In this episode, we discuss the life and legacy of Nguyễn Quí Đức. Born in Da Lat, Vietnam in 1958, Đức arrived in the United States at 17 as a refugee of the Vietnam War. He would go on to become a journalist, translator, writer, and radio producer, working for the BBC in London, KALW-FM in San Francisco, and for NPR. He was the host of Pacific Time, KQED-FM Public Radio’s national program on Asian and Asian American life.
In addition to his journalistic work, Đức also published the hugely influential family memoir Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family in 1994. Đức’s National Public Radio series on Vietnam won the Citation of Excellence from the Overseas Press Club of America. In 2006, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his contributions to journalism.
For this episode, we are joined by two writers who knew Đức personally and who co-founded the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). Isabelle Thuy Pelaud is a writer, professor, and Executive Director of DVAN. Viet Thanh Nguyen is a writer, professor, and Pulitzer Prize winner. Learn more about them in the episode description below. Pelaud and Nguyen, along with Lan P. Duong, edited the recent collection The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora, released in April 2025.
Isabelle and Viet are interviewed by Nate King, Content & Exhibits Manager at the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place May 20, 2025 and was recorded over Zoom.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Nation of Writers Podcast, presented in conjunction with our Exhibit American Voices, which you can explore in person or online at Nationofwriters.org. In this episode, we discuss the life and legacy of Nguyen Qui Duc, born in Da Lat Vietnam in 1958. Duc arrived in the United States at 17 years old as a refugee of the Vietnam War. He would go on to become a journalist, translator, writer and radio producer, working for the BBC in London, KALW FM in San Francisco, and for NPR, and he was the host of Pacific Time, KQED FM Public Radio’s National Program on Asian and Asian-American life. In addition to his journalistic work, Duc also published a hugely influential family memoir, Where The Ashes Are, The Odyssey of a Vietnamese family.
In 1994, Duc’s National Public Radio series on Vietnam won the Citation of Excellence from the Overseas Press Club of America. In 2006, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his contributions to journalism. For this episode, we are joined by two writers who knew Duc personally and who co-founded the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, DVAN. Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud is a writer, professor, and executive director of DVAN. Viet Thanh Nguyen is a writer and professor and Pulitzer Prize winner. Isabelle and Viet are interviewed by Nate King, content and exhibits manager at the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place May 20th, 2025, and was recorded over Zoom.
Nate King:
Well, thank you Isabelle and Viet for joining me today on this episode of Nation of Writers. I’m looking forward to talking to you about Nguyen Qui Duc and your own work and how he has inspired you. Before we get into that, could you just briefly tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you first encountered Nguyen Qui Duc’s work? Isabelle, would you like to get us started?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yes, yes. My name is Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud, the executive director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. I’m also a professor in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. I believe I met Nguyen Qui Duc in 1994 when his book, Where the Ashes Are were published. And at the time, he was a student and UC Berkeley, and he was the first Vietnamese-American writer that I’ve met in person. And we were very … when we met him, we started to help him to organize event, to promote his book because nobody was doing it.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I am Viet Thanh Nguyen, I am a writer, and I met Duc around the same time as Isabelle said. I remember I was probably in my early 20s, a student at UC Berkeley. And Duc to me at that time felt like an impossibly old man. But looking back, he was probably in his early 30s, 34, perhaps, much younger than I am now, but not did he seem like an old man, but he also seemed like an incredibly cultured person as well. I had grown up in this Bay Area city called San Jose, which I thought was quite provincial, fairly or unfairly. Went to school at Berkeley, started to meet people in San Francisco where he lived, and he had his own apartment.
He had his convertible, he had a taste for not just the finer things in life, but really more about the beautiful things in life. So he was never the kind of person, for example, who would buy a brand new Mercedes. He bought the old vintage Mercedes. That was really cool. So I don’t know how his life was impressed me so much because it was its own work of art. And that’s one of the things I’ll always remember about Duc was not only that he was a writer, but also that he crafted his own persona. And I think that probably had to do partly with his own experiences as a refugee and having to leave Vietnam at a young age, older than me, but still a young age in his teens and having to forge a life for himself, first as a journalist and then as a writer.
So his persona and his early work, including this book that Isabel mentioned, Where the Ashes are, his memoir, made a big imprint on me and set up the model for this possibility of what the Vietnamese American literature could be. But also, he was also not just an individual writer and journalist, but he was also always a very social person. He wanted to build movements and collectives. He wanted to have fun, even as he was doing something very serious. So part of what it meant to meet him in the 90s was to become a part of this project that we started together. I don’t know whose idea it originally was. I’m pretty sure it was Duc’s, which was to form a Vietnamese American arts collective.
