Place: Vietnam

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2021

July 19, 2021  |  in News  |  by Allison Braden, Shawn Hoo, and Xiao Yue Shan

Our blog editors pick their favourite pieces from the Summer 2021 issue!

As Asymptote celebrates the first issue of our second decade in world literature, we bring to you new work from thirty-five countries and twenty-four languages in our Summer 2021 issue! Drawing from the theme of our Special Feature, “Age of Division,” these varied writings speak to a moment of mounting borders, fractious politics, and heightened suspicion towards the other—but so too do they hint at the possibility of unexpected solidarities, strange encounters, and new geographies of affinity. Not sure where to begin with this bountiful issue? Let our blog editors take you through some of their favourite pieces to reveal a world that is, in the words of Lêdo Ivo, “sweet, full, pungent, and luminous.” 

In the spring of 2004, an intifada singer in Ramallah said to his interviewer, “What I do on stage and what martyrs do on the streets are one and the same, just with different instruments.” Were resistance embodied in genre, the shape would undoubtedly be that of music. The art which “all art constantly aspires towards” for its certain coherence of form and content, this singular quality also speaks to its ability to move people passionately, crucially, to action. For music is a verb; it must be performed and enacted. It embodies, within its very idea, its eventual actualisation.  

In the excerpt from Olivia Elias’s forthcoming poetry collection Your Name, Palestine, she makes a graceful address: “Musicians, a few minutes more.” Moving on to materialise the scene in sensual, wondering lines, she makes gentle work of speaking the terrible wreckage done to the country where she was born. Born in Haifa and living now in France, she is said to occupy a privileged space within the Palestinian diaspora as one of the few poets in French. In these poems, translated masterfully by Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert, she creates in her adopted language the continuation of the Palestinian nation, transcending geographical realities to rhyme with the poetics of Palestinian agency, with both singing and the witness of singing.

Musicians, I am speaking to you of a country
engulfed in a fault of history
of a people chosen to pay the price
of another sacrifice
of a story more than a hundred years old
full of sound and fury and blood

Intended for voices set to instruments, Elias’s work speaks to the intifada singers, the debke performances that conceptualise art from the violences of occupation, and the traditional melodies evoking the dignity of liberation. But without violence and ideology, the measured cadences of her lines are patient with painterly instinct. These poems draw their necessity from their stoic dreams of clarity. Palestine, untorn, in concert, singing.

In Mulugeta Alebachew’s “Heaven Without Prickly Pears,” writing similarly seeks physical qualities—the savoury texture of the language, the kinetic scan of the eye as it seeks and takes in. The topography of the Ethiopian town, Geneté, is overlaid with the infinite dimensions of the mind. Familiarities, kinships, intimacies run through in capillaries of psychogeography, drawing further on its composite, ramified history: “her mosaicked gum-tattoos of more than a dozen languages and myriad cultures.” With co-translator Bethlehem Attfield, Alebachew has done a wonderful job of rendering the original Amharic text, lush with dialect, into a fluent poetry that nevertheless beholds the precision of references outside of the English language.

This town bears my fondest memories, life vividly lived, and lessons well learned . . . my yesterdays, todays, and predictable tomorrows lay on its streets. . . My home includes the highway. My home does not exclude the other homes. 

In this beautiful passage which eclipses the cautious private/public boundary, Alebachew speaks to the growing of the world. Just as in the acts of reading and writing, the dialectic division of outside and inside loses its binds, and one bleeds into the other. By bringing us into his Geneté, the subtle resentment of possessive being is defied; we are given interior knowing without it being our interior. In this world there is no space indifferent or vacant. It is all compounded in an infinite geometry of living; to inhabit a text that so generously navigates a place, it is an astonishing gift. 

—Xiao Yue Shan

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 9, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Nestor Gomez, Thuy Dinh, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest news from Central America, China, and the Vietnamese diaspora!

Want to keep up with the newest literary developments across the world? This week, our team members cover: an academic conversation on the state of Central American literature, the gargantuan literary output commemorating the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the politics and poetics of translation in the film and literature of the Vietnamese diaspora. Read on to find out more!

Nestor Gomez, Editor-at-Large, reporting from El Salvador

Cátedra Centroamerica, an online space for academic analysis of Central America, recently held a series of talks on Zoom focusing on the state of art and literature in the Central American region since its independence about 200 years ago. The conversation, held on July 2, revolved around the question of the future of Central American art and literature after 200 years of independence.

