50 Years Since the Vietnam War: The Cleaving
Marking fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora, coedited by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, is the first and only book to gather the voices and perspectives of Vietnamese diasporic authors from across the globe. The following are excerpts from this new, groundbreaking book.
From the Introduction by co-editor Lan P. Duong:
an engine crossing,
re-crossing salt water, hauling
immigrants and the junk
of the poor. These
are the faces I love, the bodies
and scents of bodies
for which I long
in various ways, at various times,
. . .
eager to eat
four kinds of meat
prepared four different ways,
numerous plates and bowls of rice and vegetables,
each made by distinct affections
and brought to table by many hands.
—Li-Young Lee, "The Cleaving"
Li-Young Lee’s poem imagines the immigrant body and its desires to eat and be eaten. The meat of this stanza speaks to being famished among your own and of feasting among your own; it is a kind of loving devouring that in “crossing and re-crossing salt water” is “talkative,” “voracious,” and “eager.” In naming this edited volume The Cleaving, we recall this poem and its visceral imagery of meat, face, and bone to bring home the ideas that a cleaving bursts open for us. More precisely, the word “cleaving” alludes to the formation of a diaspora, one that has been separated not so cleanly from its homeland and yet nonetheless cleaves closely to this origin. A cleaving, a leaving, a heaving. All of this brings to mind the Vietnamese diaspora’s leave-taking from Việt Nam throughout the twentieth century, a cut and a break from the homeland that represents a metaphysical and psychic hewing to the country at the same time.
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From Section Three: Writing Feminism and Disobedience
Author Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood on being a "disobedient Vietnamese woman."
Being disobedient, I feel, implies a framework, an expectation you’re working against. Growing up in Việt Nam, I was often praised for being demure and quiet—qualities valued in a traditional culture and in a traditional Vietnamese woman. For a long time I took pride in revealing my presence through means other than my voice. Being an Asian woman living in the United States and possessing feminine-representing attributes like my long hair, a high-pitched voice, I sometimes feel the pressure to subvert stereotypes because people tend to assume introverted individuals don’t have much to offer. If I were to react against the Western assumptions of Asian women and force myself to be more outspoken and abrasive, then I would still just be reacting. The shadows of the frameworks are still there, both the Vietnamese one and the American one.
Rather, I focus on being loud in my work, as truthful as I can be, and with as much courage as I can muster. When I was still in my MFA program, I repeatedly received the message that my writing needed to signal the Vietnam War in some ways. During the semester students would get the chance to meet with their professor one-on-one a few times to discuss their progress. Once, in class, my professor gave me the advice that my short story needed to mention the Vietnam War. I decided to never go to the one-on-one meetings. I was angry. Perhaps it was arrogant of me, but I thought to myself, If they really have that perspective, there is nothing I want to learn from them. The world had already told me over and over again that my perspective didn’t belong, and I didn’t need to willingly submit myself to more brainwashing. Professors can be deeply wrong. Being disobedient can just mean questioning, especially questioning authorities, whether it be the niche world of fiction or the White House. Artmaking is disobedient as society is constantly shouting at us that it neither values nor has room for art.