But I do take credit for the name of the collective, which was Ink and Blood [foreign language 00:04:53], which is very melodramatic in English and in Vietnamese, but we are very melodramatic people, and our events were probably pretty melodramatic too. They involved a lot of wine and open mics and poetry, and we were not particularly good organizers, in the sense of building an organization, but we were great at throwing parties and art events, and I think we left our imprint. I remember throwing events that drew hundreds of people, for example, at San Francisco State and Stanford University and smaller, more intimate events at artists studios. And to one of those open mics came this beautiful young woman who became my wife. So all of these things are wrapped up in these memories of Duc and what he represented back in the 90s and onwards.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, and then I remember, I mean, one reason I was … As a student, I was quite shy, but Duc had English accent and I have a French accent because my mother is Vietnamese, but I grew up in France. I was born there. So he was very accepting, understanding of that. And I remember Viet, when the name Ink and Blood came, it was this little office in Tenderloin. And it was you, Duc, maybe two, mostly guys from I … I remember from the time, and it was a lot of talking and that came about, and I remember Duc say, yes, that sounds great. And I do remember it was you that came up with that name.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Well, thank you for that. There was a lot of men. That is definitely true, a limitation of those times that we, in the subsequent iteration of Ink and Blood, which became the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, a much more boring name in my opinion, but much better probably for 501 C3 nonprofit fundraising. But we’ve tried to correct some of the limitations and the excesses of that earlier, more romantic, less organized period, much more gender equity and equity in terms of many other different identities, including sexual identities as well. But besides there being a lot of men, there’s also a lot of smoking, which I didn’t partake in, and a lot of drinking, which I still partake in.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yes.
Nate King:
It sounds a lot like your time in France when the make believers were all there. I think Vutron said something similarly about their time there, so that … Yeah.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yes, but the smoking that we have, I mean it is from a photograph on the cover of that book, I mean, the magazine, and Duc was supposed to be there and-
Nate King:
Mm-hmm.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
And we were sad, he couldn’t be there because of his illness, but we all smoke because we wanted to be better, like rebellious children, although we all right now, but have this identity. But some of us don’t smoke, and actually some of them fake to smoke, but wanted to have the attitude, yeah and living in France. But one thing I want to say about Duc, like Viet was saying, he was very … We did the work, but it was also social gathering when he brought people from … Students like us and journalists or people from the community and people hanging out, just a lot of hanging out.
And after he had Tadioto a bar in Vietnam, he continued to do this. A lot of food and alcohol because it’s a ball, but bringing music and artists and writers at his ball, and I think with the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network, which really inspired by Duc and Ink and Blood, the continuation of it, but more professionalized way and make it more diasporic and bigger in some way. But we really try to … or at least for me to hold onto this idea of the social of the relational … Yes, professionalism is important, but connection between people around food and drinks and chit-chat is … That we are able to replicate that in residencies, has really come from that.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
If professional, is the adjective that we’re using to describe the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network, I think the adjective for Nguyen Qui Duc, throughout his life, but also very evidently during the Ink and Blood period of the 1990s was probably Bohemian. If you go read his obituary in the New York Times from December, 2023 written by Seth Mydans, there’s a photograph, beautiful photograph of Duc behind his desk at Tadioto, this bar in Hanoi that he opened as Isabelle mentioned, where he is behind a chair. There’s pens and pencils all over the chair, there’s a bottle, and he’s reclining back with a cigarette in his hand, and it’s perfect. It’s the perfect. It’s the perfect image of … that summarizes so many of the things that we’ve been talking about.
It’s really hard to hang on to the bohemianism once you become institutionalized. And I think there was probably always that tension perhaps in Duc’s life between the Bohemian that seemed to be very natural to him, and the fact that he was building institutions or becoming a part of institutions. He worked for NPR as a radio journalist and a radio show host. He started Ink and Blood, which became professional … the Diaspora Vietnamese Artist Network. He went to Hanoi to become a businessman, but his business was to run a bar that was sort of the cultural hub for all of the exiles and expats and travelers and so on. All the interesting people from outside of Vietnam, coming to Vietnam went there.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, but as I said, with our residency, that’s a place where we try to maintain that. And related to Nguyen Qui Duc, in the last residency we had in January in Vietnam in Hue, which where he was born, his partner and some of the musicians and friends flew from Hanoi to Hue and had an events with us, with the writers from the residency because Duc really felt like he wanted to do some Ink and Blood or divine work through his ball and his network. But he passed, but they flew and offered the time and the talents to celebrate his life. And we had a big event in a really beautiful place that he loved in Hue. Yeah, it was to celebrate his life, and it was wonderful for me to see the continuations. His spirit was still there with us and we’re still inspired by his work. So he had big influence on us, I believe, with Viet and I, to do what we do now.
Nate King:
Yeah, and I’m struck too by … Like you said, the musicians and artists came to that celebration. Both of you have generously shared your time with me today. Not everyone gets that, I think. So there’s something special about him. I’m curious what you think that is.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I think he was always very generous. So I’ll just give you one example. He moved to Hanoi. He opened this bar, Tadioto, which went through a number of variations in different locations, and he also built himself a house up in the mountains a couple of hours outside of Hanoi. This beautiful house that was featured in one of the magazines of things, Architectural Digest or something. And it deservedly so, it was sort of bore the stamp of Qui Duc as an artist, as an idiosyncratic person. The house looked nothing like most other homes in Vietnam at the time, and he was always willing to share. So when I came out there, he said, yeah, go ahead and stay at the house for a few days.