Alexandra Ortiz Wallner, a researcher who specializes in Central American literature and culture at the Freie Univesitat Berlin, presented a “literary roadmap” on how Central American literature has developed after the turn of the century. Currently, Central America is in a postwar era following the wars, dictatorships, and political upheavals of the 1970s to the 1990s. The transition from war to democracy and peace has had two notable effects in the identities, histories, and cultures of Central Americans. The first effect is the mass exodus of Central Americans to settle in other parts of the world. This mass migration has redefined the borders of Central America and the identity of Central Americans as people living in the region of the isthmus. Because of the large and growing size of the Central American diaspora, Central Americans are redefining themselves as global citizens. Secondly, the rise of alternative publishing through social media has provided new spaces that welcome new literary voices in postwar Central America. These new literary voices have led the movement in reconstructing political and cultural identities as well as histories of individual Central American countries into a new, shared regional identity and culture that includes the diaspora.

Wallner also shared an example of postwar literature, Horacio Castellano Moya’s novel El Arma En El Hombre, which describes a new aesthetic of violence. This new violence is born in the urban environment of a postwar city. There is no explanation as to where this violence originated from and the main character of the novel, a displaced ex-soldier, is left alone in the city to combat this new urban violence that attacks from every corner: politics, economy, education, society, family, etc. El Arma En El Hombre is a key novel that aptly foretells the state of affairs in Central America. It describes perpetual chaos and oppression as the normal state of everyday lives of Central Americans. READ MORE…

The Magical Parallels in Translation: An Interview with Kaitlin Rees, Translator from the Vietnamese

June 7, 2021  |  in Interviews  |  by Suhasini Patni

I wanted to visit Vietnam because I wanted to go to a place I hadn’t expected myself to go.

According to the University of Rochester’s Translation Database, since 2008, only nine Vietnamese original works of fiction and poetry have been published in the US in English translation. Translator Kaitlin Rees is working toward changing that. Since 2011, Rees has been back and forth between New York and Hanoi; she now works closely with poet Nhã Thuyên, with whom she founded AJAR, a small bilingual publishing press which hosts its own online journal and a poetry festival. Her translation of Nhã Thuyên book of poetry words breathe, creatures of elsewhere was published by Vagabond Press in 2016. The following year, she received the PEN/Heim Translation Grant. We recently spoke about her unconventional education, obsession with dictionaries, and intimate collaboration with Nhã Thuyên.

Suhasini Patni (SP): You’ve been alternating between Hanoi and New York since 2011. When did you first visit Vietnam? Did you visit because you knew you wanted to translate the national literature, or was it something you decided to do upon visiting? How did your relationship with the Vietnamese language first begin?

Kaitlin Rees (KR): I started learning Vietnamese when I first arrived in Vietnam, though I can’t say this was my intention before going. My relationship with the language really began out of friendship, love, and curiosity; I was quite ignorant of any possible career path at that time. Besides the practicality, it’s a politics too—being able to communicate in the language of where I lived. The strongest motivation to learn Vietnamese was the simple, personal wish to read the poets whom I met and admired, in particular, the poet Nhã Thuyên.

READ MORE…

Emma Bovary’s Adventures in Saigon, Part II

June 3, 2021  |  in Essays  |  by Thuy Dinh

Hoàng Hải Thủy’s 1973 Vietnamese translation of Flaubert’s classic complicates perceptions of domestication and foreignization.

This is the second in a two-part series that explores the mixed translation effects of foreignization and domestication, as illustrated by Hoàng Hải Thủy’s 1973 Vietnamese adaptation of Madame Bovary. Read the first part here.

Note: The below version has been revised to reflect important corrections. Lawrence Venuti’s theoretical framework, as reflected in the revised essay, does acknowledge the subaltern’s perspective and show that domestication and foreignization encompass both discursive approaches and their multifaceted effects.

Since the earlier version did not fairly reflect the full implications of Mr. Venuti’s work, the author owes Mr. Venuti an apology and would like to thank him for his forbearance and collegial support.

book

Hoàng Hải Thủy’s adaptation showcases his wit, creativity, and lyricism. In Người Vợ Ngoại Tình, Charles Bovary becomes Trần văn Bô, an inspired choice since the name represents both a phonetic and metaphorical rendering (although by Vietnamese convention Trần would be his family name and Bô his given name). Bô is a round, onomatopoeic sound that in Vietnamese evokes a chamber pot, and an idiot’s babbles.

