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Category Archives: Books and Films: reviews

Books I’ve read on my year off

04 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by itsaphanlife in Books and Films: reviews

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books, nonfiction, novels, reading

It’s coming upon a full year since I took my sabbatical, and I suppose it’s pretty much over now. Aside from giving me time to write, this break also allowed me to do more reading than I normally could in the hurly burly of attending to a full time teaching load.

Here are the books I’ve finished in my year off, and a few words about a few of them (to be added to when I have time). I should say that I’m quite positive about the books on this list, mostly because I’ll never finish a book I don’t like, and I’ve leafed through many books and put them down partway through. Life and sabbatical years are too short to waste on bad reading.

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Four Voices from the Diaspora

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by itsaphanlife in Books and Films: reviews

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These days, when the plight of refugees so often make the news, the Vietnamese diaspora seems to be experiencing a literary renaissance. Foremost is the celebration of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, with its deserved Pulitzer Prize for fiction (read my review here).

Alongside Nguyen, we have Nam Le’s collection of stories The Boat, Qui Nguyen’s new play Vietgone, Ocean Vuong’s poetry collection, all appearing in the last year or so. Are there suddenly more assured voices, or is it that the reading public has become more interested in the stories offered by the Vietnamese diaspora?

It might be a combination of both. Narratives written by immigrants have always spoken to the transient lives of people in the world, but it is just now that we see a mature collection of thoughts regarding the people who left Vietnam for even more uncertain lives abroad. The stories of the displaced, or those with multinational identities, are stories that speak to us of these particular times. The first refugees and their children, uprooted by America’s bloodiest war, seem especially able to speak of this displacement, of describing the shifting, tenuous foundations of home, of war’s wounds and shrapnel that rests embedded in the psyches of one’s offspring, years after its conclusion. The more the earth beneath us shifts, the more we listen to such voices.

The recommended works below by writers from the Vietnamese diaspora encompass four major genres: the personal essay, short story, poetry, and play. They all share fragmentation, loss, and a longing for home as recurring themes.

vietgone01.jpg

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Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer winner: “The Sympathizer”

12 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by itsaphanlife in Books and Films: reviews

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This review has also been published on Bliss Saigon in their culture section.

M

idway through Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, the protagonist of the novel, a Vietnamese spy for the north on assignment to follow a Southern Vietnamese general who is exiled to America after the war ended, is tasked with hiring extras to play Northern Viet Cong “baddies” in an American made Vietnam War film.

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Still life with 4 books I read in America over this long winter break (vertical) and 4 books I bought there to bring back to Vietnam (horizontal). Loved Bliss Montage, All That's Left Unsaid, and many of the stories in Afterparties, liked/appreciated Useful Phrases for Immigrants. Wrote a longer review of All That's Left Unsaid that'll be on @weare_dvan soon. Trekking round Manhattan #bigapple New York City continues to be the best city for reuniting with old friends. #nyc #brooklyn Trekking around Boston, Harvard, Boston Commons, and showing my wife my old hometown in winter. I actually missed feeling this level of cold! #winterinboston Fun with our niece Alanna on our last days in Florida. Can't wait to have our own...we think... #funwithbabies Beach hopping and night market shopping around Sarasota and Venice, Florida #beachesoflorida In spite of the fact that Trump and Desantis both reside in this state, Florida's been A-OK with us! #florida #summerinwinter Back in America. For this visit, our family has expanded by two! #floridayrusocold #florida

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