Good afternoon, dear ladies and gentlemen, dear students.
It is an honour and a joy for me today to open our first Vietnam Pedro Forum.
We will do together with Fulbright University in Saigon, so I deeply welcome also those who are calling us 12,000 kilometers away from here.
In Saigon and otherwise in the world.
For our first session of our common Vietnam Cultural Forum, we have an honour and a joy to welcome here in Humboldt the famous writer.
She is a very famous, internationally very famous poet and poet.
She is the author of 12 books with poetry, prose and also fiction in Vietnamese in English.
She started her career as the writer with poems in Vietnamese and was already awarded one of the most famous Vietnamese literary prizes,
the Prize Poetry of the Year 2010 of Sahanoi Writers Association, the Prize Poetry about housing years Hanoi, so as much as the Capital's Arts and Literature Award.
Her first novel was written in English.
The Mountain Sing in German translation, the Gesanderberg, was published in 2020.
This first novel is a fictive family saga, which gives historical events a voice.
This book became an international bestseller and was awarded the second place of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Award of the time 2021.
It won the Book Browse Best Review Award of 2020, the International Book Award of 2021, the Penn Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award of 2021 and the London Literary Award Fellowship for Fiction in 2020.
The writing of Nufang Kui Mai was translated in more than 20 languages and appeared in such internationally known publications like the New York Times.
She is publishing regularly in international media, short articles and essays.
She has also in addition a doctoral degree in creative writing from Lancaster University in England, and she was described by Forbes Vietnam as one of the 20 most inspiring women of the year 2021.
Her second novel also published in English with the title Das Child in German translation, the Asherblut, was published in March of 2023, with the second novel Kui Mai tells rarely told stories of Vietnamese history.
This novel is about the experience of Amerasians, which are children of Vietnamese mothers and American military fathers.
Like the first novel, The Mountain Thing, Das Child got many praise of the literary criticism and was awarded from many media the best book of the year or the months of the season.
The Gaston Boston Globe described it an extra visit novel, and it was also nominated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize of 2024.
So it is a really big honor and a joy for us to present this famous Vietnamese, Vietnamese English, and Vietnamese writing of the year Thambo.
And I would hand over to Nufang Kui Mai. Welcome.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for being here with us today.
I would like to introduce also a very special friend of Vietnam who's here with me today, who's wearing this very beautiful dress.
And this is Dapma Schumacher, who founded and is the executive director of Linda Lau's Culture Center, which is not so far from here.
And Dapma worked for UNDP for many years, and she was the host for four years, and she knows a lot about Vietnam.
I will do a short presentation about my writing journey, and later on I will be honored to have a conversation with Professor Thomas and Ms. Thamacher about my books.
And I would welcome questions from you, the audience, here and afar. So thank you so much.
Do you know why I wrote a picture to cheat my reader into reading my poetry?
So I, you know, Vietnam is the nation of poets.
The poet Phuong Huan said, In moments of difficulty, I hold on to the words of poetry to pull myself up.
During my most difficult moments, when I was, like when I was growing up, our family was really poor, I made sure that I was rich in myself.
Thank you.
So my father was an inspiration to me. He bought my, he built out my very first bookshelf from the bamboo in my in our garden and we didn't have much at that time but I had books and books really saved my life.
And this is a picture of my mom and my father in in our home in Buckleo. And at that time I really wanted to be a writer, so you could see the fierce look in my eyes.
I really loved reading at that time.
You know, at that time I had to help my father, my parents with with farming and also life in Vietnam at the time was really hard because it was after the war and we had to leave American trade embargo, but I didn't feel poor because I had my parents love and I had books around me.
And, you know, recently I was just thinking, you know, as long as we have books to read, we are not poor, because we can travel to many places around the earth, the world, we can make friends with people who can really live a rich life.
And I feel really blessed that I can have this, you know, career as a writer because I can completely disappear into the pages of my books and travel to wonderful new places and also build a world of imagination and meet amazing people like you.
So that's a great blessing.
So I started, you know, my writing journey on a motorbike in Hanoi.
I did not recommend you to write poetry on a motorbike like I did, because I got caught by the police many times, and I had to pay a lot of fines. But, but, but I think my very first poems were written on the motorbike when I was living in Hanoi.
Every time I live in West Lake, you know, in the west of the city, and my office, I worked in sustainable development, very far away from literature.
So I was in charge of communications for the office but I, every day I rode through one end of Hanoi to another on the motorbike. And being on a motorbike in Hanoi is a wonderful thing.
You could see the seasons around you, you could hear the street sellers, you could smell the flowers, you could see life around you and life merged into me, flowed into me and emerged in poetry.
I was composing poems on my motorbike. And when I arrived at work, immediately I started writing down something, you know, so that's, that's a part of being outside being in nature, it's very inspiring, and I get a lot of inspiration from the people around me.
But my very first poems about Hanoi are about the garbage collectors or the street sellers, I wanted to honor, you know, like the heroes of Vietnam, the everyday working people, you know, they are truly my heroes, you know, I, I, every day.
I write this poem about the street sellers of Hanoi, and they bring the seasons to me.
They bring the season of loaves, they bring the seasons of whatever, they bring the seasons of mangoes to my doorsteps. And you know, but they have to be away from their families.