Hoàng Hải Thủy changes Emma’s name to Ánh—which means “shadow,” “reflection,” and “refracted light” in Vietnamese. This domesticating approach nevertheless reflects Hoàng Hải Thủy’s concise and elegant understanding of Emma Bovary. In Flaubert’s original context, mirrors and windows are employed to accentuate Emma’s outsider status—she’s a reflected image, being gazed at by her solipsism, by other men. She is elusive, insubstantial, but also transcendent.

READ MORE…

Emma Bovary’s Adventures in Saigon, Part I

June 2, 2021  |  in Essays  |  by Thuy Dinh

Hoàng Hải Thủy’s 1973 Vietnamese translation of Flaubert’s classic complicates perceptions of domestication and foreignization.

This is the first in a two-part series that explores the indeterminate translation effects of foreignization and domestication, as illustrated by Hoàng Hải Thủy’s 1973 Vietnamese adaptation of Madame Bovary. Read the second part here.

Note: The below version has been revised to reflect important corrections. Lawrence Venuti’s theoretical framework, as reflected in the revised essay, does acknowledge the subaltern’s perspective and show that domestication and foreignization encompass both discursive approaches and their multifaceted effects.

Since the earlier version did not fairly reflect the full implications of Mr. Venuti’s work, the author owes Mr. Venuti an apology and would like to thank him for his forbearance and collegial support.

In 1813, Friedrich Schleiermacher, the German translator of Plato, had proposed that a translator has two choices, “either such translator leaves the author in peace as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or the translator leaves the reader in peace as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.” The former technique could be defined as foreignization, and the latter domestication. Today translation scholar Lawrence Venuti has expanded on Schleiermacher’s perspective by constructing an ethics of difference in translation. According to Venuti, translations geared toward domestication effects risk perpetuating certain uncontested beliefs in the maintenance of the status quo. As a corrective, he has proposed a meticulous yet adaptable theoretical framework that can illuminate any translation, regardless of language and culture, regardless of their status as dominant or dominated, major or minor. In his view, foreignizing translations can expand the linguistic and stylistic resources of the translating language by broadening the parameters of readability.

If we define foreignizing as a translation approach that creates noticeable effects and variations from the prevalent standard, and domesticating as conforming to pre-existing norms, how do we gauge these effects against a translator’s stated intention, his unconscious bias, inadvertent omissions or errors? My essay attempts to illustrate these questions by discussing Hoàng Hải Thủy’s Người Vợ Ngoại Tình—his 1973 adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

December 18, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Julia Sherwood, Quyen Nguyen, and Shawn Hoo

The latest news from Austria, Singapore, and Vietnam!

This week our writers bring you the latest news from Austria, where the annual European Literature Days took place; Singapore, where Singapore Unbound has launched a new translation imprint; and Vietnam, where Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk has been translated into Vietnamese. Read on to find out more! 

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-large, reporting from Austria

The rolling hills of Austria’s Wachau are usually alive with the sound of music and literature in November as writers from all over Europe converge on the picturesque wine-growing region on the banks of the Danube for the annual European Literature Days. This year, however, since Austria went into lockdown just days before the festival began on 19 November, the words and the music emanated from the empty auditorium of the sound space (Klangraum) of the Minoriten Church in Krems. Writer Walter Grond and his colleagues from Literaturhaus Europa, joined by co-hosts Rosie Goldsmith from England’s Wiltshire and Hans-Gerd Koch from Berlin, linked up digitally with writers and musicians across Europe for four days of readings and discussions. The last-minute switch to digital format went without a hitch and the loss for those who had been looking forward to meeting old friends and enjoying autumn walks and the delicious local wine proved to be a gain for the rest of the world, as the entire festival was live-streamed (the recordings are available on the Elit YouTube channel). More Wilderness!—the festival theme that, as had happened so often before, proved to be uncannily prescient in view of the pandemic—was introduced by Austrian writer Robert Menasse in conversation with German philosopher Ariadne von Schirach, who continued exploring the wilderness inside and outside the following day in a dialogue with biologist and biosemiotician Andreas Weber. Over the weekend, a dizzying range of authors discussed and read from their works: from stars such as Sjón, Petina Gappah, and A.L. Kennedy (the recipient of this year’s Austrian Booksellers’ Prize of Honour for Tolerance in Thinking and Acting); through those who made their name more recently, like Olga Grjasnowa (Germany), Filip Springer (Poland) as well as Polly Clarke and Dan Richards from the UK; to writers who have yet to make their name in the Anglophone world, such as the Hungarian Gergely Péterfy, the Italian Fabio Andina, the Czech-born Austrian writer and musician Michael Stavarič, the Slovak Peter Balko, and Miek Zwamborn, a Dutch author based on the Scottish Isle of Mull. In addition to Menasse and Grond, the home-grown talent included writer and musician Ernst Molden, whose balcony concerts helped to keep up the spirits of his neighbourhood in Vienna during the first wave of the pandemic, and Daniela Emminger, whose reading from her dystopian novel set in Hitler’s birthplace, Braunau, was enlivened by the appearance of a banana-munching gorilla. Emminger’s succinct summaries of the whole festival can be read here. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

