. I decided to put this together because, for whatever reason, not being able to “go home” for New Year’s this year hit me quite hard. When seeing writer Chris Galvin Nguyen’s tweet about soaking rice for making bánh chưng, it made me realize how much these New Year’s rituals I still sorely missed. Thanks, Chris.

Xuân Này Con Không Về

This song was written in the early 1960s by the Trịnh-Lâm-Ngân song-writing trio. Over the years many have sung this song, but only Duy Khánh has truly made this his own. For millions of Vietnamese away from home, this is our song. Though it was written, and sung, from the point of view of a young soldier at the front longing to come home for New Year’s, the song has become the anthem for those of us, because of circumstances beyond our control, are forced to be thousands of miles away from our loved ones.

The 20th Century wasn’t so kind to the people of Viet Nam; in addition to the devastating war, families were broken up not once, but twice, first in 1954 and then in 1975.

"Operation Passage to Freedom" Northern Viet Nam's Refugees Boarding US Navy Ship in Haiphong, 1954

When Viet Nam was partitioned into two halves in 1954, it did not just divide the country but also divided thousands of families. Over one million moved to what-now became Southern Viet Nam from the north, and about 200,000 moved in the opposite direction.

And in 1975, once again the Vietnamese people are forced to leave behind their loved ones, marking the biggest exodus from just one country in the 20th Century. All told close to 2 million Vietnamese refugees, escaping mainly by boats or on land through Cambodia, resettled outside Viet Nam.

Leaving Home Once Again After 1975

The Vietnamese people have been scattered to all four corners of the world. Lunar New Year, or Tết, is the biggest celebration and family reunion event of the year. It’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s all rolled into one. Being able to go home for this occasion would be a dream come true for those of us who have not been home for it. The hand-to-mouth existence in the developed countries is such that when you have money, you have no time; or when you have time, no money.

Mother, I promise, I will be home for Tết one day soon, hopefully next year/ Mẹ, con xin hứa, con sẽ về ăn Tết với Mẹ và các em một ngày sớm, hy vọng trong năm tới. Not being able to join you for Tết for 33 years is long enough/Không về ăn Tết được trong 33 năm nay đã đủ dài.

Sonny Le: A news junkie since the age of five – thanks to my father and the BBC and Voice of America shortwave radio – born and raised in the Mekong Delta of Viet Nam, but home has been Oakland, California, after a stop at 25 Hawkins Road, Singapore Refugee Camp. A communications strategist with over twenty years of experience, started out with half-tone and carbon copy that actually left stains, then moved on to fax and e-mail and now happily embracing microblogging.

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Please take the time to rate this post (above) and share it (below). Ratings for top posts are listed on the sidebar. Sharing (on email, Facebook, etc.) helps spread the word about diaCRITICS. And join the conversation and leave a comment! How did you celebrate Tết? Do you celebrate with family? Or are you in the same situation as Sonny, with family back in Viet Nam?

please like, share, and comment on this post! Xuân Này Con Không Về – I Won’t Be Home for Spring (New Year)

Most Vietnamese are familiar with the story of Quan Âm Thị Kính, a thousand-year-old Vietnamese folk tale, and the Buddhist chanting  Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật (equivalent to “Amen” or “Hallelujah”). For the first time ever there is an opera by a Vietnamese-American composer featuring this literary work and the celestial Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật. P.Q. Phan, associate professor of composition at Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, translated and reconstructed the libretto for his three-act opera The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh from Quan Âm Thị Kính (Our Benevolent Bodhisattva Thi Kinh), a traditional Vietnamese work that combines both music and drama. The workshop of the new opera in July 2011 was a success and the opera will be premiered by Jacobs School of Music in 2014.

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NAM-MÔ-A-DI-ĐÀ-PHẬT CELEBRATED ON AMERICAN STAGE

Anvi Hoang/Photos by IU Jacobs School of Music (IU JSoM)

(1) There is a small number of Vietnamese in Bloomington, IN. (2) Cultural, especially musical, activities here are numerous – orchestra concerts, operas, theatrical plays, musicals, ballets, Broadway shows, arts festivals, etc. Yet, hardly does one see the combined presence of (1) and (2) in public in one place. Until…

Workshop of the opera “The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh”

With the largest and most extensive collegiate opera house in the country, IU Jacobs School of Music has a long tradition of new opera premieres. Many national music critics and opera producers will attend the premieres, and the Opera Magazine, the largest and most important of its kind, will also review them. Needless to say, a new opera production is the talk of the town. The workshop is one step in the evolutionary process – a learning stage where the composer, the directors, and designers, just to mention a few, have the chance to study the work in advance in details – before the full production. Needless to say, the workshop is the talk of the town. Seriously, articles are everywhere in the local newspaper and school websites.

Workshop performances were on Saturday and Sunday evenings, which meant rehearsals were going on for three consecutive weeks, five days a week, 3pm-6pm everyday, until the Friday right before the first performance. I came out for a rehearsal open to the public. As an “adopted Hoosier” (IU is my school) and a proud Vietnamese, there is no way I would let it fly; as a freelancer, I would love to cover it for The Vien Dong Daily; as an “emotional supporter” for the composer of “The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh” – who happens to be my husband – I just had to be there. Well, four birds with one stone, not a bad deal at all. So, I looked for a seat, sat down and began to observe. The students involved in the workshop are from the Voice Department at Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University. Many of them have had experience working and performing on professional stage. Watching them, it is difficult to tell whether they are professionals or students. They would be referred to as “singers” in this writing.

This afternoon, they worked on the scene when Thị Mầu went to the temple to look for love. The singer playing Thị Mầu began her music rehearsal first with the conductor and the pianist (one piano is common for rehearsal). She started singing. Half way through, the Conductor stopped her and said, “Could you prolong this word a little? And come in faster on the next one.” There she went, and the process of singing-correction-singing-correction continued through difficult sections of the score. Other singers in the scene together with another sixteen in the chorus took their turns going through the music rehearsal. After more than an hour, they began to combine singing and acting.

Conductor at work

Lost in a Different  World

The stage was minimal to the bare bones: a large wooden frame was used as a door into and out of the house and the temple. The Servant, Nô, entered the stage, complaining about his miserable life. He was singing and walking a few steps then the Stage Director intervened, “Stop. You cannot be so formal and rigid. You have to use gestures as if you are a servant. Indeed you are a servant here!” Everybody laughed. I felt sorry for the singers who had to deal with the unrelenting criticism. Besides the conductor and the stage director, the composer can step in at any time with suggestions as well. The singers must have trained themselves to keep their ego and spirit intact to be impervious to these instructions. It is true the instructions are part of their job package, but who would like to be criticized all the time! I came to admire their working ethics.

Additionally, by the time of rehearsal, they already memorized the music, the libretto, and then incorporated them into their singing as instructed by the conductor, and into their acting as directed by the stage director. Both physically and mentally, it was intense. Three weeks to perform a two-hour opera was mind-blowing, especially so for the Thị Kính character who had to sing in nine out of ten scenes. Normally with more time, the pressure level would be lower, but in any circumstances, just to witness the singers, the composer, the conductor, the director – those known to possess the diva attitude – working together to create the opera on stage, I was mesmerized.

"Divas" team work

I imagine if colors and shades and brushes are tools of the painter, just as words are for the writer, materials and forms are for the architect, then the musician communicate with notes. Looking at the score, the singer can already “hear” the songs in their head. Maneuvering air through their vocal cords is only to realize the tunes out for the audience. The conductor, on scanning the score, can “hear” the sound of the whole orchestra – the violin in the background, the clarinet is leading, the harp whispering on the left, the percussion pulsating in the back, the double bass puffing on the right, etc. Like a painting with details being singing notes.

On the other hand, the stage director “thinks” with images, spatial constructions, gestures, and more. For example, when Thị Mầu failed to court Tiểu Kính Tâm the monk, she returned home. As she appeared, what the director “saw” on stage was a wooden house surrounded by bamboos, with a front courtyard. She came on stage from the right, at the same time the servant Nô came out of the house from the left, and they met outside the gate. Thị Mầu started to flirt with Nô, and she had to stay close to the gate so that when they finished singing, the music moved to the next measure in a few seconds, Thị Mầu only needed to push Nô slightly through the door, and the two of them were right inside the house. Such being the situation, the director had to remind the singers at what note and in what direction they needed to move. Like intricate details in an art work. I could not help feeling “high” submerging in their magical world. My eyes and ears were all up, my mind racing, my body shaking out of excitement and thrill. On stage, the musicians were merging their own worlds into one to create The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh. For a moment, I felt “enlightened” as if a simple thing turned into a very philosophical discovery of life.

