For Vietnamese people living through the wartime, or even younger generations growing up in peace, many of them have loved and learned by heart powerful poems by Trần Dạ Từ (pseudonym of Lê Hạ Vĩnh) and Nhã Ca (pseudonym of Trần Thị Thu Vân). They are literary luminaries of their generation whose poems have mesmerized, tormented, wounded, and inspired anyone reading them. Trần Dạ Từ’s prodigious poetry was remarkably acclaimed in the canon of Vietnamese literature before 1975: he writes lyrically, amorously, politically, and always powerfully; he could be jubilant, somber, passionate, desperate, hopeful, often in the same poem. His writing is cameo of love in the war-torn Vietnam. And his exceptional flair for poetry hypnotized such a charming and dreamy lady from Hue. Nhã Ca eloped with Tran when she was only 19 in the fierce defiance of her parents who could never entrust their dearest daughter to a destitute poet. They both, during those bullet-ridden years of 1960s, wrote prolifically and passionately about war, love, disillusion, and hope. Their ever-lasting love for art and for each other is unrivaled.
Yet, there were times in their lives when nothing was that poetically romantic. After the Communists seized Saigon and reunited the country in 1975, both Trần Dạ Từ and Nhã Ca were blacklisted as “cultural guerrillas” and incarcerated in Gia Trung reeducation camp, especially Trần Dạ Từ, for 12 harrowing years (1977-1989) until they received political asylum in Sweden. During their traumatic stay in that hellish prison, Trần Dạ Từ conceived his powerful poem, “Throwing Children into Thunderstorm,” then he himself turned the verses into lyrics. This is a poignant poem—and a heart-rending song—not only touched the people who sent their children to the boat to cross the ocean, but also reminded the audience of an excruciatingly sorrowful history.
“My vulnerable, young children
rejected by their homeland
shrouded in the darkness of vendetta
I clench my teeth
throwing them into thunderstorm.
Thunderstorm thunderstorm
offshore, in the ocean
I’m sending you my beloved children
My flesh, my bone, my soul
My hope . . .”
Those searing verses leave resonances. Yet Trần Dạ Từ and Nhã Ca, since their relocation in Little Saigon in Garden Grove, CA, have left behind their pasts. Or they have chosen to forget their painful memories. And perhaps they have reconciled with past sorrows through their commitment to love and hope. Their magnificent gift for the Vietnamese diaspora in Little Saigon is the annual “Writing on America” contest, which was launched since April 30th, 2000, with the award budget of $35,000. This year marked the 21st anniversary of this significant event, the entire archive of which is published on VietBao.com, the online edition of the first newspaper in Little Saigon, founded by Trần Dạ Từ and Nhã Ca.
Over the past 19 years, the “Writing on America” contest by Viet Bao has published 5,500 articles by thousands of writers across the nation. This year, Viet Bao presents its 21st compendium of “Writing on America;” each volume is 640 pages long. Thousands of articles from these editions have also been printed and reprinted on Vietnamese and foreign books and newspapers. VietBao.com has attracted 800 million readers so far. Some of its authors have attracted over a million readers.
At the age of 80, Trần Dạ Từ strikes me by his nimble and vibrant appearance. He seems even ageless when he talks, quipping back and forth during our conversation:
“You must be wondering inside how come this bogey is shamelessly annoying,” he says wittily, pointing at his hearing aid as he notices my bewilderment when he leans over the table gazing at my face with his wide eyes, “but forgive me, I’m hard of hearing recently. So I have to read your lips and guess what you are saying.”
We both bust out laughing. As I watch him turn nuisance into humor, senile failure into youthful prank, I can’t help feeling that there’s a kind of miracle in the way he’s aging. People like him have the wonder of spirit immensely mightier than the ravages of time.
Whenever I wish to chime in with my predetermined question, Trần fascinates me with his keen observations that would linger profoundly on my mind days after we met. Our conversation goes from one surprise to another. The questions I ask him are quite unconventional, more philosophical than inquiring, unlike other interviews I had with other figures. Trần seems to read my mind, sharply predicting my incomplete ideas or even filling the void of communication between my hesitating moments with awakening thoughts. He keeps me in awe and I’m flabbergasted by his canny insights.
What makes Trần special, perhaps, are his aspirations and optimism about everything despite having lived through war atrocities, a famine, a monstrous genocide, a tyranny, brutal camps, and a harrowing flight for freedom. He has savored deeply every sense of an exilic life with a typical sensitivity of a sophisticated writer. Since his family settled in Orange County, Trần has never ceased to write. Furiously. He has worked assiduously seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, during 27 rolling years, only resting when the weather failed him.
