“On Starting Over Again”: A Conversation between Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Ly Tran

This interview kicks off diaCRITICS’ new series, “Writers on Writers,” in which two writers are invited to mutually engage in each other’s work with attention to a particular theme. In this interview, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Ly Tran discuss their current work projects as well as issues currently most critical to them.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai: Congratulations, Ly, on receiving the Millay Arts Residency sponsored by DVAN! Tell me about your experience?

Ly Tran: Oh, it was such a dream! I am so deeply grateful to DVAN and Millay Arts for the opportunity. I took part in the October 2022 Residency and met so many wonderful artists from different disciplines. We’d gather for dinner every evening and talk about what everyone was working on, how much progress we made, and discuss our craft. It was truly inspiring to be in the company of people who are profoundly passionate about art and so generous in sharing their knowledge. And it certainly didn’t hurt that we were surrounded by beautiful nature, autumnal woods and meadows and babbling brooks, freestanding wooden doors that seemed to lead to other worlds. I went hiking on Harvey Mountain nearly every day and discovered the peace and serenity that allowed me to find clarity on many of the plot elements in my next book. Millay gave me the time I needed to explore my craft, to escape the pressures of the real world, and to reflect.

NPQM: Sharing, networking, and reflecting are so important. And this is exactly what I did, too, during my first and only residency so far: a gathering of DVAN writers at the Djerassi Artists Residency in June 2018 in California. The conversations during and following that residency were so meaningful to all of us that we are publishing them in a book called “On Being a Writer: Vietnamese Diasporas in Dialogue”, which I am so excited about. And I am so happy to hear that you are writing your second book! Is the process similar or different this time? 

LT: After having written my first book, I feel as though I’m in this incredible transition or transformative phase. In preparation for this novel, I am reinventing myself in a sense, and shedding all the layers of the person that I was when I was working on my first book.

NPQM: You give me goosebumps, because this is what has happened to me as well whenever I start a new book. I need to reinvent myself. I can’t wait to see how you will transform yourself for your novel, Ly! Your first memoir House of Sticks is just so breathtakingly beautiful, personal, painful, and traumatic. Yet it’s also a healing and liberating read. I can’t wait for your second book. Tell me more about it. 

LT: They’re constantly changing, these projects of ours. At the moment, it’s an epistolary novel about an agoraphobic mother-daughter duo. The daughter is coming of age and yearns to see the outside world but is still gripped with fear. One day, she receives a letter addressed to her from someone she doesn’t know. She’s very intrigued and starts a correspondence and friendship with this mysterious letter writer, and they start telling each other these wild stories. Ultimately, something becomes a catalyst for her to step outside for the first time to find the mysterious letter writer and liberate herself.

There were certain themes in my memoir that I wanted to continue exploring in this next book: feminism, womanhood, and mental health. I wanted to focus on agoraphobia, which is something not often seen in literature. And, you know, my first book was more for my parents, but there was a lot about my father. So I want to dedicate this second book to my mother.

NPQM: What amazing topics and themes! The elements of mystery make it sound so exciting. And I love the fact that you’re dedicating this new book to your mother. From your memoir, I got to know her as a hardworking, loving, and compassionate person. And she taught you very well, because you’re fluent in the Vietnamese language even though you grew up in New York. You know many proverbs, idioms and Vietnamese rituals, and you have incorporated them into your memoir.

LT: Thank you. How about you? What are you working on at the moment?

NPQM: I have been working on my third novel. It is set in modern-day Vietnam and deals with human trafficking, human smuggling and other urgent real-life issues faced by Vietnamese women. I have written more than fifty thousand words and am very compelled by it. I wish I could work on it full time. But for now, I am putting this new writing project aside, to be able to prepare for the launch of my second novel, Dust Child, which will be published on March 14, 2023. I am so excited about this book and I am leaving home on March 8 to embark on a major international book tour which will take me to many cities in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand… I am looking forward very much to meeting readers and have been preparing exclusive performances for my events, together with other award-winning writers and artists. I aim to make these events memorable, moving, yet also fun and entertaining. 