Stage director welcomed audience

The Singing of Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật

Actual performances were in Auer Hall where everybody was waiting. The light went dim. The Stage Director appeared in front of the wooden frame. Holding out his hands, he said, “Welcome to Vietnam!” The audience laughed. Well, they were going to hear a Vietnamese story, coincidently it was hot that day and the air condition was kept high to save energy (economic downturn!). It felt pretty “tropical” in the hall. So the performance commenced with laughter. The audience had many chances to laugh, especially when Thị Mầu went to the temple to court the monk. They also laughed when the servant Nô told Thị Mầu that “you are like a young squash/Lie around any longer and you will become a gourd.” Plenty of laughter, and tears as well. Some of the older ladies shed tears over the unjust life of Thị Kính. My Vietnamese friend told me his 13 year-old daughter cried a lot.

Thị Mầu about to flirt with the monk

Nam Mo-4: Thị Mầu about to flirt with the monk

One thing I was certain, that to the end of the performance the American audience was able to pronounce Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật and know what it meant, because after Thị Kính cut her hair and disguised as a man to seek monkhood, they began to hear Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật regularly. Thị Mầu Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật to wish for love in the new moon; Thị Kính Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật to shed earthly life; Tiểu Kính Tâm Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật to ponder life and religious faith; Sư Cụ Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật to contemplate justice and traditions. Oddly enough, it felt so natural to hear Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật chanted on American stage for the first time ever.

Just as Amen or Hallelujah is a chanting term and cannot be translated, Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật is kept as it is to preserve the Vietnamese flavor. Who is not familiar with Hallelujah, especially at Christmas time. Either the chorus Hallelujah from Handel’s Messiah, or Leonard Cohen’s and Bon Jovi’s Hallelujah – to black, white, or yellow, it is all the same feeling of peace and serenity, quietness and sacredness. Now imagine, instead of Hallelujah, the singing is Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật. The whole hall was attentive to the performance on stage: Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật. The chanting-singing was cheerful, melodic, earnest at times with some hint of Vietnamese chèo music, peaceful at others. The Vietnamese everywhere will be proud to hear it – something so dear to their heart, and so universal on American stage right now.

Firework ending Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật

When Thị Kính was going to Heaven in the last scene, all the singers and the chorus Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật in a most earnest and intense manner as if preparing for a firework ending – Thị Mầu’s youthful life was already celebrated, now it was Thị Kính’s sacrifice. My muscles were stretching like the strings. It was indeed music for the Almighty, there was no shame that it made humans like me cry. It certainly dawned on me that the magical power of music transcends both happiness and sorrow. I remember my friends and I once talking about the tragedy in Vietnamese history: over four thousand years, countless wars, fathomless sorrow, unspeakable sacrifice, innumerable  deaths. For a moment, all those baggage seemed to melt into the lyrical Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật. May a requiem free those spirits. I have heard Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật, I could imagine a requiem for the Vietnamese: an outdoor stage of millions, all opening their hearts in unison with the requiem.

*****

The opera The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh is planned to be premiered at Jacobs School of Music in 2014. It sounds like a long time, but two years is an average amount of time for a new production. Set designer needs to study how to “fly” Thị Kính to heaven, and costume designer to dress more than 30 characters together with the chorus. Stage director also needs to “meditate” on how to realize his concepts on stage. And so forth. Then follow auditions and rehearsals and miscellaneous issues. Time flies. In the meantime, ladies, get your áo dài ready. Welcome to Bloomington, Indiana! Jacobs School of Music is one of the most famous music schools not only in the United States but also in the world. Soon, Americans and people all over the world will hear Nam-Mô-A-Di-Đà-Phật in a full scale production, with elaborate set and costume, on a high tech stage, with an orchestra of 68, a chorus of 40, highly professional cast, well-known conductors and directors. I have begun to dream about that day.

P.Q. Phan’s bio:

Born in Vietnam in 1962, P. Q. Phan became interested in music while studying architecture and taught himself to play the piano, compose, and orchestrate. In 1982, he immigrated to the United States and began his formal musical training at the USC Thornton School of Music and the University of Michigan. He is an associate professor of music in composition at Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University at Bloomington.

Recipient of 1998 Rome Prize, ASCAP awards; grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ohio Arts Councils, Charles Ives Center for American Music, and fellowships from the Macdowell Colony. Guest composer: the 99 Asian New Music Festival in Tokyo Japan, the 99 & 97 New Music Festival at Hamilton College (New York), the ’96 residency with the Kronos Quartet at University of Iowa – Hancher Auditorium, the ’95 Asian Composers’ Forum in Sendai – Japan, the ’94 New Music Festival at UC Santa Barbara, the ’92 Music Lives in Pittsburgh. Performances by the Kronos Quartet, the BBC Scottish, Radio France, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Hanoi Conservatory Orchestra. He has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the Greater East Lansing Symphony, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Samaris Piano Trio, the New York Youth Symphony, La Sierra University. Work recorded by the Kronos Quartet for Nonesuch. Former Faculty member, University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana, Cleveland State University.

P.Q. Phan

– by Anvi Hoang. A version of this article was previously published in the Vien Dong Daily News 2012 Lunar New Year Edition.

Anvi Hoang is a part-time freelance writer, and full-time gardener and traveler. She makes it her aim to celebrate Vietnamese people everywhere in her writing. Anvi is currently working on a Western music series. She lives in Bloomington, IN.

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please like, share, and comment on this post! Vietnamese Opera in the United States: Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật Celebrated on American Stage

diaCRITICS has talked about actress Maggie Q in a review about Nikita and reading Nikita as a postfeminist show.  Here, Jade Hidle takes up Maggie Q again but instead, Hidle talks about her admiration for Maggie Q, not for her as an actress but more for Maggie Q as a mixed-race Vietnamese American. Reading Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with Maggie Q, Hidle raises questions regarding American narratives of mixed-race Vietnamese/Asian Americans and the complicated histories brought up by the Amerasian identity.

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Maggie Q is my homegirl. It’s not because we grew up together (in fact, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting her). And, though she is a striking on-screen presence, it’s not because I’m necessarily a huge fan of her U.S. film roles as a leg-baring, gun-toting undercover agent in Mission Impossible III or her current job as the sexy yet dangerous eponymous assassin in Nikita. (I must confess that the nerd within me, not buried very deeply, was tickled that she signed on to play a vampire-slaughtering priestess in the 2011 film adaptation of the graphic novel series Priest.)

Maggie Q in the film Priest. Movie poster image from justjared.com

No, Maggie Q is my homegirl because she is one of the few mainstream American celebrities who proudly claims being Vietnamese AND mixed (Irish and Polish, to be specific). A blend of Vietnamese and Irish myself, I experience relief and pride whenever I see this sister on screen, and I follow her work in hopes that she, along with other hapa and Asian American females, will soon garner increased representation in the media—that is, beyond the supporting roles of exotic action vixen. Maggie Q herself has admitted that she aspires to break these restrictive molds:  “Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights–gee, what a wonder–but also I have more to offer than that” (imdb.com). Over the holiday break, I slipped into well-worn sweatpants and caught up on all the pop culture I had missed during the fall semester of teaching and PhDing, and one of the programs I watched (thank you, full episodes online) was Maggie Q’s December 1^st appearance on the late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Maggie Q's appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Photo courtesy JKL show website.

Now, to be clear, Kimmel is no Coco; nevertheless, I usually enjoy his humor and interviews, as they flow much more smoothly than the forced laughter, if not dead air, that creates hiccups in Leno and Letterman’s celebrity interviews. Kimmel’s interview with Maggie Q, however, was downright awkward. What was awkward about it, you ask? The interview questions written by Kimmel and his staff, though brief and tonally casual, bear the weighty subtext that, while Maggie Q’s “exotic” looks render her admirable in the public eye, a mixed-race Vietnamese individual continues to stir anxiety and curiosity about Americans’ memories of the U.S.-Viet Nam War. In particular, mixed-race Vietnamese bodies like Maggie Q’s become legible through narratives that render Vietnamese women as prostitutes. You can watch an excerpt of the interview below and then read on to see what I saw and heard in Kimmel and Maggie Q’s conversation. Use the comments section to let me know if you agree or were reading into their “err”- and “umm”-filled interview in other ways.

Maggie Q Interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Part 1

Right off the bat, Maggie Q’s ethnic origin is called into question before any discussion of her identity as an actress.  When she shares that she was born and raised in Hawaii, Kimmel jokingly greets her with “Buenas dias,” which apparently applies to any “ambiguously raced” person, and this offhand remark is undoubtedly racially and politically charged in light of current immigration debates. Kimmel oddly follows with the questions “How Hawaiian are you? Were your parents born in Hawaii?” as if calling for Maggie Q to provide a birther movement-style measure of her identity, presumably to pin down her level of “Americanness.” This comes off as unintentionally ironic because Hawaii—a complex palimpsest of colonialism and miscegenation—speaks to the fact that American history is no simple yardstick for identity, and far from being something that can be defined in the first ten seconds of an interview. As if in recognition of the audacity of this opening extraterrestrial encounter type of question, “What are you and where did you come from?”, Maggie Q seems taken aback as she stumbles over her answer: “I’m just, I’m not, I was born and raised. But I’m Vietnamese-Irish-Polish.” Kimmel attempts to make a joke about her ethnicity, which he reduces to the silly acronym “V.I.P.”, then proceeds to ask her if she had ever thought of that before. Apparently, it wasn’t enough to reduce an Asian American woman to her ethnicity. Once Kimmel finds out that she is Vietnamese, the conversation really gets awkward, and a bit offensive, as he elliptically probes her for some kind of expected confession that her mother was a prostitute. Let’s review:

Jimmy Kimmel:  And how did your parents wind up in Hawaii?