So they make a lot of sacrifices to offer the beauty to us. So I wanted to honor them with my poetry.
I also love Vietnamese poetry so much. So at that time, whenever I saw I read a good poem, I started translating it, because I wanted to invite international readers to Vietnam via poetry, because normally outside Vietnam, you know, Vietnam is known as the Vietnam War.
So I was determined to let people know about Vietnam as a country of literature, of 4000 years of history and of literature. So I translated a lot of poetry.
So, for Poetry of Sun Kwing, Lu Wang Vu, and I also produced some radio programs with, with poetry and had a lot of fun. But I thought, you know, not, not many people read poetry these days, unless you write poetry like Ocean Vuong.
So I thought, okay, I have to find a novel to translate into English. So it was looking, looking, looking until one day I thought, why don't I write this novel myself.
So this started the crazy journey of beginning to write in English. And I did a crazy thing. I had a job.
You know, I was a consultant with the UN then I was working with a lot of development agencies, but I decided to quit my job, stay home and write.
But sometimes you have to take that leap of faith, you know, because I always wanted to be a writer. And by then I had worked a lot of years, I had interviewed people from North to South Vietnam overseas.
So I had gathered a lot of stories in my diaries. And these stories, you know, refused to sleep. So I started, I quit my job and stay home and write. And it was the most difficult decision.
Because like, you know, in Vietnam, a lot of people don't consider being a writer is having a real job. So people ask me a lot of questions like what are you doing these days, you know, I remember I was at a party, and somebody asked me.
So what do you do? And I said, I'm a writer. Oh, really? Okay. And then she turned on, she turned to another person, she talked and then she turned to me and said,
What do you really do? I mean, what is your real job? Okay, so I told her my real job is to be a writer. But it was hard for her to believe. Anyway, so so but I had to believe in myself in this this vision of trying to write the stories that I wanted to read the stories that
helped me understand my family history because you know Vietnamese history is so complex. So by researching about it and writing about it, I wanted to understand the trauma of my parents understand the history of the people around me understand the history of my family.
The mountain thing. So these are the first books of poetry that I translated. So because before I started to write in English, I translated a lot of poetry. And I think I have published eight books of translation.
I mean, being a translator taught me a lot about the language, how to work with the language have to be creative with the language and understand a lot of the deeper meanings. And then I translated from English to Vietnamese and Vietnamese to English.
And then I had my first book of poetry, which I translated together with the Vietnam War veteran Bruce Weigel. And I read before my father's home village from this book. And then it helped me a lot when I wrote The Mountain Sing.
The Mountain Sing took me seven years to write many, many of those years I was unemployed because I stayed at home and wrote and, and, you know, I could not find an agent because in Vietnam, I had a lot of publishers who asked me.
Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.
And a lot of publishers who asked for my manuscripts. But with The Mountain Sing, I wanted to venture into, you know, the international stage and I needed an agent.
And I couldn't find an agent. So I finished writing and I sent to a lot of agents, and I did not receive any feedback. So what do you do when the world rejects you? You go on and you fight.
So when I went on, I fought and I wrote my second book. And I was very lucky because the Vietnamese brothers say,
The bad luck was, I couldn't find an agent. The good luck was when I found an agent, I had two book manuscripts. So then she could sell it to one really good publisher in the US.
I did a great thing in New York when I went there to launch the paperback, and I got to sign so many books and they did a surprise party for me.
So, you know, they were fantastic team to work with. And then, and, you know, the Mountain Sing document, a lot of difficult experiences in Vietnamese history, one of which is the Great Hunger of 1945.
One of my own grandmothers died in the Great Hunger of 1945, together with her younger son and with her brother. And we did not find her grave for many, many years.
So I will, I will present you a poem that I wrote for her. But first of all, I want to say that I did, I did not know that this, that this Great Hunger which took place October 44, May 45, then the French and Japanese occupation of Vietnam killed so many people.
People don't know how many experts don't know exactly how many people died, but up to 2 million Vietnamese. And it's very sad because at the moment we we don't have any national memorial for the victims.
We don't have a day to commemorate for the pain and suffering of those people, including my family who lost three family members.
So I would like to invite you to listen to one of the poems I wrote for my grandma who, who perished in the Great Hunger. And the Great Hunger is documented very vividly in the Mountain Sing.
I have this big chapter in the novel. And I think for me to write in English about the Great Hunger.
It was difficult because English is not my first language, my second language, and I got to learn when I was really, I was grown up when I started learning it so I still have to learn English every day.
It's difficult, but in a way, I when I wrote in English, I could step away from the pain. And I could, you know, be removed a little bit format. So I could document it so vividly in the Mountain Sing.
And I think if I wrote it in Vietnamese, it could have been a lot more painful. So, this, so this is the poem, the poem I can't yet name.
This is the poem I can't name.
My hands lift high a bowl of rice.
The seeds harvested in the fields
where my grandmother was laid to rest.
Each rice seed tastes sweet as the sound of lullaby from the grandmother I never knew.
I imagine her soft face as they laid her down into the earth.
Her clothes battered, her skin stuck to her bones.
In the great hunger of 1945, my village was starved for graves to bury all the dead.
