Poems essays and other writing by Vietnamese Americans
NOT A WAR: AMERICAN VIETNAMESE FICTION, POETRY AND ESSAYS. EDITED BY DAN DUFFY. VIET NAM FORUM SERIES, NO. 16. YALE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL ON SOUTHEAST ASIA STUDIES. YALE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES. New Haven: Yale University, 1997. First Edition. Rare.
A nice copy of this rare and fascinating anthology of stories, poems, and essays about Vietnam. The editor describes it as "a collection of work by Americans, mostly, who play in front of one Vietnamese backdrop or another." This book is now rare, as there are no other copies listed for sale on the internet, worldwide, at any price. Therefore this book is now virtually inobtainable. Such a nice copy is not likely to come up for sale again soon on ebay.
From the Back Cover: "Not a War: American Vietnamese Fiction, Poetry and Essays' makes a terrific contribution to the - at long last - growing field of Vietnamese American literature, although editor Dan Duffy rejects that term in favor of the more open-ended 'American Vietnamese.' Indeed, this collection breaks all boundaries through the eclecticism and wonderful idiosyncrasy of its selection. In addition to works from two distinct generations of immigrant writers, there are works by a visitor to the United States from the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, and a translation of the journals of a French colonial woman by her grand-daughter. One of the strengths of the collection is that we are given several poems by each of the poets, giving a fuller sense of their work than a single poem would. The poetry here ranges from the startling images in the works of Christian Nguyen Langworthy and Le Thi Thuy to the formal experiments of Truong Tran and to the tri-lingual works of Thuong-Vuong Riddick. The prose also forays into areas relatively new in Vietnamese American work - into humor in the works of Andrew Lam and Khoi Luu, and into explorations of gay sexuality in the works of Nguyen Quoc Vinh and Viet Hoang. Several of the poems and stories here have won awards and contests: The Yale Council on Southwest Asia Studies is doing a great service to scholars and to readers by bringing these works together in a single volume."
Contents include: Editor's note: What is this book?; How could I interrupt the events of my youth, events I do not remember except in dreams by Christian Langworth; In different languages by Barbara Tran; Crooked by Dung Nguyen; Up over Boulder Hill by Dao Strom; Vietnamese Americans; Reception of Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a strange mountain by Monique T. D. Truong; Poems by Le Thi Diem Thuy; Grandma's Tales by Andrew Lam; Crossing by Truong Tran; Tale of a apricot by Minh Duc Nguyen; Poems by Bao-Long Chu; One Vietnamese woman's reflection on War by Lucy Nguyen-Hong-Nhiem; Poems by Thuong Vuong-Riddick; Remembrances of things slapped by Khoi T. Luu; Bare bones by Viet Hoang; Poems by Duong Tuong; Islands by Ava Chin; Love songs of a madman by Trinh Cong Son; Love of Men: Xuan Dieu; Saigon Journals of Roberte Desolme.
Illustrations include: 27 black-and-white illustrations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quarto - sized softcover book; 320 pages of text, with 27 illustrations. Very Good condition: no writing or markings in the text, no torn or missing pages, no ownership markings. Original publisher's binding with light wear to edges; minor chipping to spinetips. A solid and attractive copy of a scarce book.