Maggie Q:  Um, well, my, my fa—[Sighs] they met in Vietnam.

JK:  Oh, wow.

MQ:  And then they moved back to the states. I guess he retired from the military in Hawaii.

JK:  Oh, okay. So your dad was in the military. And did, did your mom work too?

MQ:  Did my mom work? [Raises eyebrows]

JK:  Did she have a job?

MQ:  Yes, my mom, she was a bartender for many years. [Laughs]

Maggie Q’s telling sigh evinces her awareness that revealing her parents’ introduction in Viet Nam inevitably conjures popular American memory of the war as some sort of Full Metal Jacket-style rendezvous between good ol’ U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese whores, just as we hear Kimmel’s awed “Oh, wow.” Accordingly, Maggie Q is clearly taken aback by the implication of the question of whether or not her mother worked; she repeats it with eyebrows raised, elongating the inquiry as if to prompt Kimmel to say what he really means, “Was your mother a prostitute? Did she meet your father while she was ‘working’ the corners?” I’ve confronted similar queries, both here and in Viet Nam, when people scrutinize my face to determine if I’m old enough to be a war-time baby and then ask, “Was your father a solider?” To this, I could reply with the epic, quixotic, passionate, heart-pounding, romantic tale of how my parents met at a post office in Huntington Beach, California (sorry, Mom and Dad, but that’s just plain boring compared to the bombs-exploding-in-the-jungle story that people thirst), but why should I have to answer that question, even if to shatter the inquisitor’s presumptions? And why should Maggie Q have to do the same? Why must we put our family’s history on display to provide strangers with an artificial sense of ”knowledge” about Viet Nam and the  U.S.-Viet Nam War?

After Maggie Q reveals that her mother was a bartender, she quickly follows up with glowing compliments of her mother and notes that she, in model-minority fashion, just bought her mom a Rolex, to turn the conversation, and her family’s history, into something positive—not the “dark spot” in U.S. history that the war and prostitution would invoke. Maggie Q’s seemingly purposeful redirecting of the conversation, along with her jovial energy (she laughs wholeheartedly at all of Kimmel’s jokes, no matter how lackluster they are) speaks to me as the game that mixed-race Vietnamese Americans are forced to play:  we must always clarify and adapt who we are to make others feel more comfortable about their history. This enforced malleability is demonstrated later in the interview when Kimmel inquires as to the origin of her last name, “Q”:

Maggie Q Interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Part 2

JK:  How did you get the last name “Q”, which is just the letter “Q”?

MQ:  I was working in Asia for many years. My last name is really Iri—I have a really sort of white name. My last name is Quigley and nobody could pronounce it there so they, uh—

JK:  How would they pronounce it?

MQ:  [Laughs] Somebody had asked me, “Are you upset that they changed their name for you?” And I was like, had you lived there when I lived there and heard them try to say Quigley, you’d probably be pleased with “Q.”

At this point, I was grateful that Maggie Q refrained from performing the mimicry that Kimmel is asking of her. But that feeling didn’t last too long.

JK:  So who decided on the “Q”?

MQ:  It was the newspaper one day that printed it and I had gone through different incarnations–”quickly,” somebody said to me [Speaks with a Chinese accent], “Maggie, is it you are very quickly because you are quickly?” [Does a running motion with arms, makes confused face, and the audience laughs] Somebody said that to me in Hong Kong. No, not it in any way, because my last name is not “quickly.”

Even though I don’t necessarily blame Maggie Q for giving in to doing the accent (not proudly, I have made fun of Asians in order to feel, however fleetingly, that I fit in with other groups), I cringed when the audience guffawed in response. Yet, as if to mirror the ambivalence I was feeling while watching, Maggie Q follows with comments that speak to the identity issues wrapped up in being Asian American:

MQ:  I think they [the Asians who first referred to her as “Q”] wanted to capitalize off the Asian side too, which I think is very sweet. They just wanted to be like, “You’re just Asian and you’re just ours.”

JK:  I see.

MQ:  You know, and so the Irish bit gone. Yeah, yeah, the white side. [Makes a thumbs down motion]

JK:  So in Ireland maybe you’ll be O’Quigley.

MQ:  [Laughs]

Maggie Q on Jimmy Kimmel Live

As the interview came to a close on these notes, I heard echoes of the esteemed Asian American historian and professor Ronald Takaki who, in his examination of Japanese American citizenship during and after WWII, stated how Asian Americans are asked to choose identification with either Asia OR America. Yet, in watching this interview, I was reminded that this choice is not always ours. Our bodies continue to be read through lenses informed by skeletal histories. These are narratives that do not account for stories transcending the borders of the silver screen, for identities and kinships shaped by cultural citizenships,  for shifting terrains of self. This one is for all my homegirls.

Jade Hidle received her BA (2006) and MFA (2008) in creative writing from California State University, Long Beach, and is currently a PhD student in the Department of Literature at UC San Diego. Her academic work focuses on how contemporary Vietnamese American cultural productions, including comic books and hip-hop music, present marginalized bodies—veterans, refugees, transgendered individuals, prostitutes, and mixed-race children—as a means by which the history of the Viet Nam War can be re-remembered. On the creative front, she is working on a collection of non-fiction essays about growing up a mixed-race Vietnamese in Los Angeles. Her writing has been featured in Ethnic Studies Review, Watermark, Spot Literary Magazine, Word River, and Beside the City of Angels: An Anthology of Long Beach Poetry.

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And please take the time to rate this post (above) and share it (below). Ratings for top posts are listed on the sidebar. Sharing (on email, Facebook, etc.) helps spread the word about diaCRITICS. And join the conversation and leave a comment! Did you feel the same unease while watching the Jimmy Kimmel-Maggie Q interview? What kind of experiences do you have when questioned about your own parents, whether they’re Vietnamese and/or American, European, etc.?

please like, share, and comment on this post! A Meditation on the Mixed-Race Politics of My Homegirl Maggie Q

Earlier last year, diaCRITICS featured Eric Nguyen’s review on the up and coming Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong’s chapbook of poetry, Burnings.  Vuong was born in Saigon in 1988, grew up in Connecticut, and was later educated Brookyn College, CUNY. Vuong’s work has been honored with various awards and has been translated into Hindi, Russian, Korean, and Vietnamese.  For today’s post, we hear from Ocean Vuong himself about his new project, the photographing the lives of Vietnamese Americans. 

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For the past two years I have been taking photos of various scenes in Vietnamese American life and I thought I’d share them with you on my blog. This specific series is titled ” Happy Nails”, a selection of shots taken at a nail salon. As you might already know, the nail salon is the unofficial hub of all Vietnamese culture in America. I remember when I was younger, my family would go on road trips, and being illiterate and not able to speak English, we always looked for nail salons whenever we were lost. The little shops, often garishly decorated with charmingly simply names like “Top Nails”, “Paris Nails” and “#1 Beauty Nails”, are the life line of Vietnamese life in America, often in more ways than one.
If you feel compelled to, please feel free to share this essay with others, on your blogs, tumblrs, facebook, etc… It would mean a lot to me and I appreciate it very much.

I will add to this series as more photos accumulate.

love and light,

-Ocean

*Editor’s Note: diaCRITICS is featuring selected photographs from the series.  See the entire series and follow Ocean Vuong at his blog.

"pick you color!"

hot, cold, and nails

morning offerings

in luck we trust...

getting ready for work

matriarch

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Do you enjoy reading diaCRITICS? Then please consider subscribing! Please take the time to rate this post (above) and share it (below). Ratings for top posts are listed on the sidebar. Sharing (on email, Facebook, etc.) helps spread the word about diaCRITICS. And join the conversation and leave a comment! A poet taking photos? Thoughts about the photos of Vietnamese Americans?  What do you take pictures of if you were thinking about Vietnamese American life?

please like, share, and comment on this post! Saigon America, a photo essay series on Vietnamese American life

Dr. Boitran Huynh-Beattie, a leading Vietnamese art historian and guest writer for diaCRITICS, has passed away. diaCRITIC Nora Taylor contributes this obituary.

I am sad to report of the passing of Dr. Boitran Huynh-Beattie. Born in 1957, among the few art historians of Vietnam, Boitran started her career as a teacher at Dong Nai College of Fine Arts. She then received her PhD in Art History at the University of Sydney in 2005. Titled “Vietnamese Aesthetics from 1925 onwards,” and supervised by Dr. John Clark, it contained the first comprehensive study of artists in South Vietnam between 1954 and 1975. Her dissertation can be read here.