LT: Congratulations. I can’t wait to perform your poetry with you in New York as part of your book tour! I want to ask about your public speaking ability. Do you feel like it comes naturally to you? Or is it a skill that you’ve had to hone over time?

NPQM: I had a lot of low self-esteem growing up. I was bullied. I was afraid of speaking up, of expressing my viewpoint. Growing up in Vietnam didn’t help since I was told to obey and to be obedient. Over the years, as I became a writer, I reflected, grew, and empowered myself with knowledge. I am fascinated by storytelling and feel energized by the presence of readers so I am doing my best to make this book tour amazing for those who attend. I am so excited that you can be a part of it.

Now, coming back to your new book. Are you experiencing difficulties and how do you plan to overcome them?

LT: Oh, that’s such a great question. Coming from writing a memoir, you have all the facts of your life to work with. You’ve got these parameters that are already built in for the story. But when it comes to fiction, I can take this novel in any direction I want so that’s actually incredibly daunting. It’s a little too much freedom. So I have to find a way to rein myself in, give myself structure.

NPQM: Yes, fiction is daunting but I do treasure the freedom that it gives me. I have employed such freedom to change some past events via my imagination, and also to free myself from the burden of responsibilities. I think I read somewhere that for a novelist, history is a nail on which the novelist can make up a jacket to hang. Both of my novels, The Mountains Sing and Dust Child, even though the characters and events are fictional, are based on historical truth. However sometimes we might have more than one version of the truth. My mission as the writer is to show the truth through different perspectives.

LT: And you do such a beautiful job of it.

NPQM: Thank you. I try. I want to be faithful to historical events but would like to exert my freedom of creativity as well. So it’s a difficult balance.

LT: Do you feel that, for whatever projects you work on, there is a through-line, regardless of genre? A particular theme you’re drawn to, like an itch you want to keep scratching? 

NPQM: I think humanity is something that I want to explore: our common characteristics as human beings regardless of our nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender… I think as humans we are more similar than we are different. We are all children of Mother Earth. We are all one family. And the COVID pandemic showed us that whatever happens in the furthest corner of the world will affect all of us. So we are in this together. My mission as a writer is to bring humans together, so that we all recognize our similarities, our connections, our relations with each other, and our ability to love each other.

LT: I completely agree, and I love this idea of connection. I feel like humanity right now is so disconnected from nature. So much so that we can’t see the harm that we’re doing, both to Mother Earth as well as to ourselves. I think aside from COVID, humanity is suffering from another, more insidious pandemic, a pandemic of loneliness because we’re so disconnected from each other, disconnected from ourselves. I do agree that love is the answer to all of this: loving ourselves, loving nature, and loving each other. I think it’s so beautiful that you’ve made it your mission as an artist to incorporate this message in your work. I’ve seen it. It brings me to tears every time I read your work because it’s so incredibly powerful. And I know that it’s life changing. So many people respond to your work. They find themselves in it, and it’s something that I aspire to achieve as an artist as well.

NPQM: And I saw that in your work, too. I did not know you before I read House of Sticks but through your memoir, I felt your pain, your love for your family, your struggle, your courage, your bravery. And I want to say that I believe in you. And I trust that you will do well in this novel you’re working on. 

LT: Do you ever have self-doubt?

NPQM: All the time! I’m working on my third novel now and even though I have more confidence, because I had readers supporting me through the first two books, I also have the pressure of meeting and exceeding my readers’ expectations. But I tell myself, you need to write for yourself first. You write a book that you want to read with messages that you want to convey. So don’t think about other people’s expectations. One way to overcome self-doubt is to just sit down, write and be disciplined because writing is a job, just like any other job, so you need to log in the hours. Whenever I have self-doubt, I also remind myself that I am not alone in this. I have our community and DVAN to help me overcome whatever challenges I will face. 

