Student Reflections on author Monique Truong's Seminar and Reading at Duke, September 30, 2019
These undergraduates were enrolled in "Asian American Gender and Sexuality" (Fall 2019) with Professor Ryanson Ku, a 2018-2020 postdoctoral fellow in the English Department. The Seminar with Monique Truong was led by Professor Ku and Professor Susan Thananopavarn (Thompson Writing Program).
"Following our discussions in class on Marilyn Chen and Frank Chin, Monique Truong’s seminar provided new historical, cultural, and personal perspectives to view representation in Asian American literature. Like many Asian immigrants, Truong had to reconcile a body that was “not at all extraordinary” in Vietnam with one that was suddenly subject to criticism in America. “The thing that one cannot negotiate is the body,” Truong said, though the way one survives is by continually navigating between lived experiences and by prioritizing community over geography in defining home. Despite one’s body being immutable, however, perhaps the past is something more malleable: I’ve always thought of nostalgia as a way to romanticize memories by reliving them all, so I was struck by her statement that in fact, nostalgia sanitizes memory by filtering trauma out for only the elegant parts of one’s past. We often take effective representation to mean historical accuracy, but what if it has more to do with reclaiming emotional agency? Like the daffodils in “Kelly” that transform yellow into something beautiful, I wonder if nostalgia is an intentional choice to cast one’s undeniable body—and with it, its trauma—into a more amenable light.
Monique Truong’s new book, The Sweetest Fruits, offers the perspectives of three women to interrogate Hearn’s legacy as a cultural observer of Japan. I found it interesting that in publishing the book, Truong faced criticism and doubt over the authenticity of the language used by the female narrators—first, because the book is written in English; second, because many women in their time were illiterate; and third, because the narration is heavily descriptive and metaphoric in a way that people would not have spoken. In response, Truong defended her style by expressing how “the word exists, just not always on paper.” In other words, her creative discretion is justified by a choice to give voice to real figures whose thoughts have historically been filtered, appropriated and reconstructed through men. Truong implies that even though the language of the novel is not historically plausible, the author can still lend modern-day language and metaphor to express her real-life characters’ inner psyche, which is a deeper kind of truth. In this sense, I admire how she comes to each character “with full respect,” which I took to mean having the empathy to assume depth in one’s characters beyond what they can audibly say. The inadequacy of explicit storytelling is reflected again in The Book of Salt through Binh, the unreliable narrator, and his shipmate Bao, whose answers are uncommunicative and vague. Nevertheless, Binh infers deeply about Bao’s limited answers (p. 108) and is generous enough to believe that he leaves much more left unsaid, perhaps just as Truong hopes her readers do for Binh." --Wong, Jake
"I appreciated the opportunity to hear Monique Troung read excerpts from her new novel “The Sweetest Fruits”. I thought it was interesting how Troung uses historical archives as a basis for her work. For instance, in her earlier work, “The Book of Salt” was inspired by a brief mention of an “Indochinese cook” in Alice Toklas’ Cook Book and “The Sweetest Fruits” was inspired by three women behind Lafcadio Hearn, a 19th-century traveler who is famous for his writings about Japan. I find it incredible that she is able to create such vivid characters infused with poetic language from fragments of history. “The Sweetest Fruits” is separated into three sections with three women narrators: Rosa, Hearn’s mother, Alethea, a newly freed slave, and Koizumi Setsu, Hearn’s second wife. Although these women were incredibly influential to Hearn’s life, they are largely absent in historical record. Setsu, in particular, acted as Hearn’s interpreter in Japan and helped with his writings. Troung said that Setsu’s contribution has been diminished by many historians, when in reality, Hearn never was completely fluent in Japanese. I was impressed by Troung’s careful approach and respect towards these characters. In this way, she is able to use her literary talents to give voice to the marginalized." --Meng, Teresa