Boitran continued to pursue research and curatorial projectes pertaining to Vietnamese modern and contemporary art including “Nam Bang!” at Casula Powerhouse in 2009. She was also an adviser to the Singapore Art Museum, Post-Vidai in Ho Chi Minh City and co-author of an upcoming monograph on Nguyen Trung. Her passing is a terrible loss to the fields of Vietnamese studies and Vietnamese art history.

Her contributions to diaCRITICS include this review of Carina Hoang’s Boat People, this essay on realism and the avant-garde in Asian art, this review of artist Khue Nguyen, and this review of artist Dinh Q. Lê.

She was a close colleague of mine. Aside from being a wonderfully caring person, a mother and recently a grandmother, she was also extremely dedicated to Vietnamese art. The field will not be the same without her. She is survived by her husband, Ray Beattie and a son, daughter and grandchild.

Nora Taylor

please like, share, and comment on this post! Obituary: Dr. Boitran Huynh-Beattie (1957-2012)

diaCRITICS editor Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Top Ten Posts of the year 2011.

A little over a year and a half ago diaCRITICS began publishing. Since then, we’ve published two hundred and fortysomething essays, reviews, and interviews on literature, music, cinema, visual art, politics, and culture, of the American, Vietnamese, and Vietnamese diasporic kind. We also did a total overhaul of the site in Fall 2011, and it’s all been free to readers (but not for us or our sponsoring organization, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network). So we began experimenting with ads from Google and amazon.com, which to date have earned us the grand total of–hang on–$5. I don’t expect you to click on ads for hot Asian women or whatever Google thinks is appropriate for this site, but please buy books and films from the links on our site. You’ll see a few of those links below. Buying here puts money in the pockets of the artists we feature and will pay for the peanuts I eat as I write my editorials. Let’s try it! Click on the links for any of these books by some of the authors mentioned below:

Our mission isn’t selling books, of course. It’s to talk about the vast diversity of cultural and political work that Vietnamese engage in or are featured in, in Viet Nam and all over the world, as well as the news of Vietnamese lives. For a group of people who are writing these things in their free time and for no compensation except for readership and a sense of community, we’ve done pretty well. We’re always looking for help in all kinds of ways–writing, editing, photography, maintenance of this site, brilliant business people who can handle our $5 or find us some more–so get in touch with us if you’re interested.

Now it’s time for us to take a look at all we’ve published in 2011 and highlight some outstanding writing. It was tough to pick out a top ten from all the posts, but here’s my pick in chronological order. Some of the posts are from our diaCRITICS and some from guest writers.

Let’s begin with Xaigon Mai’s Mondega’s “For the People” – A Montagnard Hip Hop Debut. I hadn’t heard of Mondega before this, so it was a thrill to hear (and see) some riveting rap from his YouTube videos. But Xaigon Mai (a pseudonym) also does a fine job of telling us more about Mondega, his life, and the fact that he (and she) are Montagnards. For those of you who don’t know, Montagnards are what the French called the dozens of minorities who lived in Viet Nam’s highlands, each of whom has a distinct culture and name. Xaigon Mai and Mondega prefer to re-appropriate the term the French used for their peoples. For diaCRITICS, it’s always important to point out how Viet Nam is a multicultural country in which race, ethnicity, prejudice and domination were and are important issues. Mondega’s lyrics make vivid how these issues stretch from Viet Nam to the United States.

Unknown woman, found photograph, Portland

Jade Hidle’s Meeting Strangers So Familiar: A diaCRITIC’s Dilemma recounts her personal experience in Portland, Oregon, stumbling across a bric-a-brac shop that had, among its many odds and ends, black-and-white photos from Viet Nam for $1 a piece. As any Vietnamese refugee can tell you, these photos exist in almost every refugee household–they were about all we could bring with us, if we were lucky, along with the clothes we were wearing. So it’s sad, as Jade conveys, to see these personal totems on display and on sale. Inevitably, we’d wonder who these people were in these pictures and what happened to them.

Dao Strom’s True Laws? (Thoughts on Selling “Vietnamese-ness”in America) has some relation to Jade’s piece. Dao Strom, author of a couple of books and a musician, has been thinking about what it means to create art as a Vietnamese person and about Vietnamese people. I think every Vietnamese American artist stops and thinks, should I deal with the war? Then he or she makes a decision to do so or not to do so. And any Vietnamese American artist who winds up dealing with her or his ethnicity–this thing called “Vietnamese-ness”–will also worry about whether their art is exploiting their ethnicity for profit. There’s no way around this intersection of race and profit in America’s art markets–or is there?

Diem Chau's miniatures

Lien Truong’s The Miniature Work of Diem Chau introduced us to an artist I’d never heard of before, Diem Chau. She carves Crayola crayons. How crazy and great is that? Before getting to the meta-artistic issue of using an artistic tool as one’s material, and not just as an instrument for art itself, we’re struck by the playfulness, the whimsy, the sheer intricate beauty of these tiny sculptures. For anyone who’s used these crayons as kids, or seen their kids using these crayons, there has to be some visceral reaction of joy. Unless you were one of those kids other kids abused by shoving crayons up your nose. Not that I would know anything about that.

Julie Nguyen’s Generation Trauma: A Different Kind of War Story was something I stumbled across online in Julie’s personal blog. I liked it a lot. Maybe because I have had war and trauma on the brain ever since I was a kid. My generation, which is roughly Julie’s, has a particular relation to trauma that’s different than our parents. Some of us might have been directly traumatized as a result of various things, but all of us have been indirectly traumatized by the war and what it did to our families. But whereas our parents were burned by the fire, we were only warmed by it. Julie’s post gets at what it means to be warmed by trauma–we’re not burned enough to not want to talk about it.

The ship bearing Julie Nguyen's family

Anonymous, Bearing the Weight of History: A Young Cham Woman’s Story tells of the history and culture of Viet Nam’s Cham minority. At one time, before Viet Nam became the Viet Nam we now know, the Cham had their own kingdom and land. Then the Vietnamese began their long march south and conquered the Cham people and took their land. Does this sound familiar? It all goes to show that no nation has a unique claim on sanctity and heroism, as the Vietnamese would like to think. They’ve conquered and expropriated as much as anyone else. So now the Cham are a part of Viet Nam and the Vietnamese, and the article recounts one particular young woman’s efforts to remember her culture.

Linh Dinh, Mugged Then Shot: Linh Dinh on American Corruption. Here the poet/fiction writer/photographer Linh Dinh sends a flamethrower across the landscape of our American corruption–structural inequality, the entrenchment of the monied interests, our everything-but-in-name aristocratic system of closed doors, limited opportunities, and fixed games. He’s an angry man, and that can be a good thing. And although he’s Vietnamese, he doesn’t always write about Vietnamese things, whatever those are; plus it’s arguable that anything that affects a Vietnamese person should be of interest to a Vietnamese person. Writing about the corruption that touches all of us is one way out of the ethnic dilemmas mentioned by Dao Strom.

Trangđài Glassey-Trầnguyễn’s Paradise Shot: Norway in the World’s Arms was a piece I commissioned on the occasion of the 2011 Norway massacres committed by Anders Breivik. 69 people were killed. I was horrified by news of the event and remembered that Trangđài had spent time in Norway as a Fulbright scholar, studying the Vietnamese community. The beautiful essay merges the historical with the cultural and the autobiographical, bringing us news from a Vietnamese diasporic community I, at least, knew nothing about. The Vietnamese find themselves in dozens of countries all over the world, and in each of these communities we find unique stories like what Trangđài uncovers.

Vietnamese students in Upsalla

Kim-An Lieberman’s An Interview with Bao Phi was done to mark the publication of his new book of poetry, Sông I Sing, published by Coffee House Press. It’s a great interview, done by a talented poet talking to another talented poet, and it gets into all the compelling issues of art and politics that have been key to Bao Phi’s writing and performance. As anyone who’s seen Bao Phi do his thing on stage knows, he can put on a good show that’s both entertaining and provocative, full of wordplay and political consciousness. All those features are evident in this interview, too, which will hopefully send you running to your nearest bookstore to buy or order his book. But if you’re too lazy to do that, you can buy it here and give us a few cents.

Bao Phi and friends

Yes, we can’t get away from the market and capitalism even here. Trời ơi! That gets us to the last post, erin Khue Ninh’s An Ode to Ơi, the most popular post of the year. Who knew an ode to a two-letter word’s many meanings would mean so much to so many readers? And the essay itself isn’t very long either, its conciseness suiting its subject (but for those of you want more words from erin, she wrote an entire book…see below). erin mentioned the topic to me not long after I overheard a rough-looking Vietnamese man call himself Ba at the drugstore while he called his son on the phone, asking him in tender tones to make rice in time for dinner “con ơi.” I didn’t tear up but I felt that ethnic connection, that familial yearning, that communal identification that made me think of my own Ba. One word is all it takes, as erin shows.

So there you have it, the Top Ten of the year. Let us know what you think of them in the comments, or let us know if there are others deserving of recognition.