December 4, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Clémence Lucchini, MK Harb, and Thuy Dinh

The latest news from Lebanon, the Vietnamese diaspora, and France!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Lebanon, the Vietnamese diaspora, and France. In Lebanon, Jadaliyya has published an essay on the late Lebanese poet Iliya Abu Madi and Lebanese author Nasri Atallah has been included in a new anthology, Haramcy; in the Vietnamese diaspora, December 6 marks the 183th birthday of Petrus Ký, a prominent Vietnamese scholar who helped to improve the cultural understanding between French-colonized Vietnam and Europe; and in France, whilst bookshops have suffered from national lockdowns, a new translation of poems by contemporary poet Claire Malroux has been released. Read on to find out more! 

MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon

Arab sci-fi lovers rejoice! An Arabic translation of the late American science fiction author Octavia Butler’s Kindred is coming out with Takween Publishing. Dr. Mona Kareem Kareem, a writer, literary scholar, and Arabic-English literary translator, worked on the Arabic manuscript during her residency at Princeton University. She will be holding an online talk, “To Translate Octavia Butler: Race, History, and Sci-Fi,” on December 7. Tune in as you wait for the manuscript with sci-fi jitters! In other translation news, Kevin Michael Smith, a scholar and translator of global modernist poetry, translated two poems by Saadi Youssef for Jadaliyya. Yousef is a prolific writer, poet, and political activist from Iraq and we are delighted to see more of his work profiled in English. Also on Jadaliyya is this beautiful rumination on the late Lebanese poet Iliya Abu Madi and his political imagination. Abu Madi wrote spellbinding poetry and was part of the twentieth-century Mahjar movement in the United States, which included the renowned Lebanese author, Gibran Khalil Gibran.

In publishing news, Bodour Al-Qasimi, founder and CEO of Kalimat Group, an Emirati publishing house for Arabic books, has been announced as the president of the International Publishers Association! Al-Qasimi has tirelessly worked on expanding the scope of the Arab publishing industry and we are happy to see her achieve this feat. Award-winning artist and cultural entrepreneur, Zahed Sultan, is seeking to release Haramcy, an anthology with twelve writers from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, including Lebanese author Nasri Atallah. It is set to be published with Unbound Books and the anthology addresses pertinent themes of love, invisibility, and belonging. In the spirit of the holidays, if you are feeling generous and capable of donating, then consider contributing to the Haramcy Fund.

We know the holidays are upon us and you are looking forward to cozying up with a book or two (or five in our case!). We have some new Arabic literature in translation for you to read during the holidays! The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize shortlist has been announced! Another shortlist we are excited about is the Warwick Women in Translation Prize, which features Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Sudanese author, Rania Mamoun, translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette.

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora

December 6, 2020 marks the 183th birthday of Petrus Ký, also called Trương Vĩnh Ký, whose prolific achievements as scholar, translator, and publisher helped broaden the cultural understanding between French-colonized Vietnam and Europe. His vanguard efforts popularized chữ quốc ngữ, or modern Romanized script—leading to its official adoption as Vietnam’s national language in the early twentieth century. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 3, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Jiaoyang Li, and Quyen Nguyen

Bringing the latest in literary news from China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam!

Literature has the fortunate habit of making itself known via a variety of media. This week, our editors from around the world introduce a thrilling TV adaptation from one of China’s most promising authors, the protests in Hong Kong making its way through its censored literatures, and a Vietnamese classic that has been underserved by its celebrated translation.

