A Vietnamese American/diasporic reading list
I often get asked what books people should read from Vietnamese American authors. Here's an annotated list, not comprehensive, along with some other diasporic authors thrown in. Big limit: everything is in English or translation. This rules out what people have been writing in Vietnamese. The American publishing industry only puts out about 3% of what it publishes as translations, which is a terrible ratio, and what's worse is that it's all translations of foreign literature. This ignores the many Americans writing in other languages, including Vietnamese people. We have work to do to get these works translated into English.
In reverse, very little Vietnamese American or diasporic literature is translated into Vietnamese. It’s a shame. I think that could help Vietnamese in Vietnam understand the diaspora better.
This list is far, far from complete. You can add your own suggestions in the comments.
I'm really, really amazed by what Vietnamese American and diasporic writers have accomplished. This is only a partial list. We have done our best, fought to get our voices heard, put out a wide range of writing across different genres, and we've been doing it since the 1970s. If we're not heard, it's not our fault.
Amy Quan Barry, She Weeps Each Time You're Born. One of the great underusing novels about wartime and postwar Vietnam. I loved it; it does exactly what I think an ethical fiction about war should do.
Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. A moving memoir about a young girl caught between both sides of the war in Vietnam. I couldn't put it down when I read it in college. Still the only account we have written by a Vietnamese peasant. It's ironic that the war was fought in the name of the peasantry, but almost everyone who gets to speak about the war comes from elite or educated backgrounds.
le thi diem thuy, The Gangster We're All Looking For. A short, poetic, lyrical novel about the refugee experience and the losses that haunt refugees.
Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Like Barry, Vuong is both poet and fiction writer. Read both books. Intense accounts of refugee queer life and emotion.
Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala and The Eaves of Heaven. Nonfiction accounts of southern Vietnamese life. C&M is set during Vietnam's opening to a market economy in the 1990s, and Eaves is about his father, a southern Vietnamese officer. It's the best account I've read about an ARVN soldier's life.
Nam Le, The Boat. Le is Australian, and many of the stories in the book have nothing to do with Vietnamese people, as Le shows what he can do. But the book, from a Vietnamese point of view, is worth it just for the title story and especially for the legendary story "Love and Pity and Honor and Compassion and Sacrifice," just mind-blowingly good about what it means to write about Vietnamese refugee life.
Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do. Comic book memoir about refugee life, gripping from its opening scenes, delving into the lives of two generations. The paperback edition features a short dialogue between Thi and me, in comic book style.
GB Tran, Vietnamerica. Another comic book memoir about war, trauma, generations, the return to Vietnam, the search for history, truth, origins.
Linh Dinh, Love Like Hate. A scathing satire of both Vietnam and the United States, from wartime to postwar capitalism for both countries. Dinh doesn't let up on anyone or any side.
Nguyễ Phan Quế Mai (most Vietnamese American authors don't use the diacritical marks in their names, but she's an international author, born in VN and living in Indonesia), The Mountains Sing. An epic novel that spans the great famine of the 1940s, the land reform of the 1950s, and the American bombing of Hanoi of the 1970s. Also a poet. Truly an amazing read, a Grapes of Wrath for the Vietnamese.
Mai Elliot, The Sacred Willow. A family autobiography that also serves as a history of 20th century Vietnam. Very informative about this history for those who don't want to read actual histories.
Bao Phi, Sông I Sing. A slam poet and political activist, Bao Phi brings the fire and the rage with these poems of Vietnamese American life. Catch him in person if you can. He's a great reader.
Aimee Phan, We Should Never Meet. Moving short stories set in Little Saigon, California, about the orphan experience.
Dao Strom, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys. Not all Vietnamese American literature is about the war, and it shouldn't be. These are four novellas about the lives of Vietnamese American women, focused on intimacy and emotions rather than history or politics.
Kim Thuy, Ru. Short, fragmentary, lyrical evocation of refugee life in Canada and the return to Vietnam. Deeply immersive, a sensational read, a literary triumph in Canadian literature.
Linda Le, Slander. Le is the best-known of the French authors of Vietnamese descent, and this is an intense depiction of the experience of colonialism, exile, and madness.
Monique Truong, The Book of Salt. Poetic, imagistic, imaginative account that begins from a fact: Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein had a Vietnamese cook in 1920s Paris. What was his life like? Who was he? Truong's novel gives us answers.
If you can see them in the theater, catch Qui Nguyen's plays, Vietgone and Poor Yella Rednecks. They're funny, sexy hip hop musical dramedies, with lots of obscenities, about the Vietnamese refugees who went to Arkansas. Thoroughly enjoyable.
And for pure fun, don't miss Ali Wong's memoir, Dear Girls, which is vulgar, funny, and insightful, like her comedy. The chapter on returning to Vietnam is one of the best I've read about that experience.
Or read Phuc Tran's Sigh, Gone, a memoir about growing up in Pennsylvania, becoming a skate-boarding punk rocker who loves literature, and then turning into a teacher of classical languages and a tattoo artist. Unlikely and very funny.
Then there's Helen Hoang's highly readable The Kiss Quotient, a romance novel about a go-getting young woman with Asperger's who falls in love with her half-Vietnamese, half-Swedish male escort. He's the sexiest Vietnamese man ever put into words. Don't read if you don't like hot sex.
Others recommended:
Dragonfish, which made the NY Times 100 notable books for 2015 by Vu Tran
Oanh Ngo's memoir, OF MONKEY BRIDGES AND BANH MI SANDWICHES.
Diana Khoi Nguyen and her book Ghost Of and poetry and fiction by Vi Khi Nao
Nguyen Qui Duc's Where the Ashes Are. Andrew LaM's Birds of Paradise Lost