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Los Angeles-based professor, teacher, critic and fiction writer, author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America and numerous short stories in Best New American Voices, TriQuarterly, Narrative and other magazines. He is the editor of diaCRITICS. More info here. Read his latest short story “Look at Me” here.

please like, share, and comment on this post! Editor’s Picks: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Top Ten Most Critical of 2011

Story time! This is a popular truyện cổ tích Việt Nam (old collected tales of VN) that fantastically explains the phenomena of toads croaking before a big rain shower. It also expresses the age old adage of not judging the greatness of things by their appearances. This story is called Con Cóc là Cậu Ông Trời (Toad is the Uncle of Heaven) and also goes by the name of Cóc Kiện Trời (Toad Sues Heaven).

You can read a longer version of the story in Vietnamese over here. And you can also listen to the story in Vietnamese over here. Finally, please enjoy this humble English translation; and as always, suggestions are perfectly welcome.

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When Heaven Cried Uncle (translated and illustrated by Julie Nguyễn)
Once upon a time, the toad was still a creature as ugly and small as it is today, but was renown as amongst the bravest, the most daring. The toad’s legacy goes like this: In a time long forgotten, Heaven made a drought so vicious, so brutal, that the lakes and rivers were sucked dry, fires burned from one month to the next, and the trees died of thirst. There was not a drop in the world to drink. Even the great beasts of the jungle, the majestic, the beautiful, all and the same they lay despairing, waiting for death. What could they do to save the jungle, if they couldn’t even save themselves? Their strength was meant for hunting and foraging and fighting one another, how would this strength save them now?

Luckily, there was the little purple cousin, the toad, mottled and ugly with spots. With great aspirations to ascend Heaven and sue for rain to deliver the world from ignoble death, Toad set out on his way. Along the way, Toad came across a sad mangrove village, dry and drooping, full of dust and wind. From the shade of a dead treeroot, a grumpy old Crab asked him, “Where are you going in such a hurry, you ugly toad?”

Toad took no offense and told the Crab of his design, and then an idea struck him. “Say, Crab, why not come along?”

The old Crab scoffed, his sideways nature getting the better of him. “I’d rather die here than drag myself all that way just to beg at Heaven’s door!”

The nosy neighbors poked out their long noses. They praised Toad for his foolishness, they criticized Toad for his daring. They spoke left, they spoke right, they spoke backward and forward until no one remembered what anyone else was talking about. Someone told off that foolish Toad but by now the old Crab’s head was spinning, his sideways nature volunteered him for the road, no less! And Toad had his first companion.

A little further on and the companions met a slumped tiger, her breath coming in great dramatic gasps, and a melting bear, choking on his burning throat. Toad felt badly for his cousins and kindly asked them to come along. Tiger rolled her eyes but Bear nodded.

“Sounds better than lying here waiting for death. I see you’ve even convinced that backward old Crab to come with you. I will follow you, cousin Toad. So will this sardonic tiger as she has nothing better to do.”

The sardonic tiger didn’t have the energy to argue, and so it was that two doubled into four. Four would become six when they were joined by a wasp whose honey had dried to dust and a sun-burnt fox whose fur was singed and smoking. Toad led the companions on and on, a very long ways, until finally, they attained Heaven’s Gate. The massive doors were shut fast and it was only Toad of Crab, Bear, Tiger, Wasp, and Fox, who was brave enough to go forth and sound the Great Drum of Opening. But first, he turned to his companions.

“If we are to survive this campaign, I will need you all do as I say. Over there is a jar of water. Old Crab will hide himself within it. Wasp will hide behind the door when it opens. Fox must hide somewhere to my left, Bear to my right. And Tiger, please crouch behind me, out of sight.”

The companions, one and all, obeyed Toad. Finally, it was time. Toad jumped up onto the face of the Great Summoning Drum and struck it three times, each strike reverberating like thunder.

Old Man Heaven was having a pleasant dream when the drum’s voice disrupted it. He grumpily waved his hand, ordering forth the Thunder God to deal with it. Thunder shook the dust from his shoulders, brushed the cobwebs from his massive Lightning Hammer, and stormed out to investigate. He threw open the great doors but there was no one, nothing to see; just an ugly little Toad splayed across the Summoning Drum. Thunder raised his hammer but hesitated, looking from the Toad to his great hammer and back again. The damage this hammer could do was enormous, reaching even into the Fourth Realm of Hell; was this puny creature worth it? Thunder brought his confusion back to Heaven. Heaven grumbled in annoyance and ordered out Heaven’s Rooster, to peck that insolent Toad to death.

Heaven’s Rooster rushed out clacking and squawking and was just about to swallow up Toad when Toad ground his teeth. Instantly, Fox leapt out from the left and snapped her jaws down on that rooster’s throat. Toad sounded the drum again. Heaven was furious and set Heaven’s Hound on Fox. Heaven’s Hound had just charged out when Toad ground his teeth. Instantly, Bear lumbered out and blocked Hound’s path. The hound ran smack into that sturdy bear and died instantly.

Toad sounded the drum again. Heaven wearily rubbed his temples and waved his hand, permitting Thunder to wield his full authority, ending the matter. No one in the world could contest against Thunder’s Lightning Hammer. Heaven sighed and lay back down to finish his nap.

Thunder stormed out from Heaven’s Gate but just then, Toad ground his teeth. Instantly, Wasp shot out from her hiding place and flew into Thunder’s right nostril. She stung him where it would hurt. It is not an unremarkable thing, to see a God of Thunder burning up, and burn he did. Wasp’s venom spread like wildfire. Through the pain, Thunder recalled there being a jar of water somewhere near. He dropped his great hammer and with both hands, grabbed up the jar and shoved his entire head into water. But in there, waiting, just waiting for his fifteen minutes of fame, was the contrary old crab.

Pincers snapped and the Thunder God howled. The jar shattered and Thunder scrabbled backward, escaping toward the Gates. Toad ground his teeth. Instantly, Tiger leapt up, and with a warrior’s roar she tore that Thunder God in two.

Seeing the stalwart Thunder God dismembered thus, Heaven was so frightened that he begged for peace. He asked to receive the remains of his servant and Toad agreed, grinding his teeth. Tiger and Bear laid the two parts of Thunder together. Meanwhile, Heaven had to go himself to pour the nectar of life into Thunder. It was an insult, far beneath his dignity to apply himself to such a menial task but no sooner had he fantasized taking his revenge than Toad had ground his teeth. As one, the companions rallied together, ready to fight. Wasp with her venom, Fox with her swiftness, Tiger with her claws, Crab with his pincers, and Bear with his strength. Now, Thunder had just narrowly escaped his death. He wasn’t going to go through all that pain and agony a second time. He slunk down behind Heaven’s throne when no one was looking and hid himself. Heaven’s Armies, seeing the majestic Thunder God cowering thus, could not be assembled.

Heaven finally understood that he was beaten. He was finally ready to listen.

Toad jumped up onto the arm of the throne and opened his mouth wide.

“Four long years have we suffered from drought without a single drop of rain to relieve the dry earth. The trees wither and the creatures die of thirst. I thought that perhaps Heaven was busy with affairs, or that Heaven must at least be angry with us in the world. Who would have imagined that Heaven and his servants merely slept in laziness, forsaking their duties, forgetting the mortal world down below. Will no one relieve our suffering? We took it upon ourselves to come all this way to Heaven’s Gate to awaken Heaven’s awareness and to beg you for rain.”

Hearing Toad’s words, his companions trembled with passionate anger and Heaven was compelled to reply. “Toad and I are friends now, there’s no reason to let things get out of hand. I will call on the Rain God and the Windbag God to make it storm this instant. Are you satisfied?”

“That you’ve rescued our humble earth from ignoble death, we are immensely thankful. We will promise to return again the next time we are struck by drought, to beg for your deliverance.”

Hearing this, Heaven quickly shook his head. “Oh no, no, no, you needn’t bother coming all that way. If ever there is another drought, all you need do, Toad, is grind your teeth, and I will see to it that you are sent rain.”

To show his sincerity, Heaven ordered forth the Black Dragon to pilot the rain clouds and return the six companions to their homes.

The rain brought life back to the earth and the jungle grew lush and thick, the creatures and critters danced together, welcoming home their friends. And thus and thereon, whenever Toad ground his teeth, Heaven would send pouring rain. A thousand years after and it is still remembered in children’s rhymes:

Toad is the Uncle of Heaven
Whomever challenges Toad must first challenge Heaven

please like, share, and comment on this post! [Cổ Tích Story] Toad is the Uncle of Heaven

After managing editor Julie Thi Underhill’s two-part “intervu” with author Vu Tran, you might think there is little else to know about the man. Au contraire! Geoff Schumacher’s interview with Vu, published in April 2011 in the Las Vegas Review of Books, deftly expands upon Vu’s literary styles and influences, and his years in Iowa and Nevada.