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong:

This week, Hong Kong is stricken by Beijing’s passing of the sweeping new national security law for the city. The law was unanimously passed on June 30 by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, bypassing Hong Kong’s Legislative Council and without consulting the citizens. Details were not even revealed until 11 p.m. on the same day, to be put into effect on July 1. The details of the national security law indicate that the new law has broad offences, can override Hong Kong law, allows trials to be closed to the public, and requires the establishment of a National Security Office in Hong Kong directly controlled by Beijing, among other key points. The priority given to the new law can possibly erode Hong Kong’s judicial independence and be in conflict with Hong Kong’s common law tradition.
Fear towards the establishment of the new national security law has been spreading since the passing of the proposal in late May during the National People’s Congress.

Critics expect that the law will adversely influence Hong Kong’s freedom of expression and citizens’ rights to oppose decisions or policies determined by the government or China. Under such an intense political climate, quite a number of political works have been recently published, striving to defend free speech and publication, including Sociology professor Dr. Chan Kin Man’s Letters from the Prison, as he was sentenced to sixteen months imprisonment for his participation in the Umbrella Movement; and media professional Ryan Lau’s That Night in Yuen Long, which is a work of documentary literature on the 2019 Yuen Long attack.

Meanwhile, regardless of the continued threat of COVID-19, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council decided that the Hong Kong Book Fair would be held as scheduled from July 15 to July 21, under the theme of, “Inspirational and Motivational Reading”. However, with the implement of the new national security law, the publication sector is concerned about the displaying of politically sensitive books at the Book Fair being potentially prosecuted. Some publishers have already suspended the production of some books related to the anti-extradition movement and have given up displaying books related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Although the actual impact on Hong Kong’s freedom of speech is yet to be fully revealed, tangible effects of fear induced self-censorship are pervasive. READ MORE…

Land / Water: A Chronicle of Vietnamese as a Diasporic Condition

May 27, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by Maya Nguyen

There can be no firm diasporic life. Only affirmation of the un-firm: the resolution of irresolution between one home and another.

The journey that a language takes to arrive at us is often unimaginably intricate, with all the marks of history, people, and land upon it. In the following essay, gorgeous with lyricism and intimate with the facts and ideas of past and present, Maya Nguen takes us through the emotional and physical cartography of Vietnam and its language, and how such structures reverberate against the ever-mutable definitions of identity, personhood, and home.

In the beginning is a creation myth.
Âu Cơ meets Lạc Long Quân where mountain meets sea.
They form a bond and Âu Cơ bears an egg sac with a hundred children.
At the core of their bond with one another is another bond of one with the mountain and the other with the sea. So it came to be that fifty children followed Âu Cơ for the mountain whence she came and fifty followed Lạc Long Quân for the sea whence he came. And as Âu Cơ calls for land and Lạc Long Quân calls for water their children come to call a country
land  water
đất   nước ¹
 where land begins at the edge of the water that starts at the end of the land: is a shore that holds the country in the crossing between one word and another: between 越南 & Indochine Française & Việt Nam & Vietnam
the Vietnamese language emerges at the border
thoroughly other & utterly ones own
& defined by a border endures
Diasporic
& Pure

<<  >>

In prehistory: Austroasiatic tribes living in the Red River Delta (today’s Northern Vietnam) speak a Proto-Viet language belonging to the Mon-Khmer language family.

<<  >>

Beginning in 111 BC: Colonization by the Chinese empire for eleven centuries to follow. Classical Chinese is imposed as the written language of the government elite, forming the basis of politics, science, and literature. Proto-Viet continues to be spoken, and its speech, to be influenced by Classical Chinese.

<<  >>

Beginning in the tenth century: Independence from the Chinese won by King Ngô Quyền at the shores of Bạch Đằng River. After a millennium of foreign occupation without a formal writing system of its own, independent Vietnam continues as before: with Classical Chinese at its helm.

<<  >>

Beginning in the thirteenth century: A vernacular written script called Chữ Nôm (lit. “southern characters”) is developed on the basis of Classical Chinese to record Vietnamese folk music and poetry. Considered as the pillar of Vietnamese literature, Truyện Kiều (Tale of Kieu) by Nguyễn Du is written in Chữ Nôm. For this script, Chinese characters are naturalized to fit the Vietnamese spoken language, which itself includes Chinese words naturalized into Vietnamese. “Southern characters” in Chữ Nôm: 𡨸喃. “Southern characters” in Classical Chinese: 字南. 𡨸喃 is taught in reference to 字南. 𡨸喃 exists alongside 字南: forming a pillar: a porous border. READ MORE…

Our Spring 2020 Issue Has Landed!

