When was the last time I read a Vietnamese book for fun? I’m sad to say I can’t remember. Probably years ago.
I’ve written elsewhere about the challenges of teaching and learning Vietnamese as a heritage language in the diaspora. I grew up in the US in the 80s and 90s and learned Vietnamese from my parents. Although my mother taught me to read when I was only four years old, I always found it harder to read in Vietnamese than in English. It wasn’t until I was an adult that my reading skills in Vietnamese reached the point where I could effortlessly breeze through a novel or short story. But by that point, I had little time for leisure reading because I was busy with school and work.
To be clear, I actually read a lot of Vietnamese literature for my research now, but reading for research is a far cry from reading for enjoyment. When my research brain is on, I approach novels, short stories, memoirs, and essays as primary sources for understanding a larger historical phenomenon. Only when I turn off my research brain do I get to immerse myself in a book for the sheer beauty of it. And this type of immersive reading is the most joyous of all and the greatest reward of learning any written language. Indeed, it would be a waste of all my hard work learning Vietnamese if I didn’t read for fun. Only a tiny fraction of Vietnam’s modern literature is available in translation, and reading something in translation is just isn’t the same.
With this irregular series, I’m embarking on a reading adventure in Vietnamese literature. I’ll grab books off my shelf, read them in my leisure time, and review them. I’ll choose books that are fun to read rather than useful for my work, though I do include a few notes for other researchers out there who may find these books relevant to their intellectual interests.
The literature of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam, 1955-1975) will feature especially prominently in the series. Not only is that body of writing overrepresented in my personal library, it’s my favorite period of literature for its creativity, dynamism, and stylistic diversity. It also reminds me of my childhood. My mother came of age under the RVN and introduced me to its literature as soon as my reading level could handle it. She gave me Duyên Anh’s children’s novels and Duy Lam’s young adult fiction when I was a tween and teenager. In high school, I pursued an independent study of Vietnamese literature as part of the International Baccalaureate program, and my mother had me read short stories by southern regionalist writers from the 1950s and 1960s like Bình Nguyên Lộc and Sơn Nam. She also taught me colonial and early modern Vietnamese literature, but the RVN period was always my favorite.
And just as my mother shared her love of Vietnamese literature with me, I hope that these (English-language) posts will share that love with a wider audience who may or may not know Vietnamese or who may struggle with reading their heritage language just as I did.