Vu also kicks down some hard-won wisdom for those with an affinity for the pen. “All writers are sensitive and you take everything personally, even if it’s not intended to be personal, but you need to learn from that,” Vu recommends. “You need to either learn to accept that criticism or to reject it, not to be hurt or buried by it.”

AMES, Iowa — In the summer of 2010, in a coffee shop across the street from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus, I interviewed the writer Vu Tran. The interview was prompted by the news that Tran had been hired to teach creative writing at the University of Chicago. Tran was an adjunct faculty member at UNLV at the time, and a hot literary prospect. He recently had won a coveted Whiting Writers’ Award, and a New York publishing house had committed to publish his unfinished novel. Although it was unlikely Las Vegas was going to keep Tran much longer, it was nonetheless a disheartening blow to the city’s burgeoning literary community.

Unfortunately, other commitments prevented me from transcribing the interview immediately. But more than nine months later, after I moved fifteen hundred miles from Las Vegas and started a new job, I found time to do so. I also contacted Tran to find out how things are going in Chicago. He revealed that it’s been a difficult transition for him, from the sunny, laid-back lifestyle of Las Vegas to a dramatically different place he summarized as “no parking, traffic, cramped spaces, the weather this year: the third worst blizzard on record, for fuck’s sake.”

“I miss Vegas tremendously,” Tran wrote. “Never thought I would miss it this much.”

Of course, any transition of this kind is going to be tough, as I’m discovering myself. On the positive side, Tran said he’s enjoying the academic life. “I love my classes here, and I love my students,” he said. “They’re all very talented and smart: Some are just fucking brilliant.”

Because he’s been so busy with “classwork and departmental duties,” Tran said he hasn’t done much work on his novel. But he plans to dive back into it this summer.

Tran, who is thirty-five, was born in Vietnam but moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was five years old. His father had escaped from Vietnam in 1975, settling in Tulsa, and his family emigrated five years later.

Here are the best parts of the interview.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I remember very specifically that in first grade we had to write stories, and I wrote a story. All I remember about it is that it had one of those main-character-wakes-up-from-a-dream endings, one of those awful endings. But I remember reading it in front of the class and just enjoying that process, not only the performative process but writing something with the anticipation that someone will enjoy it. I was hooked from there on. I never really wanted to do anything else.

How did your family respond to that?

I come from a very pragmatic family and pragmatic culture. You do what you need to do to survive, you plan for the future, and stuff like that. My dad would have much preferred if I had gone into some sort of business. He’s a businessman. But there’s also this very significant respect in the Vietnamese culture for the writing profession, for artistic endeavor. You are very esteemed as a writer or an artist or what have you. Still, my dad would say, “Take some accounting classes in college just in case.” I did end up taking two accounting classes because of him — yeah, just in case. When I started winning some contests and getting some notice, they warmed up to the idea that this is all I wanted to do. And I think they became more comfortable when I was pursuing my Ph.D., because I would become a professor, which is a stable kind of profession and also a very respected profession.

What were some of the formative books for you?

To Kill a Mockingbird was a very formative book. The first serious literary novel I read was Jane Eyre, which I didn’t like. That was in seventh grade. In eighth grade I read To Kill a Mockingbird and the kind of narrative conventions that she uses, you know, the mysterious house in the neighborhood, those kinds of things interested me more than I thought. Just the child narrator, the retrospective narrator looking back on formative years, that really influenced me a lot.

The Narnia Chronicles were very, very influential. There was about a four-year span where almost all the stories I wrote were about characters going into alternate worlds. I think to a degree I still do that on a less fantastic level. I still kind of write that narrative.

When I got to college, I had a professor who became my mentor. His name was James Watson, and he was a Faulkner scholar from the University of Tulsa. He actually died this year, which was very sad for me. He made me appreciate Faulkner on various levels. But I think what he taught me the most was not just about Faulkner’s work, but about the whole idea of being a writer. Faulkner had the idea that, for example, he called The Sound and the Fury a “splendid failure.” The idea that you always try to pursue some idea of perfection, knowing full well you’ll never reach it. But it’s that pursuit that will make you a great writer. I think I learned a lot about ambition through Faulkner and through Dr. Watson. The idea, too, that you don’t walk into a room with a feather, you walk into a room with a brick. Not that you should be an asshole or a jerk, but that you should have that level of confidence in yourself, because that will translate in your writing. Whether you’re a shy person or a gregarious extrovert, that level of confidence, I believe, is very necessary if you want to be a good writer or a great writer, because people will feel that through your writing. I don’t read a lot of modernist writing anymore, but Faulkner was the guy who really made me think in that way.

Is there a particular Faulkner novel or story that’s your favorite?

My favorite of his novels would probably be Light in August and The Hamlet.

What do you like about Faulkner’s writing?

The thing about his writing is that, even at his most experimental, you always felt the beating heart there. In his Nobel speech, he said his aim was to write about the heart in conflict with itself. You really felt that through his writing. You knew you were reading something difficult and new and adventurous, but you also felt the beating heart behind that. That combination has always been very interesting to me. One without the other is not half as interesting.

Did you have a particular period when you wanted to write something that you wouldn’t do now?

In fifth grade, my first story collection was a sequel to a book called Mr. Pudgins, which was a male version of Mary Poppins. He’d go on these fantastic adventures with these kids he was taking care of. I wrote a sequel to that. Also, for a long time in my youth I wrote fairy tales. I think a lot of people do that. When I was in my teenage years, I wrote a lot of stories with fantastic elements, never really quite fantasy like The Lord of the Rings or science fiction but always some sort of realistic world with fantastic elements. When I got to college, I started writing in a much more realistic vein. And it often had an element of tragedy to it, because I think I was reading Faulkner too much. (Laughs.) A lot of kind of noirish violence. In a lot of ways, I’m returning to that now. In early college, I wrote a lot of stories with violent elements, very dark.

It wasn’t till my last year as an undergraduate that I started writing about Vietnam. I returned to Vietnam in 1996 for the first time since I actually escaped, and after that I wrote only stories concerned with Vietnam. That’s where it became less noirish and more of a naturalistic vein. More concerned with the real and historical world.

You got your undergraduate degree and your master’s at the University of Tulsa. Who were some of your contemporary influences during that time?

Tim O’Brien was a huge influence. I met him about three years ago and that was great to meet him and actually like him. Toni Morrison. For a long time I really liked Toni Morrison. She was probably my favorite writer for a long time. I started reading John Fowles, who is one of my favorite writers. It’s a shame that people forget him, because he was huge in the sixties. He was beloved by both fans and critics. He’s a very, very adventurous writer. Again, the same combination of innovation but also wonderful storytelling and human emotion. He was a huge influence on me. The African-American writers, for a long time I really, really loved them, because they had to write in a new mode to express their ideas of their American dilemma. By default, they were more adventurous writers.

Was there a connection with them for you?

For a couple of years, I would write stories with Vietnamese characters but the dilemma was obviously an African-American one, there was a racial element to it. I think I was conflating my own kind of outsider status with theirs. And of course they are very different identities and very different dilemmas. But I at least felt the superficial affinity.

So, then you went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

The two years in the program were the best two years of my life thus far. It was so exciting. First of all, I had lived in Tulsa all of my life, not really been around writers, and suddenly I’m in this community of very ambitious, very intelligent young writers, and I found a lot of great friends. A lot of people talk about how competitive Iowa is. It’s absolutely competitive, but I like that. It was just this very energetic period in my life where I was reading everything. I was very unfamiliar with contemporary fiction, so I started reading all these writers I was not familiar with at all. I learned so many things, not just in the program but outside of it, through my relationships with the other students. To finally be able to be in a situation where all I’m doing is reading and writing was what I’d wanted my entire life, just a chance to do what I love to do without any other distraction. It was just ideal. It was like a two-year summer camp.

Who were some of your teachers there?

Ethan Canin, Samantha Chang, Chris Offutt, Marilynn Robinson, and Frank Conroy. I guess I was in his third-to-last class.

Marilynn was the writer I admired the most but she was the one I learned the least from. Not that she was a bad teacher but I just didn’t learn much from her. Ethan Canin I learned a lot of practical things from. He was very supportive of me. I’ll always remember him for his support.

What kind of practical things?

Practical things like exploit your weaknesses. When you can learn to identify the flaws in your writing, one way of fixing them is to exploit them. If you have a character who’s a cliché, exploit the fact that he’s a cliché character, make a comment on it or turn the tables on the reader so he becomes the opposite of what he began as. Stuff like that.

I learned a lot about teaching from Chris Offutt. He was a good teacher, a good communicator. He talked to students as someone they could relate with. Frank Conroy, he gave me one good workshop and another workshop where he tore me a new asshole, where he just demolished me. And I learned a lot from that, because I was an over-writer. I was still trying to be Faulkner, you know. Very verbose, not enough control. And he taught me how to really write good prose.

After that episode with Conroy was over, did he have any comments, like, you’ve made a lot of progress or . . . ?

