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Vietnam exports literature lessons
West
By James Borton
In
Hanoi, families are making preparations for next month's
Tet (New Year) celebration. This exuberant three-day
affair at the beginning of the lunar year in January
translates into new clothes, at least for the children,
and plenty of nuoc mam (fermented fish sauce)
flavored foods. Soon there will be scores of street
stalls springing up around Hanoi's Lake of the Restored
Sword, or Hoan Kiem Lake, offering packets of assorted
teas, liquor, red dragon fruit and the fabled banh
chung cakes, made of glutinous rice and bean paste,
wrapped in green banana leaves and tied with bamboo
twine, giving them the appearance of a present.
During my regular visits to Vietnam over the
Christmas and New Year holiday, a Vietnamese friend has
often quoted an old adage: "Hungry all year, but at Tet,
three days full." After all, Tet is considered
everyone's birthday - an occasion to meditate on the
past, to enjoy the present and to contemplate the
future.
Against this celebratory background, few
can dispute that Vietnam's doi moi, translated as
"renovation or new thinking", has ushered in a greater
appreciation for Vietnam's culture and literature. And
there are encouraging signs that this cultural
appreciation is spreading to the West as well.
For
instance, over the past several decades, Western firms
have published an increasing number of translations of
Vietnamese short 
stories, novels and
folktales. Just recently, the University of Hawaii Press
published Two Cakes Fit for a King - Folktales from
Vietnam, a book compiled and exquisitely translated
by Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Dana Sachs. This collection is
an assemblage of classic tales and beautiful
illustrations created by Hanoi's Bui Hoai Mai.
It is not surprising that the Vietnamese cling
to these tales, since the country has suffered
historical incursions from the Chinese, French and of
course, the Americans. For centuries, despite social and
political changes, the Vietnamese have maintained the
history of their nation, both actual and mythic, through
their valued folklore.
Most relevant to the
approaching holidays, the newly translated collection
offers the title story, "Two Cakes Fit for a King",
which explains the origins of the banh chung
cakes that are still sold and presented as gifts.
Folklorist Nguyen Dong Chi believes that these
stories, which have been passed on from one generation
to another, are notable for their elegant balance,
gentleness and, above all, humanity. Within the various
tales and sagas, there lurks a sense of national
identity that Vietnamese cherish amid the cultural and
social dislocations prevalent in the world. In addition
to these stories, state-controlled educational
publishers periodically produce an illustrated book for
each folktale to meet demand among the growing number of
consumption-oriented families.
For example, in
Two Cakes Fit for a King the compilers have
provided an excellent prologue for many classic
Vietnamese tales and have included stories like
"Princess Lieu Hanh, Tea-Seller of Ngang Mountain".
Vietnam's rich history includes many impressive
women, like the mythic Lieu Hanh, who, in the tale,
defies both her father and society. However, mandarins
during the Confucian period transformed real women, such
as the Trung Sisters and Lady Trieu, largely into
morality tales. Still, the message conveyed by the story
of Lieu Hahn retains its meaning even today, as it
addresses a new generation of independent Vietnamese
women who no longer live at home, spend their own money
on the latest fashions and Nokia cell phones, buy flashy
red Hondas and only occasionally wear the traditional,
diaphanous ao dai, the graceful national dress.
Today, Vietnamese are able to preserve their
"memory" and at the same time, reinterpret the exploits
and achievements of their ancient heroines like the
Trung sisters and countless unsung women who were highly
capable family matriarchs, astute small-scale
entrepreneurs and petty traders in the village market,
as well as hardworking farmers struggling in the paddy
fields, said Pham Thanh Van, a visiting professor in
Women's Studies and Religion at Xavier University.
Furthermore, many of the tales are much more
than a storybook reminder that Vietnamese women are
resilient, strong-willed, independent, shrewd and
resourceful.
A few years ago during the
holidays, I sat with a Vietnamese literary star -
54-year-old Madame Le Minh Khue - at the Au Lac Cafi, in
a delightful garden located in the front courtyard of a
former French villa and directly across the street from
the historic and restored Metropole Hotel. There we
discussed the Hanoi Writers Association and the role of
traditional folktales.
"I have always wanted to
write," Le said, "and as a young woman, I found solace
in our ca dao tuc ngu [tales], where we first
learned to embrace the virtues of truth, kindness [and]
beauty. But of course, all these beliefs were deeply
challenged during the American war."
Le Minh
Khue's published short stories reflect her life at 16
when she enlisted in the People's Army and was trained
as a sapper during the Vietnam War, when she worked
along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Even then, she admits that
literature was her talisman and she carried with her the
paperbacks of Chekhov, Hemingway and Jack London.
With writers and artists testing the boundaries
of censorship, Vietnam's literary landscape was
profoundly affected by the renovation movement in the
late 1980s. Along the Red River, this literary
flourishment was most evident in the socialist realism
stories of Nguyen Huy Thiep, Ho Anh Thai, Nguyen Ngoc
and Le Minh Khue.
Presently, Vietnam's new
literateurs are all struggling to respond to the new
challenge of globalization. In the past, these same
artists - like many of their fellow writers - were
encouraged to display "national character" in their
work, and they were always considered symbols of
national pride. However, a stroll into any gallery
reveals that contemporary Vietnamese art equates with
kitsch and quick-cash commerce directed at the
increasing number of tourists. In some sense, the
country's literary and economic freedoms are
intertwined, but now it is no longer an issue of a
socialist-driven system choking freedom of expression,
but rather the artist or author seeking an authentic
voice, one which is not so easily drowned out by MTV,
pop fashion shows and blaring discos.
But amid
this spreading globalization, the Internet has propelled
a renaissance of Vietnam's arts and culture, offering a
smorgasbord of cultural websites. For example,
Vietnamjournal.org is an excellent starting point for
new Vietnamese literature. Now with support and
cooperation from Vietnam's Ministry of Culture and
Information, Western publishers are importing titles and
collaborating with talented translators like Dana Sachs,
Wayne Karlin, Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson to name
but a few.
Other US publishers like the
University of Massachusetts and the non-profit,
Connecticut based, Curbstone Press have also taken the
lead in publishing gifted translations of Vietnamese
novels and stories.
Wayne Karlin, Le Minh Khue
and Truong Vu's earlier compilation, The Other Side
of Heaven: Post-War Fiction by Vietnamese and American
Writers, provides Western audiences with an
excellent introduction to Vietnamese writers, most of
whom have never been available in English before.
Their collection has one notable omission
however - Vietnam's influential writer, Duong Thu Huong,
whose Paradise of The Blind, released in 1993,
was the first major Vietnamese novel to be translated
into English.
Paradise of The Blind is a
novel of women - all of whom are greatly affected by
Vietnam's land reform campaign of 1953-56 in communist
North Vietnam. All three characters struggle to maintain
their family traditions, which are threatened by the
doctrine of communism. According to this book, in
Vietnam, an individual lives, works, suffers, succeeds
and sacrifices not for self, but for the family, living
and dead. And even today, a friend in Hanoi believes
that tradition and family life remain at the heart of
Vietnam's present and future.
Folktales are
still loved and read, said 29-year-old Nguyen Da Huong.
And from these stories, a young girl still learns
submissions - to father, husband, and son (although
selective at best) - and virtues - of industry,
appearance, speech and behavior.
As long as
people still believe that folktales uphold time-honored
ideal and family values and are a way of memorializing
the past, these Vietnamese national treasures will
translate into global readers at a time when the seeds
for global misunderstanding seem to be taking root.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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