Nobody could find my grandmother's grave, so my father tasted bitter rice for 65 years.
After 65 years of searching, spirits of my ancestors led my father and me to my grandmother's grave.
I heard my father call mom for the first time the rice fields behind his back trembled.
My feet clung to the mud.
I listened in the burning incense how my grandmother's soul spread, joining the earth, taking root in the field,
where she quietly sang lullabies, calling the rice plants to blossom.
Lifting the bowl of rice in my hands, I count every seed, each one glistening with the sweat of my ancestors,
their backs bent in the rice fields, the fragrance of my grandmother's lullaby, alive on each one.
I got to know Quyen because she's the audiobook narrator of my two novels, The Mountain Sing Industrial in English.
So when my publisher gave me a list of narrators for the audiobook, I said the first condition is that the person has to speak Vietnamese fluently,
because I use a lot of the Vietnamese language in the novel, so I wanted the person to be fluent in Vietnamese.
So I made good friends with Quyen, and then Jason and Quyen performed at quite a few of my events in the US.
So with The Mountain Sing, I found a big family around the world, including many of you.
Thank you for reading my novels and for embracing the stories of Grandma Ziolan and her granddaughter Huem.
Maybe I will stop here for some audience questions before I go on. We can have a discussion before I don't want to speak too much.
Thank you very much for your interesting performances, and now I open the floor to the public.
Maybe you have questions, if not I have a question, somebody who has already.
Yes, please.
I was so curious, because I think the fact that, like you said, that your fans provided books very early enough,
you don't have time for you to become a very well-known writer and very passionate about writing.
I was wondering what kind of books do you have on T-Day, or what kind?
So the question for those who join us by Zoom is, what kind of books my parents provided for me?
So you can find the titles of some of those books in The Mountain Sing.
So I mentioned them, for example, Zeman, Feluki, The Adventures of the Cricket, The Diary of the Adventures of the Cricket by Tohai.
So I loved that book, I read a lot, and I wanted to be a cricket, you know, travel far away from home and create a lot of troubles.
Because at that time I was a very obedient child, I listened to my parents all the time, and I was just wishing, like,
I could be a cricket, you know, travel the world and, like, cause a lot of things and have a lot of fun.
So I loved that book, I also loved the book, my parents, you know, they were, like, very few books of translated literature at that time,
one of which is Pinocchio from Italy. So I remember that I read that book and I could smell the onion that Pinocchio was eating because he was so hungry, he ate raw onion.
And the description was so vivid that I could taste it and I thought, if I were to become a writer, I had to make the scenes alive.
So that's what a lot of my readers said, when they read The Mountain Sing or Das Chai, they get hungry because I want to describe my most favorite dishes.
Another question I have is, you said you write The Mountain Sing in seven years. What keep you so motivated? Because seven years is a long time and do you have any method to, like, keep going on for that?
That's a great question. A lot of, actually, research has shown that so many people start attempt to write novels and they give up because it's too difficult or because it takes too long or they, you know, they can't finish it.
But I think for me, because I interviewed so many people who told me the most compelling stories, I thought I had to write it for myself.
You know, I wanted to read this book. I wanted to know what happens about this family. And I think one of the things is that for my two books, I did not know the ending.
I created these characters and I created a lot of suspense. And I'm every day when I sat down, I was excited to find out what happens to them.
So I must tell you the ending totally shocked me. I had no idea. And I think in any job, you have to make it fun. You have to make it exciting.
And the excitement for me is to write fiction and not knowing what's going to happen. So normally I scream to myself, but this is what happened.
You know, I think my creative writing teacher told me that don't underestimate the power of your inner mind.
So, you know, your inner mind creates these characters. And every day you work with them, you make them more complex, more human-like.
And I think they will lead you to places where you are destined to go.
Okay. Good question. So I did not know this about book publishing, but like when the book is first published,
so the publisher will bring the hardcover editions. So they will have the design, which is very different.
And then after one year or two years, they will launch the cheaper paperback edition.
So they may come up with a new cover. So the cover with the outside is from the UK publisher.
So my US publisher bought world rights, and these should be printed and distributed in the US.
And then the UK publisher has the right to distribute in the UK and Commonwealth countries like India and so on.
So then also a lot of other publishers also come up with their own design. For example, can I have this?
Yes. So, you know, these two, this is for The Mountain Sing. So it is similar. See, this is similar to the US edition.
So they bought the cover design from the US publisher and they adapted it. But for Das Chai, it is very different.
So this is the US edition and this is the German edition. So they tried a German artist in Hamburg.
Unfortunately, she's away today, so she can't come. But she this is a German design.
A German artist read Das Chai and designed this cover, which is beautiful because I love lotus flowers, the flower of Vietnam.
Yeah. Thank you.
Yes, these are the UK editions.
I wanted to ask more about your writing journey, in case you want to talk about it at a later point today, because you said that you've been writing this novel for seven years.
And you also said that you have a writing degree from the UK. And I wanted to ask you about the timeline when you've been writing the novel for us.
So for the zoom audience, so the question is my writing journey and how I kind of weave my academic studies into my creative writing.
So actually, the mountain thing is my master's project, my master's studies. And Das Chai is my PhD research project.