No, Frank was in many ways very standoffish. There were very few students he loved. He would be more nurturing with them. With me, I sometimes thought he didn’t even know my name. But he did and he remembered everything. He would surprise you.

People complained about him. Everyone was terrified of him. I didn’t take his workshop until my second year, because I was afraid. Everyone was afraid. And a lot of people still resent him for how brutal he was. But that brutality was necessary. If you want to be a great writer, you have to be able to take that kind of criticism. I think a lot of times when people talk about MFA programs, they bag on them because they think they can ruin young writers. That’s complete horseshit. Those writers who get ruined deserve to get ruined, I think. Because if you can’t handle that kind of pressure, you should not be writing. If you are going to let a writing program ruin you, then maybe you should find something else to do, because yeah, it’s personal, it’s very emotional. All writers are sensitive and you take everything personally, even if it’s not intended to be personal, but you need to learn from that. You need to either learn to accept that criticism or to reject it, not to be hurt or buried by it.

You also have to deal with the criticism of the other students in the class, right?

You can learn more from the big fat idiot in the class than from the guy who supports you, because the person whose criticism is stupid, you end up learning what you don’t want in your writing. And that’s just as important as learning what you do want. People forget that. The benefit of bad criticism is really good. You just have to know how to absorb it. Bad criticism is just as helpful as good criticism. Frank believed that. He was brutally honest because he cared a lot. He didn’t want you to waste your time.

One criticism of MFA programs that I hear is they kind of steer all these writers into the same kind of writing. What do you think about that?

There is such thing as a “workshop story.” But if you think about it, at any time in literary history, you have groups of people who start writing like each other. And the great ones always rise to the top. It depends on who you are talking about. Are you talking about great writers or are you talking about mediocre writers? If you are talking about great writers, you have nothing to worry about, because those men and women will always distinguish themselves. They will not write like everyone else. And a writing program is not going to change that. I think people overestimate the power of an MFA program. What it does is it teaches people how to write in a standard, clear, strong way. And yeah, that does all seem the same, but if you look at any era in history, most of the writing is the same. And that is the writing that is forgotten. The writers who rise to the top will always be a little different.

Who were some of your writing colleagues at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop?

Curtis Sittenfeld, who wrote Prep. Reza Aslan, who’s the go-to guy for Middle Eastern issues. He’s on CNN a lot. Danielle Trussoni, who broke out with a book called Angelology. I overlapped with Anthony Swofford, who wrote Jarhead. They weren’t my closest friends, but Reza and I partied a lot. My closest friends are not as well known.

How did you end up at UNLV?

My third year in Iowa I was selling suits at Dillard’s, and I decided I needed to go back to school. I applied for USC’s Ph.D. program and UNLV’s Schaeffer Ph.D. program, and I ended up coming here because it was less expensive to live here, and they gave me a really generous three-year fellowship. And also, they seemed willing to let us do what we wanted and needed to do. It was a young program, which was exciting, and it was Las Vegas, so I came here for that, and it turned out to be the best decision, because Doug [Unger] and Richard [Wiley] and everyone else there, they are very supportive, incredibly supportive. Hands on when you need hands-on help, but for the most part they leave you alone and let you develop as you should develop, and that’s the best way to do it.

You came here more or less fresh from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which many say is the best writing program in the country. Did you feel like, “I’m the big guy on campus”? If so, how did that evolve?

I’ve always had a big ego, but I think most people coming from the workshop feel a little inflated sense of self. But I don’t think it was ever over-inflated. I think I would have had that sense of self even I hadn’t gone to Iowa. The thing is, I think I’ve always kept myself in check, because I expect a lot out of myself, so whatever environment I’m in, you find yourself comparing yourself to the people around you, but ultimately my standard are the writers I really love, my favorite writers, whether they are dead or alive. That standard never goes away. And that’s very humbling. I ended up confronting a lot of rejection here in Las Vegas, and really four or five years of not getting a book published, not getting a story collection published, and feeling very in doubt of my own talent. It was the toughest part of my life, in the sense that I was finally confronted with the idea that I might not be as talented as I think I am.

What was going on, do you think?

Number one, I think there was a downturn in the economy that had a little bit to do with that. But also, story collections were not being bought at the pace that they used to be. Publishers were much more wary of story collections and less willing to take a risk. The publishing industry has changed a lot over the last few decades but especially in the last ten years or so. Especially now, with e-books and everything. But even before that became popular, publishers were very risk-averse. Editors don’t buy books anymore, publishers buy books by committee. There’s only a handful of editors who can actually buy a book without asking anybody anymore.

It could very well be that my stories were not strong enough. I thought they were. I hope to still publish them. My Vietnam stories were not directly about the Vietnam War, so there wasn’t that marketing thread to kind of connect them. That was really tough to take for a good four years.

In the meantime, you were teaching, getting stories published, and getting your Ph.D.

I won a few contests, I was still kind of establishing my publishing credentials, but the book contract was still missing, and that was kind of hard to take. But I was writing, trying to work on the novel and teaching.

What was the turning point?

I got into the Best American Mystery Stories. It kind of started from there. Because my first novel was not working out.

What was the first novel about?

The first novel was kind of a very cliché ethnic novel. He was an American character who goes back to Vietnam to find a missing person. His father used to be in the war. There’s a secret back story that he’s going to uncover when he goes back to Vietnam. It’s kind of amazing how you suddenly realize you are writing the most cliché novel in the world. When I realized that, I said okay, unless I can fix this, I need to scrap it.

How did you get the book contract?

Around that time, my agent got back in touch with me. I’d been working with Alane Mason from WW Norton the whole time. My agent went out with my story collection in 2006. Alane was interested from the very beginning, but she couldn’t get her colleagues to agree. She was always in the back picture while we were looking at other houses. Up to the very end she was still interested. And so when my agent got back in touch with me, I told her I had this new novel that I was working on. She sent it over to that editor, Elaine, and Elaine was able to buy it this time. I currently have a contract for the novel with Norton, with kind of an implicit agreement that if the novel works out, the short stories will follow.

When you won the Whiting Award, what happened?

After I got the Whiting, I had more people pay attention to me. You look better on paper. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I’d rather just look better because my writing is better.

I’ve heard it said that the Whiting Award is the kiss of death for a young writer, kind of like the curse for appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

I really hope not! The Whiting is a somewhat good indicator of talent. But it’s not the perfect indicator of talent. But what’s funny is that people suddenly think you’re a good writer just because you won that without having read your work. I’m not always comfortable with that. But that’s how things work, and I understand that. It’s opened a lot of doors for me, not just in terms of writing but in terms of getting a job. I think that was crucial in me getting interviews.

How has your time in Las Vegas influenced your writing?

When you’re young, the world is all possibilities, and you have a perspective that anything is possible and ambition is endless. Once you reach a certain age or a certain point in your so-called career, you are confronted with failure. When I was young I thought, okay, I’m not as talented as I want to be, but I can get there. I still have all this time to be this genius or whatever. And then you realize, at least I did in the last five or six years, that I might not have the kind of talent that I want. But what you end up doing is folding those expectations into real life. You don’t discard your ambitions, you don’t necessarily compromise, but you fold them into the life you are given. Most importantly, what I’ve learned is to accept my abilities and my limitations but to also leave myself plenty of room to surprise myself. So, I think I leave Las Vegas being more aware of the limitations and knowing what it means to feel like you’re failing.

“Anything is possible.” That’s sort of a mantra for Las Vegas, isn’t it? It’s like every time you step up to the roulette wheel, it’s going to land on your color.

This city is always making itself over. It’s always renewing itself. It’s a place of endless optimism. I think the problem sometimes is it can be blind optimism. Life is not fair. The literary world is not fair. I tried so hard to understand and read the market. I don’t understand the market any better than I used to. Just try to do what you think is good. Try to write what you like to read. And then you don’t make bad decisions. That’s the best you can do sometimes. Because a lot of it is luck, and a lot of it has nothing to do with who deserves what.

That’s the type of wisdom you pick up here.

I still have to figure out how Vegas figures into this. I don’t think I’ll really understand until I have two or three years separation from this city. I’ve always thought I’ll appreciate the city more after I’m gone. I think that will be the case.

I know you are going to write about Las Vegas in your novel. Will leaving make it easier to write about Las Vegas?

Oh, I hope so! My biggest fear right now is I’m going to be writing the novel in Chicago and say, oh my God, I wish I could go here or there and do research or whatever and I won’t be able to. But I also think that the distance will clarify things and put them into focus much better.

Las Vegas seems like a great town for stories. Do you find that to be true?

I think Las Vegas is a good town for stories because there’s always the promise of a good story. There’s not necessarily a good story there but there’s always the promise of a good story, because people have those expectations of a town like this. Regardless of what the actual reality is, I think your reader will always have those expectations. That’s a benefit for you. You can go in any direction and most readers will follow you, because they implicitly know this is the kind of city where you’re going to have an interesting story.

