Posts featuring Viet Thanh Nguyen

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

November 29, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury and Wambua Muindi

The latest literary news from Palestine and Kenya!

This week, our editors-at-large report on the intersection of literature and politics, from a pledge by leading others to boycott Israeli cultural institutions to a book launch by a prominent Kenyan political figure. From a historic call for solidarity with Palestine to an alleged abduction following a book launch, read on to find out more.

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

In a historic move, over 6,500 authors and literary professionals have pledged to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, citing their complicity in the oppression of Palestinians. This unprecedented commitment, initiated by more than 1,000 signatories, underscores a growing global response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The open letter articulates a collective moral stance: “We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement.”

Notable figures among the signatories include Nobel laureates Annie Ernaux and Viet Thanh Nguyen, alongside prominent authors such as Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy, and Michael Rosen. The letter draws parallels to the cultural boycott against apartheid South Africa, emphasizing the role of culture in normalizing injustices. It states that Israeli cultural institutions have historically obscured the realities of Palestinian dispossession and oppression.

The authors express that working with these institutions would contribute to harm against Palestinians, urging fellow writers and industry professionals to join their cause. They call for a recognition of moral responsibility and a refusal to support entities that perpetuate systemic injustice. This movement represents one of the most significant cultural boycotts in recent history, reflecting a profound commitment from the literary community to advocate for Palestinian rights amidst escalating violence and humanitarian crises. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

May 31, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury and René Esaú Sánchez

Updates from Mexico and Palestine solidarity around the literary world.

This week, our editors share news of solidarity, legacy, and cross-cultural connection. Around the world, the literary world is showing up to express support for Palestine, with the Palestine Festival of Literature continuing their crucial work of uplifting work that urges us towards compassion, the Palestinian struggle, and a condemnation of violence. In Mexico, some of the greatest writers in Latin-American history are celebrated for their efforts in connecting their nation to a greater, global heritage of letters. Read on to find out more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

In a historic demonstration of solidarity, the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest), Writers Against the War on Gaza, and Amplify Palestine have come together to organize the event “Freedom to Write for Palestine,” held on May 7 at Judson Memorial Church in New York City. This significant gathering brought together writers who had withdrawn from PEN America’s World Voices Festival and the PEN America Literary Awards, condemning the organization’s failure to support Palestinian writers facing violence and displacement in Gaza. The unprecedented withdrawal of dozens of authors led to the cancellation of both PEN America events just weeks before their scheduled dates.

The program featured opening remarks by Nancy Kricorian and an introduction by Derecka Purnell, and included powerful readings and stories from Michelle Alexander, who read the work of Haya Abu Nasser, and Mohamed Arafat, who shared his family’s harrowing experiences. Evie Shockley read pieces by Fady Joudah, while Nicholas Glastonbury presented an insightful commentary on the Palestinian struggle. The event can be watched in full here. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 27, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by José García Escobar, Rubén López, and Thuy Dinh

The latest in literary news from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the Vietnamese diaspora!

This week in world literature, we hear from our Editors-at-Large reporting on the latest in literary developments! In Guatemala, we’re covering the literary community’s response to threats to the electoral process, as well as the country’s most recent award-winning authors. From the Vietnamese diaspora, we take a dive into two authors’ recent publications. Read on to learn more!

Rubén López, Editor-at-Large, Reporting on Guatemala

On August 31, sixty-two Guatemalan writers, editors, and artists signed a statement calling for the resignation of María Consuelo Porras, Head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Ms. Porras, who was included in the Engels List of 2023 for obstructing investigations against corrupt political allies, has been the main actor in the attempt to sabotage the Guatemalan electoral process of this year. 

On June 25, the progressive presidential ticket composed of Bernardo Arévalo and Karin Herrera surprisingly made it to the second round of the election. This started a series of legalistic arbitrariness from Ms. Porras in an effort to prevent the duly elected candidates from taking office democratically on January 14. 

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Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

March 31, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Meghan Racklin, and Thuy Dinh

The latest literary news from the United States, Vietnam and the Vietnamese Diaspora, and the Philippines!

This week’s roundup of literary news from around the world highlights exciting new publications and publishing trends! From a literary marriage in the United States to the return of a beloved author and history titles in the Philippines, read on to find out more!

Meghan Racklin, Assistant Blog Editor, reporting from the United States

Last week, at their annual awards ceremony—in person again for the first time since the onset of the pandemic—the National Book Critics Circle awarded the inaugural Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize to Grey Bees by Andrew Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk. The new award brings attention to books translated into English and published in the United States, where only a small number of books in translation are published each year—Publishers Weekly’s translation database lists only 419 books in translation published in the United States in 2022.

