Literary success from Eugene to Hanoi
A bit of Trish news and a Vietnam reading recap
I’m big on goals. I sit down with my thoughts and my journals and my vision board to map out what I want my life to look like and what I need to do to get there. I do this twice a year: at new year’s, then at my own new year. And as I celebrated another birthday last week (to excess, admittedly), I turned back the pages to look at the lists from previous years. On every single list, right up top, for as far back as I have records:
get fiction published
After years of submitting and crossed fingers, I can finally scratch this one off the list. Three days before my birthday, after spending five weeks in the homeland that inspired it, my freaky little story imagining what might happen when the Big One hits Cascadia - To Our Fault - was published in the Clackamas Literary Review.
Better yet, later this summer, another of my very niche rural pacific northwest stories will be published in a lit mag I’ve long loved, that’s widely available in Canada (from Type to Indigo, it’ll be out in the world.)
I keep waiting to feel the feelings I’m supposed to be overcome with, but they have yet to surface. If you sit near me at work, you know I lost my mind when I got the initial acceptance, but while I anticipated something similar upon publication day, all I have right now is a mix of relief, ‘that’s pretty cool,’ and gratitude.
A big thank you to my writing groups who helped me get both of these stories to the place where someone would consider committing them to ink and paper. Say it with me now: we’re just so lucky, and everything always works out for us.
“Yeah, I’m a real film buff. I have a ridiculous VHS collection.”
- a man at the Monarch Tavern’s karaoke night
Recommended Reading - Vietnam Vacay Edition
*featuring some exceptional CanCon
It’s a little late in the game, but after my trip to Vietnam for a wedding in November, I was asked about my pre- and on-trip reading list. While some of these are oldies I’ve long loved (Kim Thúy) and some are new-ish, some are written by diasporic CanCon voices and others by Vietnam locals, they’re all fantastic and there’s a little something for everyone.
Ru is a poetic novel by Kim Thúy, with very short, dainty lace-like chapters (I’m talking half a page to three pages) exploring the experience of a young girl and her family’s journey to rural Quebec from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Most recently, this was adapted into a Quebecois film with incredible cinematography (although it does linger on a few shots for a beat too long here and there).
Contrasting the stories of families who left, Vietnamese poet and novelist Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai writes about the families who stayed. The Mountains Sing is a moving chronicle of a family through the French, Japanese, and American colonialism, through to the fallout of the war. If you liked Pachinko or Do Not Say We Have Nothing, you will love the Mountains Sing.
Similarly, her book Dust Child focuses on the experiences of the children left behind by soldiers after the war through both the lens of a man trying to find his family and an American who is haunted by who he left behind.
I’ve written about Em before in greater detail, but it’s Kim Thúy’s most recent book: a beautiful story where the narrator pulls at different strings, following as the characters are pulled this way and that, stepping back only at the end to reveal the tapestry with loose ends comprised of Operation Babylift, the rainbows of Agent Orange, the legacy of French colonialism, and how it touched the lives of children in Vietnam; how it made them no longer children.
If you’ve never heard of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I’m fascinated to know what rock you’re hiding under. It is essentially a love letter written by a Vietnamese-American boy to his illiterate mother. And because it shows the haunting, messy, beautiful difficulty of what it is to be a human touched by war, it’s being adapted by A24. (Just in case you didn’t cry enough during Past Lives and the Farewell.)
On the other end of the action spectrum, but also recently adapted into a spectacle starring Sandra Oh (sneaky CanCon call out), The Sympathizer is a wild ride of a spy thriller and exploration of identity, loyalties, and the lengths a person can go to in denial. I can’t say more without ruining the fun for you, and I was recently gifted the sequel the Committed so just go get a copy so we can talk about it.
And if you’re trying your hardest not to feel sad or sweaty with anxiety, Sunshine Nails is a fun family drama and battle of the nail salons set in the Junction of Toronto. You’ll cheer for the Tran family and book your next manicure at an independent salon.
What are your favourite Vietnamese/Vietnamese-Canadian books and authors? Let me know what should be on the list in the comments. In the meantime, Mot, Hai, Ba, YO!