“One aspect of Monique Truong’s reading that I really appreciated was hearing her talk about how she writes to give voices to the people who history overlooks, which is apparent in hearing her talk about The Sweetest Fruits and in our current reading, The Book of Salt. Minority history is something that’s often erased, and even when it is addressed, is usually not afforded the same kinds of nuances as white historical figures (eg. we know every detail about Abraham Lincoln’s rise from lawyer to President but people don’t even know that MLK espoused socialism), so the fact that Truong’s writing aims to explore the nuances of marginalized identities really appeals to me. From what Truong says about her approach to her writing and research, it’s clear that she cares a lot about this issue. Her validation of Setsu’s intelligence and agency whereas history has considered her to merely be “Lafcadio Hearn’s wife and helper” was a particularly strong example of this.” —Jiahui Shen
"The first thing that struck me about Monique Truong was that her voice contained the Southern twang I grew up hearing in Texas, but her thoughts contained the diasporic emotions I grew up feeling. Hearing how she navigated and negotiated different spaces, framed by her formative years in Boiler Springs, North Carolina, drew forward repressed memories and created new connections between past experiences. Her experiences growing up in a Southern, de facto segregated town seemed to echo a lot of my own elementary school years in an almost entirely white school. When you hear epithets from the mouths of other children, you don’t always know how to react. When people asked me if I ate dogs, I responded with disgust and confusion because I knew that was never served on the dinner table where my family gathered. Or if they asked if I knew what “ching chong” meant, I genuinely tried to parse through different Chinese words, thinking they meant jín chá, which means police, or qīn qiān, meaning light gun. When the learning of racism starts at such a young age, you tend to internalize it. And working through the unlearning and renegotiating was something that really resonated with me.
Another concept that Truong brought up that sparked my memory was the idea of a “ghost town.” When she talked about what visiting Vietnam meant to her versus what it meant to her friends, it reminded me of my own first visit to China. She talked about how going back to Vietnam, as a refugee, was a very painful and powerful experience. Rather than viewing the beautiful sights and scenery, her visit involved going with her mother, who saw an old ghost of Saigon placed on top of the city she now saw. When I went back to China back in third grade, I went with my grandparents, who hadn’t been back in about ten years. They brought with them old money and letters to send to people. Our first visit to a grocery store, the cashier rejected the coins, which were now out of use. And our first visit to an old friend’s house was found to be fruitless, as they had moved and my grandparents no longer knew their address. The trauma from the past that led to dislocation and immigration often doesn’t reveal itself, except in those vulnerable moments. The trauma gets passed on in rules and worldviews onto the next generation.
The reading was especially powerful, since Monique Truong talked through the thought processes and interests that brought her to the idea and premise of her new book. At the seminar, when someone asked if she felt a sense of responsibility for being an Asian American writer writing Asian American books, her response was really enlightening. Truong said that everything she writes can be seen as a Vietnamese American book, a refugee book, or a diasporic book, because those are the frames she was given. You could hear the yearning for homeland in the voice of Rosa, the injustice and discrimination faced by Alethea, and the hybrid mix of cultures in the household of Setsu. Yet, these three narrators all have their own distinct voice, histories, and dreams. When Truong read each section, her cadence and voice changed, bringing to life the words and thoughts on the page." --Celine Wei
"Discussion:
Through the lens of the narrative short story “Kelly,” we discussed the intersection of Asian and American identity. The discussion was powerful to me not only because I was able to hear a strong, Asian-American woman discuss how she navigates and negotiates her identities, but also because I realized so many of my fellow peers had the same questions I had asked myself: how to reconcile simultaneously feeling too Asian and too American. When asked about her responsibility as an Asian author, Monique Truong replied that there is no burden or responsibility she feels, as the true responsibility lies in telling the kind of story she would want to read. As a writer, I found this insight to be particularly helpful, as it helped me to realize that you are allowed to revel in the ownership of your own story; there is no obligation to tell a certain story a certain way just because one is a person of color.