Dralyuk, the award winner, is a poet and critic as well as a translator and until recently was the Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books. His translation was selected from a competitive group of finalists which, notably, also included the translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob by Jennifer Croft—Dralyuk’s wife. Prior to the announcement of the award winner, the two gave an interview to the L.A. Times about their relationship to translation and to each other. Croft said “Once we started dating, I would find Boris on my steps, where he would tell me about what he had just translated. He gets so emotionally invested. . . . He’s so careful about every word. It was very moving and, I think, a large part of how we came together.”

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

September 17, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andriana Hamas, Darren Huang, and Thuy Dinh

The latest in literary news from Vietnam, Bulgaria, and Taiwan!

As Venice makes its cinema showcase and the MET spreads its red carpets for the lavishly dressed, literature also serves up September as a memorable month with plenty of international displays and showcases of both known favorites and new releases. This week, a vital Vietnamese poet is commemorated in film, a varied arts festival takes place on Bulgarian shores, and an eminent Taiwanese author makes his English-language debut. Read on to find out more!

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

Each year, on September 16, the village of Tiên Điền, in the province of Hà Tĩnh, commemorates the death anniversary of Nguyễn Du (1765-1820), its venerated native son and author of The Tale of Kiều—a 3,254-line epic poem unequivocally embraced as the Vietnamese soul. This year, to mark the 201st year of his passing, the three-hour biopic Đại Thi Hào Nguyễn Du (The Great Poet Nguyễn Du) will make its premiere at the XXII National Film Festival in Hue, Central Vietnam. The film’s original September release—meant to coincide with Nguyễn Du’s death anniversary—has now been rescheduled to November 2021, due to safety concerns related to Vietnam’s recent surge of COVID cases.

The Tale of Kiều, created during a time of warring loyalties and written in the Nôm (Southern) script with Chinese characters modified to reflect Vietnamese spoken vernacular, has been endlessly adapted into cải lương (“reformed” Southern Vietnamese folk opera), chèo (Northern Vietnamese musical theatre), Western-styled opera, and films. Since the idea of trinh 貞 (chastity/integrity/ faithfulness) in Nguyễn Du’s oeuvre represents both a conceptual and linguistic challenge, its complexity has inspired at least six English translations in recent decades. Huỳnh Sanh Thông’s Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kieu–A Bilingual Edition (Yale University Press, 1983), while still considered the gold standard, employs unrhymed iambic pentameter that often lapses into wooden syntax. Vladislav Zhukov’s The Kim Vân Kiều of Nguyễn Du (Cornell University Press, 2013), in grafting iambic pentameter to lục bát (six-eight syllable Vietnamese rhyme scheme), results in obtuse renderings reminiscent of Nabokov’s eccentric translation of Eugene Onegin. Most recently, Timothy Allen’s The Song of Kieu: A New Lament (Penguin, 2019), while ebullient with vivid syntax, contains numerous errors and self-indulgent interpretations.

Nguyễn Du’s mistrust of chastity goes hand in hand with his concept of exile; his heroine wanders far-flung places and learns to survive by endless transformations—also a recurring theme in Kiều Chinh: Nghệ Sĩ Lưu Vong (Kiều Chinh: Artist in Exile) (Văn Học Press, 2021). Penned by veteran Vietnamese American actress Kiều Chinh, the memoir echoes Nguyễn Du’s art of story-telling “to beguile an hour or two of your long night.”[i] The Joy Luck Club actress—whose dramatic flight to freedom is recounted in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer—will embark on a September-November book tour to Vietnamese diasporic communities in the U.S., sharing chapters from her own life that reflect the larger history of Vietnam.

[i]Huỳnh Sanh Thông’s English translation, The Tale of Kiều, line 3254, p. 167.

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Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

October 30, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Kwan Ann Tan, Sarah Moore, and Thuy Dinh

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

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from the Vietnamese diaspora, Malaysia, and France. This month celebrates children’s literature in the Vietnamese diaspora, with a host of events and literary magazine Da Màu publishing a special issue. Malaysia also anticipates an exciting month with two Malaysian-born women recently making the longlist for Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the shortlist for the Malaysian Migrant Poetry Competition due to be announced today. A second lockdown in France has instigated an appeal by publishing and bookselling unions to keep bookshops open—and the prestigious Goncourt prize has postponed announcing its 2020 winner until this happens. Read on to find out more! 

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

October 2020 is Children’s Literature Month for the Vietnamese diaspora. The Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) is currently hosting its first online, month-long Viet Book Fest, which features readings by authors, followed by interactive Q&A sessions, and culminating in a Halloween celebration and book auction on October 31. About thirty families have attended each session, and Facebook live engagement has reached close to 1,000 people.

Vietnamese diasporic literature, representing “the losing side,” suffers from double marginalization since it belongs neither to the Vietnamese literary tradition inside Vietnam nor its host country’s mainstream tradition. To resist this condition, Viet Book Fest titles share an endeavor analogous to translation: how to preserve the diasporic community’s collective memory and make it resonate in a transplanted, multivalent milieu.