April 16, 2020  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Feat. Anton Chekhov, Tsering Woeser, Phan Nhiên Hạo, Chus Pato and Alba Cid in our Galician Feature amid new work from 30 countries

Explore the grand scheme of things in Asymptote’s Spring 2020 edition “A Primal Design,” featuring poetry by Zuzanna Ginczanka and Phan Nhiên Hạo, drama from the great Anton Chekhov, Joshua Craze’s review of António Lobo Antunes’ latest fiction, and Fiona Bell’s essay on the “diva mode” of translation. Our Special Feature this season showcases Galician poetry, headlined by Chus Pato. The vivid colors of guest artist Ishibashi Chiharu set the tone for exciting new work from 30 countries and 24 languages, while Ain Bailey’s sonic art provides a fitting soundtrack!

The oracle reveals the obscure plan that drives history, and Galicia, as evoked by its poets, shimmers with oracular resonance. “Language endures / Bodies do not,” declares Gonzalo Hermo, and indeed, these verses seem meant for stone inscriptions. Lara Dopazo Ruibal’s work takes a more visceral approach: “the fig tree grows inside me while the scorpion hunts the ants coming out of my eyes.” But everywhere these poets deal in the essential, the “gold in its original depths,” as Alba Cid writes.

The primeval and the primordial abound in highlights like Matteo Meschiari’s dive into prehistory in his powerful fiction, “Red Ivory,” or Auschwitz survivor Edith Bruck’s lyrics, as immediate as they are minimal. Tareq Imam considers the sublime terror of blindness in a Borges-inspired tale, “Through Sightless Eyes”: truly we are as the blind before destiny. History, like that of Tsering Woeser’s immemorial Buddhist Tibet, provides an illusion of clarity in our confusion. Amidst all that disorientation, writes Seo Jung Hak, “Even if I scribble a poem, the absurdity like a fly who doesn’t bother to fly away somewhere is sitting on a chair like an old joke.”

As we sit quarantined in Plato’s cave pondering our collective conundrum, consider casting shadows of your own when you share news of the issue on Facebook or Twitter; as thanks, here’s a free flyer of the issue to print and share with friends!

If the work that we do touches you, consider signing up to our Book Club, or becoming a sustaining member from as little as $5 a month. We couldn’t do it without you!

Read the issue | Join our family 

Open Secrets: An Interview with Phan Nhiên Hạo

April 15, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Sarah Timmer Harvey

To be published in Vietnam, however, one must accept censorship, and this is the price that I refuse to pay.

In a poem titled “Wash Your Hands,” Phan Nhiên Hạo writes “Gentlemen, this is no trivial matter / another story about art for art’s sake, or art for life / this is the story about a cut the length of decades.” The poem, written in 2009, seems to disrupt time, speaking as much to our harrowing present as it does to Phan’s own complex past. Indeed, much of Phan Nhiên Hạo’s latest collection, Paper Bells, appears to confirm Diana Khoi Nguyen’s view that Phan is a poet “gifted with the ability to be present in multiple planes of existence.”

Meticulously translated from the Vietnamese by Hai-Dang Phan, Paper Bells was recently published by Brooklyn-based press, The Song Cave. As the world contended with the rampant spread of COVID-19 and millions of people were struggling to adjust to a frightening new reality, Phan Nhiên Hạo graciously agreed to correspond with me. We emailed about Paper Bells and balancing the lockdown with writing and family. And Phan shared his thoughts on censorship, writing in exile and the vital importance of personal narratives when it comes to (re)writing history.

—Sarah Timmer Harvey, March 2020

Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): We find ourselves corresponding at a very strange and challenging time. You’re in Illinois, I’m in New York, and both of us are at home due to the coronavirus pandemic. I hope that you and your loved ones are well. How are you isolating and spending your time? Do you feel compelled and able to write?