One of the best things about writing about Las Vegas is that you can exploit so many of the expectations that people have about reading a Las Vegas story. I think that’s more true of Las Vegas than any other city except perhaps New York. Because people have such an ingrained idea of what this town is like. And that’s so ripe for the writer to take advantage of and play around with.

Did you read about Las Vegas when you were here?

I’ve read a lot about Las Vegas but it was mostly related to poker, because I was obsessed with poker.

How did you get into poker?

I got into poker to distract myself from the pain of being rejected. I was not seeing the developments I wanted in writing, so I started playing poker. I’ve always liked the game but I really got into it here. I started reading not so much the poker manuals but like James McManus’ Positively Fifth Street, which is an amazing book about Las Vegas history and the Binions. I read this wonderful book by Anthony Holden. He’s an Englishman and he’s actually a Shakespeare scholar. The book is called Big Deal. He spends a year being a professional poker player. It’s great. He wrote two books on it. Really great writing. I love those books. I ended up learning a lot about Las Vegas through those books.

Have you written about poker?

I have written about poker in a short story that I wrote for an upcoming anthology, Dead Neon. Poker figures pretty heavily in that story. I wrote a little bit about poker in the chapter I wrote for you last year [the serial novel Restless City]. And there’ll be a pretty significant element of poker in my novel, because one of the main characters is a gambler, a poker player. I’m also interested in poker because it is a very Asian pastime. It’s very ingrained in Asian culture. A lot of the professional poker players are Asian, particularly Vietnamese. I’m still trying to explore why these people love playing poker so much.

Have you read any good Las Vegas fiction?

For me the best Vegas book is Positively Fifth Street. In terms of the novel, I read Fear and Loathing and I didn’t love it. This is just a theory on my part, and it’s something I’m trying to deal with in my novel, but I feel like perhaps one of the reasons there hasn’t been a universally held great Vegas novel is because writers try too hard to give people the lowdown on the real Las Vegas instead of dealing with it in a much more metaphoric way. People try too hard to give the down-and-dirty, grimy aspect of Vegas instead of actually coming up with a kind of metaphor that doesn’t quite mirror the real Las Vegas but actually ends up giving you a more real sense of what the city is like. My point is, I think if there’s going to be a great Las Vegas novel, I’d like to see it be complete fantasy. The city is just so different from other cities. You have to deal with so many clichés and stereotypes that realism might not be the way to do it.

What can you tell me about the novel you’re working on now?

I can tell you that it takes place mostly in Las Vegas. Parts of it take place in Vietnam and on a refugee island off of Malaysia. Those are more like memories that the characters have. I’m really bad at talking about stuff in progress. I don’t know what else to say about it, except that it has in some ways to do with American expectations of what a Vietnam story is. There is still this American obsession with Vietnam as an idea rather than a country, a historical and cultural legacy rather than an actual country. With that, Vietnamese people take on this sense that every Vietnamese person has to have this dramatic back story that they don’t necessarily have. I think in certain ways my novel tries to deal with that.

You’re going to the University of Chicago. What kind of teacher are you going to be? Are you going to be like Frank Conroy, or like someone else?

My strategy overall with teaching creative writing is to be kind and nice in a way where I can be brutally honest. I usually have a very good relationship with my students, and I try to have a kind of laid-back, casual, and very funny rapport with them. So that when I can be brutally honest, the impact is not as personal, it’s not as significant. I want to be Frank Conroy, but I’m not. I’m not mean like that. You can only teach your personality. My personality is that I’m a really nice guy who likes to be brutally honest. That’s worked for me so far. That’s the kind of balance I want. To be able to be mean when I need to be, but it’s always absorbed because they know I’m not an asshole. Most of the time they won’t listen unless they trust you. You can be one hundred percent correct, you can be brilliant in your criticism, but if they don’t trust you, if they don’t like you, they won’t listen to you, so what’s the use of giving that kind of criticism. Most of all, I want to have fun in my class. But to have fun, honest conversations.

My thing is I curse a lot in class. But I always curse in the context of humor. I never curse when I’m angry. I never curse in a context where it would be taken that seriously. And I think that kind of straightforwardness and informality gives a sense of levity but also sometimes things are just taken too seriously. You have to have a balance.

You took classes with Dave Hickey. What did he bring to your education?

He pointed me in very interesting directions, not just having to do with literature but with cinema, with art, with nonfiction. He just threw me in a lot of very interesting directions. But also I think he just has a way of talking about art that is very uncompromising. He has his view of what a great artist is, and he doesn’t give a shit what anyone says. He always has a very unique perspective on things, which I really appreciated. It’s not always a perspective that I agree with, but at least it wasn’t the same perspective that everyone else is regurgitating. And he reads people really well. He could read a person within five minutes of meeting him.

One thing I learned from him is that when it comes to art, you should not be thinking about offending people. I’m not saying you should just go out and offend people but I feel sometimes people bring in the idea of sensitivity and apply it to art, and that has no place in art. And Hickey understands that.

—

Geoff Schumacher was a reporter, editorial writer and city editor for the Las Vegas Sun for 10 years and editor of Las Vegas CityLife for three years.  He is the author of Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue (2008) and Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas (2004.) He recently left his leadership role in the Las Vegas writing community to head up a newspaper in Ames, Iowa.

Vu Tran’s short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories 2009, the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories, A Best of Fence, The Southern Review, and Harvard Review.  He has also received honors from Glimmer Train Stories and the Michigan Quarterly Review, and is a recipient of a 2009 Whiting Writers’ Award and a 2011 Finalist Award for the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise.  His first novel, This Or Any Desert, is forthcoming from WW Norton.  Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, and his PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was the Glenn Schaeffer Fellow in Fiction.  He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.

Vu’s short story Vespertine appeared online last year at FiveChapters.

please like, share, and comment on this post! Interview with Vu Tran — Las Vegas Review of Books

What do you call a poet who’s been struck by lightning a dozen times? W.D. Ehrhart.  But each time a current courses through his body, the result is a work of great literary power.  Take a quick moment through Ehrhart’s zigzagging writing career, as narrated by Dan Duffy, in a post originally published on vietnamlit.org.

With Ken Takenaga at Hoi An July 1967

Robert Graves observed that to write a real poem is like getting struck by lightning. If it happens six or a dozen times we aren’t going to stop talking about you.

W.D. Ehrhart is a lightning rod. We printed one of his real poems on Constitution Day.

Con Thien November 1967

Here is another one and another and one more. People aren’t going to stop talking about Bill.

His work is the focus of the study of literature from the American soldiers in Viet Nam that reaches the most general conclusions and speaks to those furthest outside the field. Kali Tal devotes a chapter of Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literature of Trauma to Bill’s work.

Cu Chi December 1985

In the print edition she concluded that a man who won’t shut up about what war is like for infantry and those civilians in their way is not going to fit into society. Kali was speaking from her own predicament.

Bill had in fact been offered a career screaming at young men about war as a Marine drill instructor. Instead he became a poet.

With staff of Bach Mai hospital and John Balaban December 1985

When Graves spoke of lightning he was making the practical observation that you can’t write real poems nine to five for a career. Graves himself, soldier-poet of the Great War, instead wrote a best-selling memoir and removed to Majorca from where he issued an historical novel every year or so.

Bill wrote three memoirs which take the reader, especially a young man with notions of military service, from small-town America to killing an old man and a child in Viet Nam, resisting the war at home, and riding around in a Volkswagen with dead teen-age friends in the back seat who want to call on Richard Nixon. All three books sell steadily.

Eisenhower Library, Abilene, February 2001

He became a high school teacher, like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. He set to work as a scholar, achieving publications that would fit in at a research university or make him the star of a liberal arts college.

He edited a standard collection of American poets of the war in Viet Nam. He tracked down the men he entered the Marines with and reported on their lives.

In Swansea t-shirt at his home town September 2001

He moved on or back to our war in Korea and edited a collection of poems and stories from the Americans who fought there. He earned his doctorate from the University of Wales with a dissertation on that work.

Collections of poems and essays appear regularly. He has loyal and effective publishers at Adastra and at McFarland.

With Anne at Leela's high school graduation 2005

Lightning still strikes.

For entree to his oeuvre, what you call it when a poet writes prose and conducts research, see the W.D. Ehrhart website. For a sense of his life scroll through the photos on this post.

With Adastra publisher Gary Metras and poet Michael Casey at Vets for Peace 25th reunion 2010

They start with one of him and Ken Takenaga in the Marines in Viet Nam. The two men were later wounded by the same rocket-propelled grenade at the battle for Hue City.

The last photo is from Ken & Bill’s Excellent Adventure when the two journeyed back to the house where they were blown up. Read about their trip not just to Viet Nam but to Ken’s native Japan.

With Ken Takenaga at Hue 2011

In between are happy shots from the active life of a lucky poet. W.D. Ehrhart has been hit by lightning many times and is burning to warm us all.

– Dan Duffy, Editor of Viet Nam Literature Project, where this post first appeared

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please like, share, and comment on this post! Dan Duffy on American Writer W.D. Ehrhart