Tran Thi Minh Phuoc’s Vietnamese Children’s Favorite Stories teaches foundational stories—many of which are epistemological—such as how the Vietnamese came to eat bánh chưng (“offering earth cake”) during the lunar new year, and how the monsoon season originated from an ancient rivalry between the Mountain Lord and the Sea Lord. Minh Le’s Green Lantern: Legacy reconciles conflicting cultural values, where a Western-based superhero myth centering on innovation and technological prowess is rewritten to include a Vietnamese viewpoint that incorporates community legacy and compassion. The idea of non-conforming identity as a magical construction is reflected in Bao Phi’s My Footprints, where a Vietnamese-American girl learns to take pride in her two moms and her heritage, as symbolized by her embrace of the fenghuang (phoenix) from East Asian mythology and the Sharabha from Hindu mythology. Lastly, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ellison Nguyen’s Chicken of the Sea extols peace, where the victorious King of the Dog Knights grants amnesty to the defeated chicken pirates and welcomes them with a big party. 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…

A Special Message from Our Editor-in-Chief

December 3, 2019  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

If this #GivingTuesday inspires you to donate to a cause, let it be Asymptote, the journal that rolls out the red carpet for world literature.

Dear friends,

This giving season, consider throwing in your support for the journal that none other than Dubravka Ugrešić (pictured above) recently called “the global literary miracle.”

In 2019, we brought you never-before-published writing from 70 countries and 44 languages—more than any other Anglophone magazine has unearthed. Though it may seem a miracle on the outside—a journal that puts so many underrepresented voices in conversation with established names like Dubravka Ugrešić and Viet Thanh Nguyen—it takes hard work behind the scenes to uphold both the diversity and the rigor of our content.

Why do we strive to include outsiders? Because we know what it’s like to be an outsider. 

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Blog Editors’ Highlights: Spring 2019

April 22, 2019  |  in News  |  by Jonathan Egid, Nina Perrotta, and Xiao Yue Shan

Join our blog editors as they explore everything the Spring 2019 issue has to offer!

The Spring 2019 issue of Asymptote, “Cosmic Connections,” features work from 27 countries and 17 different languages. If you’re not sure where to begin, our blog editors have you covered with recommendations for some of their favorite pieces, including an essay about an adventure in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a story that jumps from medieval Jewish theology to the relationship between an Argentine father and son, and poems that offer us a glimpse into intimate moments in the city of Shanghai.

Asymptote’s newest issue is one of the journal’s best to date, meaning that it was nearly impossible to choose just one piece to highlight. In the interviews section, I found Dubravka Ugrešić’s comments on literary activism and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s discussion of the role of Marxism in his work particularly illuminating, while, in the special feature, Nancy Kline’s essay stood out for its focus on the often-overlooked role of the writer’s (and the translator’s) accent and spoken voice in the translation process. But I’d like to devote my highlight to an essay by a somewhat lesser-known writer, one who might otherwise get lost among the many big names that appear in this issue.

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2018: A Year of Reading Adventurously

January 5, 2018  |  in Essays  |  by Caitlin O'Neil, Chris Power, Claire Jacobson, and Theophilus Kwek

In 2018, I’ll be making an effort to trace my inheritance as an Anglophone, Southeast Asian poet of faith and colour.

After the recently concluded blog series in which we looked back on 2017’s literary discoveries, we bring you our New Year’s reading resolutions.

Chris Power, Assistant Editor:

I work in French and German, so I’ll start with my French literary resolutions: I’m reading Marx et la poupée (Marx and the Doll) by Maryam Madjidi with my friend and former French professor, the psychoanalytic literary theorist Jerry Aline Flieger. Excerpts of the novel of course appear in our current issue. If it isn’t my favorite work we’ve published, then it stands out for being the one that overwhelmed my critical faculties. I couldn’t write about it in the disinterested manner that I prefer. Instead I wrote a confused, gushing blurb listing my favorite scenes and describing how it brought tears to my eyes. An emphatic “yes” was all I could muster. Next on my list is Réparer le monde (Repair the World) by Alexandre Gefen, to which Laurent Demanze dedicated a beautiful essay in Diacritik in late November. I’m looking forward not only to an insightful survey of contemporary French literature, but also to a provocative anti-theoretical turn in the history of literary theory, namely a theory of the utility of literature (to repair the world) which cites pragmatist philosophers like John Dewey. Gefen introduces this theory enticingly through a reading of Barthes in his lecture “A quoi bon ? Les pouvoirs de la littérature (La tentation de l’écriture)” / “What’s the use? The powers of literature (the temptation of writing)” which is available online, but I must admit that I’m reminded of a Baudelaire quote dear to me: “Être un homme utile m’a toujours paru quelque chose de bien hideux.” (“To be a useful man has always appeared to me to be particularly hideous.”) In 2018 I’ll also continue exploring the work of Sarah Kofman, who seems to me to be a diamond in the rough of historical amnesia and a potential dissertation topic. She’s exactly the kind of Nietzschean, Parisian philosopher-poet of the 1960s who worked at the intersection of philosophy and art that we’ve grown so comfortable labelling a “theorist,” but she hasn’t (yet) acquired the cult following of her dissertation advisor Gilles Deleuze or colleague Jacques Derrida.