So actually, because I never had the chance to do a creative writing degree. So when I quit the job and stay home and write, I thought I should do some creative writing studies.
So I wrote in Lancaster University's master's in creative writing program. So then, actually, at that time, I had drafted a book.
My very first book, my very first novel in English is not the mountain thing. It's another book. And I worked on it for many years.
And I didn't think that I mean, the story was really important to me, but it did not. I thought something was missing, first of all, because the timeline was from ages that it was very, you know, and so there was little suspense.
So also, it was told by one character. So it was very difficult for me to build suspense. So then, so I thought, okay, I want my master's degree to fix this novel.
So I submitted it as my creative writing profile. And I got accepted and I got a supervisor and I already worked with her for eight months on it, trying to improve.
And then one day I went to a martial art lesson, kick-poke chop, like in a book, kick-poke chop, you know, I was learning self-defense, but my master said I failed because like I never wanted to hit someone because I don't hit hard enough. I hate violence.
So anyway, one day I was like going in the car with a friend to this kick-poke chop class and he's from Hanoi. And he lived in Manila at that time. So I was in Manila at that time because my husband was working there.
So we were in the car together. So I asked him, where were you during the war? And he told me he was in Hanoi when, you know, when American bombs were falling.
And one day his grandma was taking him to school and then the bombs, there was the announcement of the bombs, and then they were running, they started to run to the school.
And then the bombs were being dropped, explosions everywhere, and he was so afraid. So he hugged his grandma and he said, grandma, will they bomb this school? And the grandma said, I hope not.
And he asked, if they bomb the school, will we die, grandma? And his grandma said, grandson, if they bomb the school, we will only die if Buddha let us die.
So I heard, I was so moved by this story. So that night after the kick-poke chop class, I came home, my two kids were really small.
So I cooked dinner for them and I fed them, I put them to bed, and then I sat down at my writing desk and I booked the bombings of Hanoi in 1972.
I could hear the siren, I could see the devastation. And that night, that night, I wrote 2,000 words that would become the first chapter of The Mountain Sing.
But I interviewed many people for this chapter. Later I would interview many people. But next morning I woke up and I read it again and I decided to email my master's supervisor.
And I said, I wrote something last night and I think it's different. And she read it and she said, please write this. This is very special.
Yes. Are there other questions in your audience?
Yes.
Someone, for example, wants to write something too. What does it suggest?
Want to write something. If someone, for example, wants to write something too, what would be your advice?
Write something which is compelling to you, which is important to you, which makes you sleepless, which makes you cry.
My publishers told me my job as a novelist is to make readers cry.
So my advice is to write something important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you, which is important to you.
Yeah. So my advice is to write something important to you. Don't think about writing the book for readers or writing for the audience.
But I also want to encourage people to be empathetic because, you know, I want to share that my novels are both about the experiences of Northern Vietnamese and Southern Vietnamese.
I also want to, you know, include the story of both people.
I mean, April is the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, you know, so maybe I can read a poem for, you know, because like in Hamburg, there is this memorial for for about the both people of Vietnam who arrived here in Germany and who got a lot of support from German people.
And I remember when I first came to the U.S., to California, I was just welcomed by so many diasporic Vietnamese and I was so very moved.
So this poem, Thorn of Roses, I mean, I want to show as an example that, you know, that we we should include multiple perspectives into our work.
And this is a poem that I wrote for Chuk Mi Thwe, Theresa Mai Chuk.
Thorn of Roses, you take me to this garden where the roses open to the nectar of morning sun, each slender petal shivering in the soft wind eight thousand miles from our homeland.
The roses listen to you telling me about your trip, how to see on a tiny boat, sardines among starving people, your mother and your mother and brother skeletons among them, how at two years old, you had to flee our homeland into the arms of waves so tall, even heaven was dark.
How your boat ran out of petrol and those who died from illness or starvation didn't have the grace of a coffin, their bodies tossed into the churning mouth of the ocean and how your nonstop crying made your mother want to jump head first out of the boat.
The journey has been long for both of us, but you are here today with me in this rose garden filled with the intense California sun longing for homeland and dreaming.
But the scent of the roses tell me how nice flung from the past you cut into you and make you bleed.
To me, Theresa, my two, we both inherited the war.
We inherited the thorns of roses that still set us.
We inherited a yearning for peace that we need into stories.
We are the daughters of the same mother, Vietnam, who lived on the two sides of the ocean bound together by thorns and by the scent of this morning's roses.
And by the stories that will never set us free, by the stories that will never set us free until we tell them.
Thank you. One more question from the audience and then I will ask questions from from my wonderful companions here.
How do you feel about fame as a writer? Does it give you the pressure to perform rather than be true to yourself?
Thank you so much for this question.
Actually, I don't think I'm famous. I you know, I think every day I feel grateful.
I feel grateful that I'm alive, that I can breathe, that I can create art, that I can meet wonderful readers.
I'm I'm just being very humbled.
I'm just very humbled and honored that I get messages from from people from around the world every day, you know, on my Instagram, people who travel to Vietnam and, you know,
and who send me videos or pictures of of them with my book on the bus or on the train or in the rice field or in a long way.
It's just a great honor. And and I feel, you know, I have so much work to do.
