Tag: Andrew Lam

This gotta to stop!

Yesterday, I saw Monique Truong on the Poets-and-Writers cover.

The author of “the Book of Salt” was launching another title : “Bitter in the mouth”.

Meanwhile, I still am awaiting the shipment of “East eats West” by Andrew Lam.

What’s going on here? A Renaissance in publishing by Vietnamese-American authors?

Top of my head, I counted Hung Nguyen, co-author of Software Testing, Vu Pham, Impressive Impressions,

then Nam Le with The Boat, the Unwanted by Kien Nguyen, and Andrew Lam and Monique Truong. Not bad for first-generation immigrants.

Monique Truong & Andrew Lam Book Signing/Reading at VAALA Center, Santa Ana, Tue 9/21. Q&A moderated by Mariam Lam and Ky-Phong Tran. Books will be available for purchase at the event. Come get the autographs! : )

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/main/two-gifted-vietnamese-american/

I admire their tenacity ( I am sure each has to fight within his/her families about this ethnically unpopular career choice).

I look forward to someday reading the equivalent of Marguerite Duras’ L’Amant set in Sa Dec

or  Graham Green’s A Quiet American  set in Cho Lon.

Vietnam as a setting for historical romance should sell. After all, it dominated the news for more than a decade during its hey day,

and three and a half decades of post-war revisionism.

Vietnamese American writers offer unique perspectives i.e. passionate, feisty and observant (euphemism for bench sitting).

In Monique’s words ” I was forced to be different – when I grew up (in Vietnam),  everyone around me looked like me. There, in North Carolina, I was defined by my outward appearance etc….” She went on to Yale and Columbia – flirting  with a career in Law, just to settle down as a writer, and a good one (Nam Le took a similar turn).

When American culture looks back to this period, it will recognize what’s been buried among Wall Street post-mortem publications (Too Big to Fail),

or Terrorist war reportage (The Looming Tower).  Something has germinated in American soil, migrated en mass from overseas and found its footing just in time for e-release and e- commerce.

If I didn’t know better, I would say, “This gotta to stop. Nobody will buy or read your books”. But then, I sneaked up behind the cover in “surprise me” link on Amazon, and surprised I was. The quality was good, intriguing and en par. In other words, it passed muster and was quite palatable.

Products of  American free thinking and free enterprise (wasn’t this what Viet Education Fund and Fulbright scholarship are trying to promote?).

The Alphabet belongs to no one, and everyone.

We pay lip service to diversity and Lady of Liberty.

Now that they came, stayed and published, shouldn’t we celebrate that very thing called Americanism. Ironically, it’s the new comers that seem to discover it anew (5000 newly sworn-in citizens at Fenway Park on Sept 15th). Wait until you see the young filmmakers in action (Norwegian Wood).

This is to show that not all are model minorities i.e. majoring in math and engineering. Can risk takers (see Daring Swim) who risked their lives just to bring up children who play safe? Percentage wise, there will be some “rebels” among the pool. And their delayed version of counter-culture (against their primary cultural norm) fits the American entrepreneurs bill – whether it’s in law or arts. I am sure the publishers did their due diligence before releasing these titles.

Years ago, I browsed Asian-American literature and found only Chinese-American authors. Vietnamese-language magazines were sold along with Chinese cabbage and herbs.  I am proud to say that you now have more choices of AM books for research or pleasure reading. And third-generation Vietnamese American will be proud of their heritage when “googling” their ancestors’ pilgrimage in America, still land of the free the last time I checked.

torn between two places

Yahoo News had a piece about Diaspora, the return.

It features Mrs Nguyen Cao Ky, who is now a proud owner of a Pho restaurant in former Saigon.  She said to have spent a few months in the US, and the rest in Vietnam.

Other Viet Kieu expressed similar sentiment: “when I am here, I miss the States, and vice versa” said wife of a former Vegas casino host.

The attachment to places.

We are creatures of habits.

I found myself gravitated toward District 3 where I grew up.

I turned my head every time I passed by L’Ecole Aurore.

To lend some credibility, the article quoted Professor Hung, of the U of VA, who said what everyone had already known: the less attractive the US economy the stronger the pull of  Vietnam .