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My 2017: Jacob Silkstone

December 29, 2017  |  in Essays  |  by Jacob Silkstone

Perhaps the fitting thing to do would have been to throw the book into the water and let the waves close over it...

Assistant Managing Editor Jacob Silkstone travelled between several countries and two distinct stages of his life in 2017—and still had time to read a ton of literature! Today, in our final column, he reflects on the books that accompanied him on the move.

* * *

“If I imagine something, I see it. What more would I do if I travelled? Only extreme feebleness of the imagination can justify anyone needing to travel in order to feel.”

The complete edition of Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (translated by the incomparable Margaret Jull Costa) finally became available to English readers in 2017, and I first read Bernardo Soares’ hodophobic lines in an Airbnb flat in Portugal at the 40-degree height of summer. The water supply had been temporarily cut off and for hours the taps dribbled a thin brown fluid, but I had Soares’ life “of slow rain in which everything is … half-shadow” to keep me occupied.

In a year that began with the Trump travel ban and continued to be marred by small, scared attempts to shelter from the world behind various walls (both real and imaginary), it seems worth playing Devil’s advocate to Soares/Pessoa: perhaps there can be some justification for travelling “in order to feel.”

This year, I moved between several countries and two distinct stages of my life—having finally proposed after nearly nine years in a relationship, I got married in July. The evening after the wedding, I gave my copy of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness away on a whim to one of our guests, a foreign correspondent working in the Middle East. That copy subsequently embarked on a journey Arundhati Roy would have been proud of, travelling from Beirut to Syria to Yemen. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

February 10, 2017  |  in Dispatches, News  |  by Kelsey Woodburn, Nozomi Saito, Paul Worley, and Theophilus Kwek

This week's literary news from Singapore, Latin America, and the US

The week is drawing to a close, and it’s time for a quick wrap-up. This time we’re visiting South and North America where Mexico Editors-at-Large Paul Worley and Kelsey Woodburn, and Executive Assistant Nozomi Saito bring us the latest news. Our final pit stop is in Singapore, where Chief Executive Assistant Theophilus Kwek has been following a new literature campaign, among many other developments. Enjoy!

Our Mexico Editors-at-Large Paul Worley and Kelsey Woodburn had this to tell:

In collaboration with the Mexican Secretary of Culture, on January 24 in Mexico City’s Fine Arts Palace Pluralia Ediciones presented its latest publication, Xtámbaa/Piel de tierra (Earthen Skin) by Hubert Malina (Guerrero State, 1986). Malina’s volume is the first work of poetry published in the Me’phaa language (known by outsiders as Tlapaneco), a language with roughly 100,000 speakers. According to the press release, Malina’s work stands out for its lovingly realistic portrayal of life and community in the mountains of Guerrero. Zapaotec poets Natalia Toledo, 2004 winner of the Nezahualcóyotl Prize in Indigenous Literatures, and Irma Pineda participated in the event, providing commentary on Malina’s work. In particular, Toledo stated that a voice like Malina’s has been lacking within the contemporary indigenous language scene, while Pineda added that Malina’s work balances themes of traditional stories with current realities, guiding the reader through both the beautiful and the difficult contemporary indigenous life. The unveiling of this new book also precedes this February’s Me’phaa Language Festival, to be held in Paraje Montero, Mexico, on Tuesday, February 21 from 9am until 4pm.

In Guatemala City, Guatemala, on February 1 Caravasar hosted an event to celebrate the release of Tania Hernández’s latest work, Desvestir santos y otros tiempos [Undressing Saints and Other Epochs]. This latest publication will no doubt be an excellent addition to the author’s existing work that deals with life in contemporary Guatemala from a feminist perspective. The event was hosted by Rodrigo Arenas-Carter and the groundbreaking Maya poet, book artist, and performance artist Manuel Tzoc Bucup, among others. The event was streamed in real time via Facebook Live.

Finally, poets from all over the world will descend on Medellín, Colombia from July 8-15, 2017, to participate in the 27th International Medellin Poetry Festival. Updated in mid-January, the list of invited poets is a truly remarkable, international lineup, including authors from Algeria, India, Vietnam, Syria, and the UK, in addition to those from throughout Latin America. This will certainly be an event you can’t miss!

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