I am working at 10 different projects at the moment. I'm translating. I'm writing a book of essays. I'm writing a new novel.
I'm writing poetry. So I just want to be grounded.
And I love to travel and listen and talk to people and learn.
I mean, the best thing about being a writer is to learn.
And I'm just just so excited about learning, you know, every day when I write something, I research and I learn.
And I mean, you know, for me, I feel like, you know, if I go back to my very first books, I would edit a lot more.
My publishers normally, you know, sometimes they're very fed up with me because they said,
when my we are sending this book to the printer, I said, no, no, no.
Give me one more day. I want to read it again.
You can't believe how many times I read each of my book hundreds of times.
I have hundreds and hundreds of versions in my in in my computer because like I just want it to be the best that it could be.
I want my books to deserve the reader's time because there are so many books being published each day.
And, you know, to have someone's time a few days or a few weeks or two or one week to spend time reading a novel like this is such a great honor.
So I just want to do my best to deserve the reader's time, not just in my book, but with my interaction as well.
You know, I want to give you the best experience because you come here and you listen to me or you listen to me by Zoom.
So I think I'm just very honored and really happy.
I love this job of being a writer. Thank you.
And actually, you know, I I value most honesty.
I don't I don't over prepare for my for my events because, you know, I just say things that come to my mind.
And it's very rare that today I I have some slides because I want to show you some pictures about my family.
But normally, you know, I I don't write a speech or, you know, I don't over prepare.
Thank you. OK, I would like to ask a question.
You have were born in Ninbing and have lived a considerable time of your life in Buckleo.
So, you know, the North and the South. How much did this form your character or your views about your country?
Actually, I could not have written my novels without having lived in both North, both North and South Vietnam,
because, you know, the mountain thing is set in North Vietnam in Hanoi.
But it includes the experiences of Uncle Ming who went to the south as as well.
So I want to always document, you know, the perspective from from from people who live in different regions
and also overseas Vietnamese. And I think, you know, like that is very much influenced by my experience growing up in Buckleo,
because like the two sisters in the book, my family also went bankrupt.
We lost everything. And we had debtors who came to our house to take away our my bicycle.
They took away my radio, my radio, my tape recorder.
I learned the first words of English. They took away our pigs, but they were not readers.
So they didn't take away my books. So. So I still had books to read.
So so books really saved me.
So, you know, you my life in American Delta, I brought a lot into the book.
For example, you could see the ching kai tree or the maca, a maca tree, a maca plant, you know, or bok go.
So, you know, I love bok go.
And I have Buckleo in the book because I grew up in Buckleo and Buckleo in Buckleo.
There is this artist, Calvin Lau, who who composed a lot of bok go music.
So I so I love bok go. So that's why I thought I had to bring the music into the book.
And I wanted to show Vietnam as a country beyond the war.
So I have a lot of cultural elements, you know, music and in tradition in the book as well.
We might you connect so easily with people, people feel very comfortable being around you.
And I think we can all experience this.
And I see a lot of smiling faces, I'm sure, also on Zoom.
And your books are based on stories also about people.
You said you did a lot of research, but you covered many difficult topics and which were also very emotional for people.
How did you make people speak and trust you and build the confidence so they would share their stories,
which often were also stories of pain?
Oh, this is such an important question.
And I want to say that for my PhD, it was really important that, you know, I did not think I needed to do a PhD.
But the PhD was really the pillar of my research.
One of my PhD research question is the ethics of creative writing.
Because as a researcher, you can inflict trauma and pain on people and you may not have that permission.
So, you know, so I was very lucky with my PhD.
I worked under the guidance of an ethics committee.
So I wrote my whole research project and I formulated the research questions.
I had the documents that needed permission from everyone that I interviewed for my books.
And I wanted to have people's written permission because, like a lot of the times, people could be exploited for the other's profit, you know.
And I wanted to be ethical.
And also I wanted to document the ethical complications of searching for family members.
So if you read Das Jai, you find out that the situation that so many children born out of the Vietnam War were separated from their parents.
But now, you know, they were considered orphans and some of them found out that they actually they have parents.
So they want to search for their parents, but the search for parents may lead them to shocking secrets.
So I want to talk about the ethical complications because some people may not want to be found.
Some mothers got unwanted pregnancies and had no choice but give the children away.
And now they rebuild their life.
They have a husband, children.
They may not want to be found.
So, you know, so I wanted to highlight these ethical complications in the book so that anyone who searched for my family members, for their family members will be aware of.
And I can't tell you how many people have how many people who have been searching for family members have contacted me and discussed with me and, you know, shared with me their journey.
And yesterday I received this email, this writer, this person who was given away and who lives near Washington, D.C.
She she wrote to me and she said, I read your book and I decided to look for your my mom because I imagine her to be like John and Queen in the book.
And and, you know, like I imagine my mother to go through so much pain and sorrow.
So then I talked to her about the possible complications.
So I met with her in Saigon. Talk with her.
Can you believe it?
Yesterday, she sent me pictures of her being united with her mom for the first time.
It's a miracle. She found a mom.
And then and then I, you know, I told her, OK, there may be complications.
But even if your mom didn't want you, you may find a big Vietnamese family.
And she she sent me a picture of her with twenty five members of her big family in Dai Ning.