LT: Yes, community support is so incredibly important for emerging artists and writers. DVAN has been so supportive of me since the beginning and I couldn’t be more grateful. When I first started, I didn’t think that I had a community. I grew up very isolated from the Vietnamese community in New York City, which is quite small to begin with. And I was very nervous about the publication of my book because as part of the industry, you have to network and you have to reach out to people in your community. But I really didn’t know many people. And then I met you and you’ve been such a wonderful champion of my work from day one. You’re one of the very first people to blurb my book, and what a beautiful blurb it was! It’s been such an honor to get to know you over time and to become your friend. And then Anh Viet Thanh Nguyen invited me to an ÁCCENTED episode and that was so wonderful and so generous. I got to know the kind and charismatic Isabelle Pelaud, Vina Vo, and the entire DVAN family. Slowly, I began to feel like for the first time in my life, I have a community, which is such an unbelievably powerful and heartwarming experience. There was a DVAN gala that I went to in California a few months ago, and I just remember looking around at the DVAN community and looking at everything that they’ve accomplished so far. And just feeling, like you said, so proud of us, so proud of DVAN. I hope that one day I can be as supportive as you all have been to me, for other emerging artists or writers and pay it forward because it’s really meant the world to me.

NPQM: You know, I actually had similar experiences when I was about to publish my first book in English, The Mountains Sing. At that time, I lived in Indonesia. So I did not have a community of readers in the U.S. I was so surprised that DVAN and its amazing team started to uplift my voice. It was incredible. It was so generous. I was surprised because I was not used to being championed by other Vietnamese so generously. Now we have to make it a norm. Viet Thanh Nguyen once said, as Vietnamese we have to open the door for other Vietnamese. I have recently said in an interview that literature is like a garden. If you publish a book, you grow a tree. If you help others grow their trees, we will have a forest filled with beautiful trees where birds will come and sing. And that’s the most beautiful thing. 

We were talking about self-doubt. Do you suffer from it and how do you deal with it?

LT: Self-doubt is something I naturally suffer from. I can’t believe that I’ve already written a book. I’m still in a state of disbelief. When I see my book, I don’t even think that I wrote it. And now I’d have to sit back down and look at the blank page and begin again. So that’s incredibly intimidating for me. The biggest challenge is to believe in myself once again, and believe that I am a writer, and start.

NPQM: Oh, you are an amazing writer, Ly, and I saw it as soon as I picked up your first book. I believe in you and your mission as a writer. I know you will go far, very far on your journey as a writer. And please don’t let this self-doubt hold you back. It is something very common to all writers, regardless of how established we are. What I can recommend to you is sometimes when you are frightened of putting down words or of entering a new writing day, do meditation. Have you read The Art of Mindfulness by Master Thích Nhất Hạnh? 

LT: Yes, I have.

NPQM: Being mindful of our breath, going on long walks, and being connected with ourselves is very important to being able to block out all the noise and inner fear. Then we can hear our own voice loud and clear. Another book I would recommend is Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell. It’s about  how to write a novel in three drafts. I think the author said, “Write something that gives you a lot of excitement and joy.” You shouldn’t feel like, “Oh, I must write this scene.” You can just skip the sequence of scene and write something you are excited about, for example, a middle scene of your book instead of a beginning scene. Because unless you can channel your energy into the pages, your readers can’t feel it. You should be excited to explore the unknown, to get to know your characters and put them through tests. You throw them into the big sea and ask them to swim and they have to learn it overnight. So throw a lot of challenges at them and see how they grow and transform. Don’t be afraid to write down the words that come to your mind, because you can always edit them. Nobody will read what you write right now. So just go wild. Feel free to write the worst draft ever. The purpose is to let your words and energy flow. And if you get stuck writing on a computer, go to a park. Bring a notepad with you. Sometimes if I’m stuck, I just pick up a book that I love and I can see my love for language, and I am suddenly excited about writing again.

LT: I do the same. Whenever I pick up a book, and there’s a beautiful passage, I can’t stop thinking about it. Sometimes it keeps me up all night. And I recite the passages to myself, because I want to drink in the words. That’s what gets me excited about writing again.