I ask him about the retainment of Vietnamese language and culture and art for posterity in the Vietnamese diaspora. Expressively, Trần declares: “The flow of art and letters has been disrupted, troubled, and lost due to historical turbulence, wars, and displacement.” He pauses and recalls eloquently how Vietnam had lost most of its invaluable trove of literature written in Chữ-nôm, or Southern script, since the 10th century when Vietnamese adapted the Chinese script to create their own language, ending the Chinese colonialism of over a thousand years, from 111 BC – 938 AD, during which the official written language was Classical Chinese, or Chữ Hán. Trần read Nguyễn Công Trứ and Hồ Xuân Hương (the famous authors who wrote in Southern Script) but most of their monumental work have still been untouched by local scholars who have not been allowed to access the national libraries where these antique texts are archived. “Those libraries welcome American and international scholars only, not Vietnamese academics.” Trần smiles dryly.
“Western civilization is a blessing and a curse,” he continues, his eyes turn somber. When the Roman alphabet was introduced to Vietnam in the early 17th century by Alexandre de Rhodes, an Avignonese Jesuit and lexicographer missionary, this Western language swiftly replaced and took away another trove of literature and poetry written in the Southern script. Influential scholars such as Đặng Thai Mai, Nguyễn Văn Tố, Phạm Quỳnh, etc. translated celebrated works from Southern script to chữ Quốc Ngữ (Western alphabetical national language). “But they missed lots of the essence in that literary trove,” Trần Dạ Từ says, telling me about one of his friends who was rendering this task. Given that the Roman alphabet is more charming and accessible for Vietnamese people who also fervently wished to liberate themselves from the Chinese influence, the Western language disrupted the flow of history, culture, and traditions of Vietnam. Trần recalls sharply, “Our cultural house has changed its keys through the ebbs and flows of history, each time we lost traces of the past, substantially.”
As we delve deeper into the disjunctures of history and culture, Trần drifts back to the past, calling to his mind the revolution of 1945 when all national prominent authors, from North to South Vietnam, started to negotiate their creative trajectories. They were deeply torn apart between socialist realism (or art for the nationalist romanticization) and apolitical artivism. Both North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese poets and writers, however, agonized over their forced silence and shackled dream for art.
Historical ruptures dislocate people and cultures. “This is our karma,” Trần surmises, “because we’ve lost once and again our exuberant, revelatory and engrossing literature and art.”
Yet he discerns all poets and writers have their distinctive sensitivity for any vicissitudes of life; and they wouldn’t miss chronicling fluidity of their age in whatever language, Southern calligraphy or Western script. Wars and historical disjunctures massacre not only human beings but also literature and culture.
In his age, Trần Dạ Từ recalls his literary precursors like Thế Lữ, Huy Cận, Xuân Diệu, and Tự Lực Văn Đoàn being mercilessly tormented, during the revolution of 1945 for their “impure” writing and portrayal of human foibles and folly. All of their work before 1945 were then sanitized by revolutionaries who believed in nothing but violent ideologies. “This unsparing genocide of culture impoverished our literature capital.” Trần Dạ Từ wistfully says. But “if you visit websites such as thivien.net or its Facebook and other social media platforms,” his voice rises in elation, “most of quintessential literature before the revolution has been revived and widely read.” He has reason not to be pessimistic about the future of Vietnamese culture in Little Saigon and is skeptical about the death of Vietnamese literature and culture.
And he’s right. Their literary oeuvres live on as the young generation carry with them on the “cloud,” while moving vigorously ahead with accelerating forces of globalization. And they continue to contemplate Vietnamese literary work in their school curriculum. Trần beams with delight, looking at his wife seated next to him when we talked about her memoir Giaỉ Khăn Sô Cho Huế or The Mourning Headband for Hue (translated into English by Professor Olga Dror) being intensively taught in American schools.
Trần Dạ Từ and Nhã Ca are prophetic. Vietnamese diasporic literature and culture will not wither away. While they themselves might be the trailblazers who have written their names into the American literary history, the younger generation of Vietnamese American writers is also blossoming —a beautiful legion marching forward with fiery souls, just like them.
The article draws from the conversation between poet Trần Dạ Từ and Dr. Tung Bui to whom the author would like to express her gratitude for his invaluable support in connecting her to writers Trần Dạ Từ, Nhã Ca and other Vietnamese American artists in Little Saigon, Orange County, California.
Contributor’s Bio
Quynh H. Vo holds a PhD in English from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where she teaches and researches globalization and literature, Asian American interdisciplinary studies, Vietnamese American literature, and neoliberalism in American transnational literature. Her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Saigoneer, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Da Mau, the Peace, Land, Bread, and elsewhere.