So it's a miracle. So there are miracles that happen in real life.
So I wanted to document that miracle in the book.
But also the fact that so many Vietnamese families still have missing family members, hundreds of thousands of them.
So the end, the ending of the mountain thing and the ending of that child documents this truth that there's no perfect ending.
So you will find that I won't tell you the ending.
But the ending, you know, leaves some open possibilities of some missing people.
And that's the truth about war. You know, wars can never heal.
When wars happen, you cannot make everything right again.
You cannot make the dead people alive.
You cannot return the arms and legs to so many injured people.
You cannot undo the trauma.
So with my books, I want to call for people to do more to build sustainable peace around the world.
I remember when I was six years old, I was standing on my village road.
I was looking at the devastation around me and the people who had lost their arms and legs, their family members.
And I told myself the human race could not be so stupid as to wage another war.
Just look at this. And I was I was so young.
And now, you know, I look around the world and I see, you know, I see children being killed by bombs.
And I feel I feel I was myself in that situation. It's really painful.
And I don't know how to resolve the issues.
But I think I really fear the human race would make ourselves extinct one day because what we are doing to each other,
what we are doing to our to our environment, to nature is devastating.
Thank you. Thank you.
I have a question. Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here in the country.
And I would like a general question of how hard it is to actually maintain this poetry for novelism, for English.
And then I'll give them in poetry from English to German as well, because I brought my parents.
They are both used by address, but they have some kind of poetry that they say has not been denied.
But I can now address with them as well.
I try to translate that as well. It's not the same way, you know.
Thank you. So the question is how difficult is to do literary translation or how easy?
Actually, I learned it by myself because I love the language and also because I'm a poet.
But I think there are courses, translation courses that you could take.
And you're really lucky, like in Germany, there are a lot of bachelor of is there a bachelor of literary translation?
Probably. I think they are like bachelor degree in translations that you could take or they are like short, short term courses.
You could also take them online.
But I think what you need most is the passion and the love for the language and the love for the story because I can translate.
Right. But I mean, they like the human emotion.
So I think I really enjoy translation because I think by translating, you learn a lot about the language.
And I'm lucky that actually translating is more difficult than writing.
So yesterday, the two days ago, I had an event with a bookshop at a bookshop and that my witnesses my translator,
Claudia, who did an exceptional job for both of these novels in German.
She drove her two hours to surprise me at my bookshop event, and it was wonderful.
So I asked to I got to ask her some questions, which is great because like I read at my translators,
you know, who who can walk fast because it takes me years to translate a book.
Because I'm like I with a poem, I always text me many months to finish translating because like I wanted to sound really
Vietnamese and you know, like, yeah, I spent a lot of time on it.
So maybe I continue with my presentation a little bit before we.
We return to the Q&A.
So, you know, on my website, there's this book club kit.
So, you know, it shows the timeline of Vietnamese history compared with the history of the people in the book.
So, you know, like Vietnamese history is very complicated.
So I researched a lot.
So I compare and I wanted to make sure the historical events are in the book and correct timeline.
So, for example, you know, this is a part of the historical timeline.
And That's Child is my second novel.
And, you know, this is an article I wrote on Twitter a newspaper about the reunion about, you know,
American veterans who returned to Vietnam to look for their love for their children.
They once abandoned.
So I did a lot of real life research.
You know, like I do a lot of real life work in helping people reunite as well.
So, you know, for my PhD research.
So these are some of my research questions for That's Child.
So That's Child was based on my PhD research.
So, you know, That's Child is a story about amirations or mixed race children,
you know, born out of relationships between American soldiers and Vietnamese women.
So I read all the books that I could find written about amirations and their parents.
And I analyzed all the theories about PTSD and trauma.
And then I tried to fictionalize it into the book and also find the ways to kind of maintain the
Vietnamese of my writing.
For example, my name, Quố, a lot of you say Vietnamese, but for those non-Vietnamese
speaker, can you say Quố, Quố, louder please, Quố, Quố means cinnamon.
So my parents named me cinnamon so that I an ingredient of the Vietnamese traditional
medicine, so I would always stay healthy, very smart of them, right.
But, but, you know, oh, the screen disappear, like the my picture disappear.
How do we have the picture?
Sorry.
Okay, that's it.
So, so, you know, if you leave out the tonal mark of my name, my name would be spelled like
Q-U-E. Can you say Quố, Quố.
So, you know, when I first got published in English, I let my publisher change my name
to Q-U-E without the tonal marks, because that's the normal English requirement, you know,
that we leave the tonal mark, but Quố means a stick.
So from cinnamon, I became a stick, which is not very nice.
So I insisted, you know, the publishers to keep the tonal marks of my names, my name
and the names of all the characters to maintain the Vietnamese-ness of, of my,
of my writing in English.
So that chart is actually, you know, built on the pillar of, on the pillar of my research
in, in the viewpoint of four characters, an Amerasian from two Vietnamese mothers,
Chang, Quố, and an American father, Dan.
Okay, so any questions about this book?
How many of you have read this book here?
Some of you have read the book.
After this event, yeah, thank you.
You need the signature, yes.
I would love to know what do you mean by Spanish and Vietnamese-ness,
and I think that's really important,
and why would you want to share with us how do you do that?