Phan Nhiên Hạo (PNH): I work for a university library, and the university has been closed due to the coronavirus—yet, we are expected to work from home. Interestingly, we now have more meetings than ever before, but they are virtual meetings. I feel I am mentally well-equipped to be socially distant. Most poets are introverted people, I guess, and that helps a lot in this situation. I want to write, but I need time to absorb the current situation. The pandemic is so surreal, so absurd, so impactful to life at an unimaginable magnitude. It looks like I will stay home for a while, so hopefully, I will be able to write more eventually. READ MORE…

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2020

January 20, 2020  |  in News  |  by Rachel Allen, Sarah Moore, and Xiao Yue Shan

Our blog editors pick their favorite pieces from the Winter 2020 issue!

Asymptote celebrates its ninth anniversary with the Winter 2020 issue, featuring new work from thirty-one countries and twenty-two languages (including three new ones: Kurmanci, Old Scots, and Serbo-Croatian)! To help you navigate through such an abundance, our blog editors reveal their favorite pieces below:

Each issue of Asymptote brings with it a utopian vision—that many nations (thirty-one, in this case) may share a page, with each literature distinct but gathered in communion, resulting in a chorus that somehow does not subjugate any single voice. As always, I am astounded by the way one is allowed to travel along the cartography of these collected texts, and how vividly they summon the worlds available in their language.

For a while now I’ve been entertaining the thought that the first step to harnessing language (if there is such a thing) is to distrust it, and so was stopped short by the first line of Eduardo Lalo’s “Unbelieve/Unwrite”:

Unbelieve. Unbelieving the world means questioning the structures that sustain it.

And a couple lines on:

Unbelieving so that writing will wash ashore, like a gift.

These writings are the result of a great loss that causes one to take solace in nothingness, and seems particularly resonant today in the age in which traditional anchors—nationality, religion, family, certainty in our survival as a species—are quickly being drained of their staying power. Arriving in the aftermath of Puerto Rico’s devastation, Lalo seeks to dismantle our reliance on infrastructures both physical and psychological, while simultaneously being brilliantly aware of life’s unassailable fullness. Lalo continuously returns to the art of writing as a source of stability and control, and in doing so affirms the act of writing as a way of approaching the world, absolving the art of its mystery but instilling it with conviction. It is bleak and somehow victorious. READ MORE…

New Year, New Horizons!

January 1, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by Rachel Allen, Sarah Moore, and Xiao Yue Shan

Reading resolutions for 2020—brought to you by the blog team.

Happy New Year, reader! To ring in the ’20s, we are getting personal and sharing our own reading resolutions. From literature engaged with the effects of climate change to classic theological texts, here are the reads we have on the radar for 2020. Maybe our titles overlap with some of yours? If you’re inspired, share your resolutions with us in the comments below.

Xiao Yue Shan, Assistant Blog Editor:

We are becoming ever more impelled by the worst-case scenarios, the ultimate consequences of our carelessness. Climate change is cemented at the pinnacle of every engaged mind, consuming the concerns of those on the forefront of human progress—the writers. December is a month of returns, and a trip across the Pacific on my part meant a reabsorption into the beloved stacks of books left behind by a past self who had endlessly imagined the present. I found in those volumes an incredible vitality—it takes considerably more courage to speculate on the future now, yet in our infinitely ideating language, we can’t help it, we imagine naturally, as we have always done.

Usually my reading directives are predictable, by which I mean they’re somewhat “in accordance” with my being a female Chinese poet—the tendency veers towards a healthy majority of women writers, plenty of Chinese literature, and as much poetry as possible. As we approach the new decade, however, I’ve turned my attention to literature more specifically in dialogue with our planet. In Amitav Ghosh’s beautifully urgent book-length essay, The Great Derangement, he convincingly argues for an overhaul of the fiction genre so that it may better address and reflect upon our contemporary precarity. Though the best of our stories are inevitably engaged with our environment, I found Ghosh’s take riveting in its insistence that we continue to build and invent language that is ever more precise, alert, and curious. READ MORE…

Our Year in World Literature

December 31, 2019  |  in News  |  by Alexander Dickow and Lee Yew Leong

The top 10 articles we published in 2019—according to you!

To send off 2019, we’re revisiting the ten most-read articles from our issues this year. Not surprisingly, most of them were concentrated in our Spring 2019 issue, voted by 290 readers as your favorite edition this year. Scroll down to see which article was the biggest hit in a year that saw never-before-published writing from 70 countries and 44 languages spread out over four quarterly issues.

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At No. 10 is Argentine author Sylvia Molloy’s thrilling but sensitive meditation on the bilingual condition from the Fall 2019 issue—read her essay “Living Between Languages.” READ MORE…