NPQM: So see, you have it in you. And don’t worry about the doubt, because all of us have doubts. And as writers, we need to face rejections. I think Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote about being rejected after he won the Pulitzer Prize. Everybody gets rejected. I think as writers, no matter how established, you always have rejections and I think rejections are there to make us better as writers. And I think my aim as a writer is to exceed what I think I’m capable of. In my novel Dust Child, I wrote in the voice of a traumatized American helicopter pilot who was involved in the Vietnam War. And how he goes back to Vietnam and tries to look for his girlfriend who was pregnant when he abandoned her. So for me to write in his viewpoint, I had to know how to talk in American English and think like a veteran. But I learned a lot through that process. The higher you set your goal, the higher you’re going to learn and to achieve. The best part of being a writer for me is learning, don’t you think?

LT: Yeah. I love this idea of exceeding yourself and exceeding your own expectations for yourself. It’s simple, but it’s so powerful at the same time. Sometimes when I sit down to write, I just think, can I even get to where I want to go? But you’re talking about going beyond the end goal.

NPQM: I am learning every day. I have been reading books about screenwriting. As novelists, we should actually write like screenwriters. We should skip some scenes. It’s just like in the cinema. You don’t have to show your character walking to the market unless on the way to the market something happens. So before I write a scene, I think about what purpose it will serve in moving the plot forward. I always remind myself to show the transformation of my characters. Because readers don’t want boring characters who don’t change. I hope my characters can change and empower other people, too.

LT: Yes, me too. I certainly hope that my characters will inspire and empower others. I’m very excited to work on this book. I’m excited to travel to a different world, because for each novel, you’re creating this completely different landscape that is an amalgamation of places you know, but also places you’ve dreamt of. So this is the space that I’m trying to navigate right now as a writer, and I’m looking forward to it. I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to learn from you. 

NPQM: I’ve learned from you, too, Ly. I admire you as a memoirist because I am not sure I am ever able to write a memoir. My personal experiences are just too painful for me to bring them onto the page. I am also looking at you and thinking about how to maintain a balanced life. I mean, as published writers, we are expected to promote our work and to be out there for readers. But at the same time, we also need our space to be able to create, to shed ourselves of who we were in the past and renew ourselves so that we are prepared to write our next best book. 

LT: I mean it’s always such a joy to see your social media posts, and I’m in awe. I think, how does she do it? I’m so shy on social media. 

NPQM: I think it’s very time consuming to be on social media, but at the same time, I love interacting with readers. When readers spend days of their lives reading our books I’m thankful to them, and I want to hear from them. Social media has connected me to a lot of amazing people who have become like family to me. I love posting about other authors and about the amazing things that organizations that I support have been doing. I hope to use social media better for advocacy purposes, because currently, I am the peace ambassador for Peace Tree Vietnam, which does an amazing job in removing unexploded bombs in Vietnam, planting trees and building kindergartens. I am also an author advocate for Room to Reads, an organization that aims to erase global illiteracy and promote girls’ education, and an Ambassador for Shelter Box Book Club, a UK charity book club which has raised £1 million to provide emergency shelter for families across the world after disaster. I also enjoy my role as an adviser for DVAN’s publishing series, which aims to publish books about the Vietnamese experience in order to fight against invisibility and misrepresentation.

LT: Just listening to all of your responsibilities is so awe-inspiring. How do you find time to do it all? As you said, it’s a balance. Life is all about balance and figuring out how to do the things that you love to do. It seems to me that you love all of these things that you do. I can sense your love for your readers, your love for these communities, these underprivileged and disenfranchised populations. The world is so lucky to have you in it.

NPQM: The world is so lucky to have you as well, Ly. And coming back to your comment about how I do all this, I feel lucky to be able to give back and help make a difference. However sometimes I’m feel very overwhelmed as well. I recently re-read the book Happiness by Master Thích Nhất Hạnh, which is a life changing book for me because it reminds me to take deep breaths and appreciate the present moments. Sometimes if you feel overwhelmed, just take deep breaths. Things will line up. I wish you a lot of joy and a lot of creative energy in crafting your new novel, and I’m excited to read it.

---

Dust Child
by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Algonquin Books, $28.00

House of Sticks
by Ly Tran
Simon & Schuster, $17.99

---