Oh, thank you.
So the question is how to keep the Vietnamese-ness of my writing in English.
Okay, so I, so one thing is to keep the Vietnamese tonal marks, you know,
so that we, we don't change the language to please the eyes and ears of the Western readers, right?
We want to invite them to embrace the Vietnamese language fully.
Another thing is also like, write like a Vietnamese, rather like a native speaker.
So that's why I, you know, for example,
I include a lot of Vietnamese proverbs in the book.
The way Vietnamese people speak, for example,
or when I was growing up, my, my two brothers and I were often very naughty,
and my, sometimes my father would get upset,
and my mom would quote the proverb,
soft and persistent brain penetrates the earth better than a storm.
That's the value of patience, right?
So my father said, took a deep breath, okay,
I need to be soft and persistent right now, rather than being a storm.
So I, I include a lot of these proverbs into the book and also the way of description,
you know, yeah, sometimes, sometimes the, my ways of writing is not correct in English,
but I, but I want to, for example, I can give you an example, like the tree shadow,
the tree shadow, I, I describe it in this child.
You know, like I was discussing it with my PhD supervisor and, you know,
it's not an expression common in English, a tree shadow, but I decided to keep it,
because bam kai is something that we say in Vietnamese.
So, so also, a lot of the times I don't translate Vietnamese words.
For example, the word meh, okay, I may translate once meh, okay,
but I then I want the readers to remember that word and to understand it.
I want to invite them to come to Vietnam, not, not with a full understanding with,
but with their heart as well, that they could feel it.
I had, you know, a wonderful event at the Linde Nair Lounge, a cultural center,
where that was my wonderful moderator and, you know, we were speaking both in German and in
English, so I can speak some German, not perfectly, but some, and for complicated things,
I spoke in English, and there was one audience member who couldn't understand,
but he said, I didn't understand, I don't understand English, but I understood everything,
because I could feel, but I could feel your emotion.
I could feel, I could feel the atmosphere, and it was so nice.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay, and so I also have a historical timeline, and I have also, I also feature a lot of
musical instruments in the book as well. So I write about victim, you know, this is,
this is a problem that I documented in the book is about unexploded bombs in Vietnam.
Many people don't know that, actually, you know, so I want to do advocacy with my role
being a writer. So I, for example, I'm donating 100% of the proceeds for my next book,
my current book, The Color of Peace, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the war
to organizations that support ancient orange victims. And this is a picture of a victim of
ancient orange in Vietnam born deformed with their eyes. And you know, the reality is that children
are still born in Vietnam deformed because of ancient orange. And so many, you know, like,
many of my readers told me they did not know that during the war, the US military sprayed
19.5 million gallons of herbicides in South Vietnam to clear vegetation that was believed
to conceal enemy troops that provided food for them. The most widely used of those defolians,
ancient orange contains dioxin, one of the most toxic, toxic, you know, substances known to science.
So it continues to kill people today. So I document this in both of my novels. And also
in my poetry, I want to call for the companies who reap profit from from producing and selling
ancient orange to compensate the victims, because those children are being taken care of, of their
moms, but the moms are getting older and that are dying. So in Vietnam, also a lot of unexploded
bombs. And this is a picture by photographer Nick Wood, you know, with children, you know,
being so close to the bombs. And, you know, there were five million tons of bombs dropped onto
Vietnam, two millions on Laos, half a million tons on Cambodia, many of them killed with
innocent civilians. And I want to highlight in my books, also, American soldiers also suffered
tremendously from the war. I write a lot about them, the trauma that they carry home,
a lot of them actually suffer from the impact of ancient orange. So, you know, the Vietnamese poet
wrote this. In the end of each and every war, whoever wins, the people always lose.
So, you know, I also wrote for the New York Times about Vietnamese literature. And coming back to
your question about, you know, keeping the Vietnamese tonal mark, I have this line in the book,
the Vietnamese words. So this was printed on the New York Times. Sorry, I need to have my picture.
The video appears again. I don't know why it disappeared.
Can they see me? Can people see?
You can see you. I cannot see the top ones directly. So maybe we have to start the screen train again.
I just like transferred. I didn't do anything. I was just...
You have to try the best, I think.
But you could read here that, you know, in the New York Times, I advocated for the use of the
tonal mark. And I criticized the New York Times on their own newspaper. But I think sometimes you
need to do that. The video? I think I would have to stop the presentation and restart it.
Okay. Yeah, I tried to, but it didn't work.
Okay. So that's okay. We can make the full screen of the presentation.
So I don't need to do the PowerPoint anymore. No problem. Okay.
In that case, we can just do it like this.
Okay. So thank you so much for your patience. We had some technical problem, but we're here again.
It was solved. Okay. So any more questions?
Yeah, I definitely have one more question. You were talking or we talked already about
the grandmother in The Mountain Sing. And the colleague was also talking about her grandmother,
which didn't exist. Your grandmother whom you never met. And in both books, they are
strong women. Why all these strong women? Do you think they are a trigger for something
that pushes your books forward or the story in your books?
Oh, yeah. I wanted to write strong women characters because I was surrounded by strong women.