So, we have Vietnamese moving out of Hotel California. The choices are Houston or HCMC. Sociologists couldn’t have foreseen this 38 years ago.

I didn’t. We were in a state of shock!

Those of us who weren’t religious person then, became one.

Churches and synagogues welcomed the displaced.

So, my sweet guitar gently weeps.

I admitted to eating a bunch of church pot-luck dinners to get through college.

Then, upon graduation, I paid it all back by offering my ration packs to Boat People in Asia.  Whatsoever you sow, you shall reap.

I saw what people went through at seas to get to shores, to Hotel California.

Now, I met people like Mrs Ky who discussed opening up shops in VN, organizing a conference there, and perhaps buying a piece of land.

I do miss the comfort in the States e.g. clean beaches, ample parking and ubiquitous police. Over-protected in one place and under-served in the other.

Torn between two  places, feelin’ like a fool. Blame it on war, blame it on peace. But mostly, blame it on greed which brought down house of cards. As of this edit, I have read excerpt of Andrew Lam‘s latest Birds of Paradise Lost which is an expose on the theme of Diaspora of millions Viet Kieu, suffering the fate of “neither here nor there”.

The strangest moment came when songs of the 70’s got played at coffee shops in Saigon. It only accentuates a known fact: the place seems to have freezed up in time. Those music got me nostalgic for Vietnam when hearing them in the States, but then, to hear them play here in VN makes me nostalgic for time past, not the place itself. We all swim against the tide of time.  Boys-men-boys, in my case, a boy from BAN CO. Even grown men need to have some fun. It’s either biking or swimming now.  For that, you can do it anywhere.  But who you would ride with, that depends on the place. Those who went through the piercing experience of separation and exile are rarely heard nor noticed. Most force themselves to forget and move on. Others leverage new skill and contact to return, a phenomenon known as “brain re-gain”. More are coming back. Yet remain forever “outsiders”, torn between two places.

Clarity begins at home

April 27th Newshour  featured Viet entrepreneurs coming back to Vietnam :

a. to set up shop

b. start an NGO and

c. work  for the Clinton’s Initiatives.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june10/vietnam_04-27.html

We found in it our own Victor Luu (Software), Andrew Lam (writer), a coffee-house artist and an NGO dedicate.

The piece provided balanced perspectives  to the extent that there is a conspicuous absence of  white folks.

It’s as if Spike Lee were filming Denzel Washington in South Central during the LA riot.

You can change “China” for every “Vietnam” word that appears, and the segment still holds (except for the historical film about 1975) i.e. poverty reduction, rural and urban uneven development pace etc…

Victor was careful to stay out of politics. He runs a tight shop in HCMC which has just been through the ripple effect of this Recession.

Point taken: lots of brain gain (including PhD trained from the former Soviet bloc).

The other point made in a Hanoi interview was that the younger generation Viet Kieu are now discovering more of Vietnam (thanks to reunification) than their parents, who had stayed mostly in and around Saigon during the war.

The final episode addressed women trafficking prevention: don’t speak to strangers.

Clarity begins at home.

Andrew Lam, however, noticed a “spiritual” vacuum, which according to him, did help Vietnam withstand successive invasions by the Chinese, the French and the Americans.

He forgot to mention that there had competed forces trying to fill that vacuum, especially since the time of Vietnam joining WTO.

(see my other blog on “Luxury brand beachhead Vietnam”).

The vacuum, or social-economic gap, is widened as more students graduated without a job.

Vietnam is heading right for a trap (Middle-Income Trap), with mismatched talent-opportunity pairing.

Its advantage: young workforce. To lift the economy, that gap of job market and consumer market needs to be bridged.

Then we will see another Singapore or Taiwan right here in Vietnam.

PBS I am sure has more stories than it could fit in one hour: Goldman Sachs testimonies in Congress, Financial regulation proposal, Greece pulling the Dow down,

Catholic church crisis and apology etc..

So I am grateful to see an under-covered story like this one get air time. Someday, maybe the Nguyen foundation will underwrite a small part of the Newshour, just like the Carnegie Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation etc.. You’ll never know. Clarity begins right here at home, in this case, the United States, our home away from home.