Sweetest Fruits Reading:
While I listened to Monique Truong’s smooth and powerful voice reading from The Sweetest Fruits, I felt the characters come to life. It was fascinating to see how an author could weave together so many different voices and stories while still retaining her original voice as a writer. During the question and answer portion, I saw how Truong had absorbed parts of each character into herself; she felt them that deeply and was incredibly informed about the history of each person. With The Sweetest Fruit, Truong emphasized that there is always a new way to tell a story you think you have heard a million times. By using the marginalized women in Hearn’s life as a conduit to tell Hearn’s story, Truong creates a multi-dimensional narrative. In terms of representation, it was inspiring to see a female Asian American author detailing her experiences publishing and working on her novel." --Samantha Su
"1. I found Monique’s experience growing up in a small, still very much racially segregated southern town in NC striking, as it was clearly incredibly formative in shaping her perception of herself and relationship to her body throughout high school and beyond, even though she was only there for around 3 years. In contrast, I have lived in the same place my whole life and find it honestly quite difficult to distinguish particular years of my childhood, whereas for Monique ages 6-9 was a time that especially sticks out and can be remembered quite distinctly. Perhaps certain memories don’t remain in full, but snapshots of people (like Kelly and Michelle in the short story Kelly) and feelings of awkwardness and loneliness and confusion remained even beyond her time in Boiling Springs.
2. The origin story of how she became interested in the central figure of her new novel The Sweetest Fruits was also particularly interesting. One thing that struck me was the fact that her fascination with migrants, especially those that voluntarily move about the world, stems primarily from her refugee past - a traumatic aspect of her past rooted very much in necessity rather than willingness. Her sense of home as more of a community of people rather than a specific place seems to be tied to this past; however, I wonder to what extent these two aspects can be disentangled, as community often relies on a strong connection to place as well.
3. I’m also quite curious about her creative process and how that seems to have evolved from the writing of Kelly junior year of college for an assignment (which I can’t even imagine being able to do at this point!!) to the publication of her latest novel following 8 years of travel and extensive research. Kelly is of course a personal piece written from her own memory and perspective, which certainly makes the research aspect of the piece much easier, but her writing is nevertheless very intentional (e.g. the significance of the yellow daffodils) and goes beyond simple relaying of a childhood story into the historical and emotional. In the creation of The Sweetest Fruits, she had to contend with challenges related to writing a piece of historical fiction, such as “writing between the facts” with limited archival data (esp. on the 3 women narrators). Yet, despite lack of data or a shared history/perspective, she is still able to capture their tone and essence in her language and style. My question here (not unlike that of the other professor in the room) is quite bluntly, how do you do it? I realize now that her skill is not so unlike playing a character in a film.." --Katja Kochvar
"I unfortunately was unable to attend the seminar discussion of Monique Truong’s “Kelly,” but I was able to attend her reading from The Sweetest Fruits. As someone who’s delved quite a bit into vocal technique and dabbled in theater, I was really fascinated by the way she took on the voice of her characters while reading. Her voice shifted easily from the journalist writing a biography, to the concerned and tormented mother, to the first wife and sassy cook, to the final, mourning wife. I had never been to an author reading before, but as a person who had always considered authors to be those who let their writing speak for itself, I hadn’t imagined she would read her work with such intensity and emotion. I was also fascinated by how she described her process of writing historical fiction, particularly the phrase she used of “writing between the facts.” I imagine if I attempted to write historical fiction my desire to write compellingly would certainly be trapped by a cage of attempted historical accuracy, but her description made her process seem more freeing, and more like a filling in of the empty spaces. Finally, I really appreciated her use of “did not have access to the written word” rather than “illiterate.” I think the problem of access is huge in issues of inequality, and I love her emphasis on it in her way of speaking as well. It’s definitely something that I would like to emulate in the way I speak about history and access in the future." --Lucy Zheng
Seminar Photos | Photo Credit: Shania Khoo, Class of '22
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