Customer Reviews

Vietnamese Short Stories: An Introduction

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This book was published in the United States in 1986 and was perhaps the earliest anthology of Vietnamese short stories to come out there following the end of the war.

The collection contained 11 short stories by 10 writers. All were from non-Communist backgrounds, and most were either born in the south or moved there from the north after 1954, when the country was partitioned. The oldest among them were Khai Hung (1896-1947) and Nhat Linh (1906-63), co-founders in the 1930s of Vietnam's first modern literary group, which promoted nationalism and social reform. And Nhat Linh's brother, Thach Lam (1910-42). The youngest was Le Tat Dieu (1942-). Two of the authors were women. At the time of the book's publication, six of the seven writers then living had emigrated to the United States or Europe. The seventh, Nha Ca, emigrated a few years later, after her husband was released from "reeducation camp."

Writers from Communist backgrounds were intentionally excluded from the collection. The compiler opposed the Communist government firmly and described life in reunified Vietnam at the time of publication as unfree, hopeless and unconducive to literary expression.

The publication dates for the stories weren't given in most cases, but appeared to range from the 1930s to the early 1970s in Vietnam. The latest piece was contributed in the early 1980s from the United States.

For me, by far the most memorable story was "Market Girl" by Thach Lam, dated ca. 1942, which rather subtly followed the youth, marriage and rapid aging of a beautiful but poor nice girl, enmeshed in multiple family obligations. "She was no longer the pretty girl of the past. She had aged greatly. For some time she had stopped caring about her looks and she did not know when they had begun to fade. Beauty was worthless to her once she was married. She felt old and content with her age. On market days, she looked at the girls with the knowing eye of one who has already passed her youth." The story ended without a solution for her: "Sadly, she looked at the whole of her life -- the life of a market girl from youth to womanhood full of toil and care, one day woven into the next like a coarse cloth. She lowered her eyes and walked faster into the dark alley."

Another was "A Story for Lovers" by Nha Ca, about how the lives of a young couple were destroyed by the attack by the Northern and Viet Cong forces on the city of Hue in 1968 during the Tet offensive. This was the first short story I'd read by a writer from the south that actually dealt directly with this war. It mentioned large-scale executions of the civilian population by the enemy. A piece by Nhat Tien (1936-) described somewhat melodramatically the bleak existence after reunification in 1975 of families of supporters of the losing side.

The rest of the stories covered subjects such as a Westernized monk who sought religious peace of mind but couldn't forget a married woman he loved. A spoiled son of a grasping moneylender who had a rare moment of pity for an indebted family. Another spoiled adopted son, a painter educated in France, who became aware that his lifestyle was supported by all the peasants who were indebted to his foster parents, who asked himself, "Though I've never really hurt anyone, do I have a right to be happy?" and vowed finally to help the peasants discover beauty. Two sisters left to fend sorrowfully for themselves while their nationalist husbands fought the French, with one having to choose between her husband and her sister. A boy enjoying the beauty of the forest with his grandfather. A girl entering adolescence and growing aware of her body and male attention. And a country schoolteacher trying to teach his school's dullest students.

Compared to more recent anthologies for Vietnam published in the 1990s, after that nation began opening to the West, the works in the present collection were written much earlier. They were well within the mainstream of realism, much less stylistically diverse, more conventional in structure and tone, and so more familiar. In addition to snatches of Vietnamese songs, scattered among the stories were a few quotations from Western writers such as Pascal, Corneille and Gide, rather than Buddhist sutras or imitations of Communist Party speech. The stories didn't offer multiple conclusions, depict people transformed literally into beasts, or focus exclusively on memory, loss and sorrow.

Within a decade of this book's publication, a collection was published of short fiction from both sides of the war. Somewhat along that line, one looks forward to the time when an anthology can be published containing the most significant Vietnamese modern writing from its development in the late 19th century, to works from both native sides of the conflict, to more recent days.