This week Kill Your Darlings, in partnership with the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), is proud to present its first ever showcase of Vietnamese writers. We received over 50 submissions from Australia, Vietnam, the United States and beyond, from which we chose two works of fiction and a feature essay incorporating memoir, history and culture.

I feel immensely privileged to be co-editor of the Vietnam Showcase, given my own preoccupation with what it means to be Vietnamese—and how this aspect of my identity is a wellspring for my own literary impulses. Reading through the wide range of submissions we received, I felt both moved and humbled by what was shared with us from writers at all stages of their careers.

Considered together, the submissions revealed something of the complicated nature of what it means to be Vietnamese, and the restlessness of diasporic existence in particular. Indicating something of the geographic spread of writing we received, we chose one piece from Melbourne and one from Sydney, the two largest centres of Việt Kiều life in Australia. The third story comes from Việt Nam itself. We were limited to choosing works in English rather than tiếng Việt, so we are particularly pleased to be able to publish a short story by a writer who has lived in and experienced Hà Nội, whose literary translator is based in Sài Gòn/TP.HCM. The story is published in both languages.

‘Hai, Ba’ by Casey Nguyen is an open-hearted exploration of second-generation adult life, how our relationships with our parents evolve over time, and how we learn to live with our adult bodies. Meanwhile, Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn‘s playful and insightful essay, ‘Dear Dairy’ also examines the body, diving into dairy and in doing so brings in complex meditations on race, gender and culture. Finally, Nguyễn Thúy Hằng’s ‘In A Grossly Boring Town’ (‘Ở Thành Phố Chán Ốm’) has been translated by Dương Mạnh Hùng of Bar de Force Press. It’s a surreal and unsettling tale from the Old World which shows how bodily questions of existence are universal preoccupations, pondered upon in the centre, a topic of concern as it often is for those of us living in the margins.

You may have noticed that all three selected pieces are by writers who share the same surname, Nguyễn. (In Anglophone countries, we put the surname last, but in tiếng Việt surnames always appear first.) To use the American English pronunciation of Nguyen, we’ve come up with a win-win-win situation for this Vietnam Showcase. Personally, I’ve long been surprised by ​how little Vietnam’s most common surname has appeared among the ranks of Australian writers, but maybe this showcase suggests that that’s about to change.

Huge thanks to artists Kim Lam for her illustration on ‘Hai, Ba’ as well as Jill Trần and Nhung Đinh for their illustrations of ‘In a Grossly Boring Town’. Finally, thanks to KYD editor Alan Vaarwerk for leading the development of the Vietnam Showcase and being such an excellent collaborator on this milestone project.

—Sheila Ngọc Phạm
Co-editor of Vietnam Showcase and Contributing Editor of DVAN’s diaCRITICS

 

Dear Dairy Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn Essay: When I became vegetarian two years ago, I was unsure how it would square with the Vietnamese dishes I’d grown up with. But what I found was a fluid and creative approach to cooking, and a renewed understanding of what ethical and community-centred eating really means.

Hai, Ba Casey Nguyen Fiction: ‘I know you, con. You’re always itching to be somewhere else; never want to stay still.’ Featuring original artwork by Kim Lam

In A Grossly Boring Town Nguyễn Thúy Hằng translated from the Vietnamese by Dương Mạnh Hùng Fiction: ‘I recognise these glassy dull eyeballs. They used to be mine.’ Featuring artwork by Jill Tran and Nhung Đinh

 

Want more? Revisit our previous Asia-Pacific and State & Territory Showcases.