My mom lost her parents from a very young age, but she was a very determined woman
who fought to have to just be able to send us to school who did everything for the family,
but who still, you know, build a wonderful career. She did many things to survive,
but also to thrive, you know? So I admired her a lot and also witnessed so much pain and sorrow
from women around me, women who also, you know, celebrated when they found joy, who loved their
family so dearly. So I was compelled to write about women. Yeah, because also in Hollywood
movies about Vietnam, Vietnamese women normally don't have a voice. We are there to be rescued
by men. So, you know, in Dastai, my two women, two sister characters try to rescue American soldiers
with Vietnamese poetry. Thank you. Yes.
Thank you very much. That's a very important question
because the Vietnamese community is still deeply divided, as many people might know.
Your question reminds me of my very first visit to Orange County. And I was there to read poetry,
and then I asked to meet a very famous poet, and then he met me. And after, you know, for a while,
he told me, so he asked me to read some of my poetry to him, which I did. And afterwards,
he told me, do you know, last night, I got two phone calls from people who said,
don't meet quite mine, because she comes from North Vietnam. And her books are widely published
in Vietnam, so she must be a communist. So people want him not to meet me. But then when I read my
poetry to him, we come, immediately we felt this bonding and his friendship, because I was such a
big fan. I think when people read my books, they know that my mission is to unite Vietnamese people,
regardless of where we are, North Vietnam, or South Vietnam, or inside Vietnam, or outside
Vietnam. We are children of mother Oka and father Lachlan Kuan. We are children of one family.
You know, so I just encourage people to read each other's story and be open minded to everyone's
story, regardless of where they come from. So I'm really lucky that I have friends and readers
everywhere around the world. And you know, it's my first time having book events in Germany. And
just so honored to have the Vietnamese people in this community and Yi as well. Yi contacted me.
Yi is a journalist who lives here, also a curator of events and who lives here in Hamburg. So thank
you for coming Yi and for your question. And I think, you know, for each community, I learn a lot,
because like each community has, each Vietnamese community in each city or in each country has its
own character, own components. And I'm learning a lot from each of them. And I'm just so amazed at
what we can, we have to offer, you know, to the society at large and to our community as well.
So my big dream is to connect Vietnamese everywhere together. And the world. Yeah.
Thank you. One last question. Do we have a question? Can the screen be unshared so we can
see this bigger? Oh, yes, that question is answered. Okay, sorry. Thank you so much.
Do we have the last question from the audience?
I'll ask you the last question. Okay. You told me your husband at the moment is in Bishkeg in
Kyrgyzstan. Are there Vietnamese in Kyrgyzstan also? There are very few Vietnamese in Kyrgyzstan.
And I found one of them who has a Vietnamese restaurant. So when I arrived, I was told that
there's a Vietnamese restaurant. And immediately I went there and I ate far there and talked to him.
But no, but sadly, there's, yeah, just two other Vietnamese. But luckily, there's a direct flight
this year from Bishkeg, Kyrgyzstan to Vietnam. So I invite all of you to come to Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan is also a land of literature. I used to read about Aimatthof,
so then when we got the post in Kyrgyzstan, I was delighted, you know, that I could experience the
country of Aimatthof. And he's such a wonderful writer. And he, you know, like his writing is so
vivid. So I want to thank you for joining me at the event today. Thank you. Professor Thomas,
Kaimir, Hanbok University, Fulbright University, my wonderful friend Daphma, our IT expert,
our IT expert over there too, and all of you, Michael and his wonderful wife who are my friends
for many years, my first time to see you after more than 20 years, right, from 1999 that we met.
So it's like 26 years. So we met in Hanoi. So thank you for coming. And my friend Mathilda,
who traveled for like four hours to attend this event. Thank you, Mathilda.
So I have a special gift for you. Would you like to receive it?
Okay, I don't normally do this in front of a Vietnamese audience, but
anyway, I love my readers. So in Dax Chai, there is one farm place, a musical instrument
for Van Gogh music. So I grew up in Bagliu, the land of Van Gogh. Would you like to hear Van Gogh
music? So I composed this short song for you. And my friend Daphma has a German translation.
Okay, so, okay, you know the tradition of the Van Gogh. After I go up, then you have to clap, right?
Okay.
So
all my readers, today we gather. Looking at your compassionate faces, I see light and I see that I
owe you oceans of debt. For my childhood, I wanted to write about my homeland, about people like you
and me. Their lives can be filled with laughter, but sorrow also brings them tears. All my beloved
readers, I owe you until the end of my life, your compassion I carry with me always. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, and thank you so much for your support. I am very happy to be with you today.
Thank you so much, and thank you so much for your support.
Thank you so much, and thank you so much for your support. Thank you so much for your support.
Thank you so much, and thank you so much for your support.
I am very happy to be with you today. I am very happy to be with you today, and thank you so much for your support.
Thank you. Thank you so much. I should bring that everywhere with me. Don't you agree?
She's now my tour manager. She drove me all the time here in Germany. Thank you so much.
I want to thank everyone for joining us by Zoom. Thank you so much. It's very late in Vietnam at
the moment, so I want to wish you a good night and thank you for putting up with the IT difficulties,
but it could not be a Zoom event without, you know, IT problems, so I think there's no more.
So thank you.