When I got there, there was somebody else leaving his house who had been staying there. And I know he was always generous with that space just as he was generous with his time. And whenever I met him, he always seemed like he was overjoyed to see me, even if we hadn’t seen each other for a while. I think he probably gave that vibe to everybody, that he encountered, or at least to people that I knew in common with him. So I think that spirit of generosity and sharing was always present and made him very beloved. For example, when he would throw these events at Tadioto and he would invite musicians and artists and writers to come, the space was always as much about all these other people as it was about him.
So he was a centerpiece of Tadioto in Hanoi, but really it was all the guests that came that he invited, that he knew his network of people and his willingness to make new friends, That turned Tadioto into an interesting space.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, and I will echo that, when I went to the celebration of his life, organized by Kiki Uedi and then listening to all the speakers, this is really the word also that came to my mind when you asked a question. This was very generous with this time and make everyone feels like they were very special. Yeah, I also received that and also, went to his house in the jungle up north and welcomed us when we went with a group of writers and they offer us drinks. But yes, this is what people speak a lot when they speak about him, by his generosity with this time and being very present with everyone of us. Yeah.
Nate King:
Thank you for that. Yeah, I can see why everyone comes out for him. And we’ve talked a little bit about him as kind of a person. I’m curious if we can get into the writing a little bit, and I guess maybe it is also the timing in which he started publishing is quite important, which you alluded to also there wasn’t much going on at the time, especially for Vietnamese writers. So I’m curious if you could just talk about his role and sort of, you’ve talked about building community, but also just about uplifting writers to the Vietnamese-American writing community too. Yeah, just curious if you have any thoughts on that.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I wrote a senior thesis on Vietnamese-American literature, so I wrote that thesis in 1992, and at the time, there actually was Vietnamese-American literature. There wasn’t a lot of it, but there was a handful of books written in English or even sometimes translated into English. And they were, I think all memoirs of various kinds. And the most notable book up until that point had been Le Ly Hayslip’s when Heaven and Earth Changed Places, which came out I believe in 1989 and then, was turned into a movie by Oliver Stone. But then there came Duc’s book in 1994, very shortly after that.
And it was a very different kind of book because I think the books that came before Duc’s, including Le Ly Hayslip’s oftentimes translated or co-written in English the number of … I’m trying to remember how many actually might’ve been written by the author of himself or herself. And I think there was only a couple that come to mind. So Where The Ashes Are, was a really remarkable book, one of the very few single authored in English books by Vietnamese-American, and someone from a very interesting background, Duc as the son of the governor of Hue, and someone who left Vietnam that sort of an impressionable age in his teens and went on to become … Had to make his own life as an activist, as someone who was helping Vietnamese refugees.
And then as someone who became a journalist and who was thinking about these questions of exile, the refugee experience, war, colonialism, the diaspora, all of that is there in Where The Ashes Are wrapped up with his family memoir and the sense of loss, obviously, that he had been separated from his family for a long time, including his father and his sister. So I think many of the patterns of Vietnamese-American literature before and afterwards, especially afterwards, are present in this book. So it was really a groundbreaking, I think, kind of work in Where The Ashes Are.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, I will add to what we had said. He wrote about history, but also the story of his father who went to re-education camps. And then, Hue is very … Unlike other memoir, because often it’s about one person and he hears the story of two people, in his time in refugee camp and so forth, and really some strands of nostalgia where the home is, Where The Ashes Are. And it’s like in Vietnam, I want to return to Vietnam, a strong attachment to Vietnam. And some people have said that the reason it was not … Because it went out of print and it was not republished is because it’s not like one single narrative by himself, is himself and the second part is focused on his father. And I thought that’s interesting, right? And I wish … But he’s very Vietnamese in a way. Yeah.
Nate King:
Yeah, that is an interesting … Well, it’s interesting too because that has been an aspect of the memoir I’ve enjoyed quite a lot is the dual narratives. But it’s interesting that you point out that maybe makes it more difficult to, I don’t know, would you say market or-
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
You went out of print and it was not published, right? So it is harder to teach, right? It doesn’t fit in some of the model of memoir, but it is an important book, and I wish it was reprinted.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I think it was reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press. So yeah, so that came out I think in 2016 if I’m looking at the date correctly.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Okay. Because I was looking for it at some point and it was not there, so I was like, give up. Okay, great. It’s good to know. Thank you.
Nate King:
Isabel, you mentioned just now, which I’m curious to hear more about. You said that’s sort of aspect of storytelling, that dual narrative is very Vietnamese. What do you mean by that?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
If it’s not very Vietnamese, but what I want to say is that sometime the we, the collective identity, the clan, it is not so individualistic maybe as a culture, and he is very individualistic and the memoir is really much about the self and how the self impacted by the outside world. But here, it’s focusing on him and also his father. What happened to his father is as important to what happened to him. He wanted to honor that and speak to that, I believe.
Nate King:
Yeah.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
And if he has a weight of representation, representing what happened to that generation who sometimes couldn’t write in English or will not be published in English to give voice. So some have argued that he has a bit of the weight of representing that generations, but from knowing him, I think he really wanted his father’s story to be heard and told and known.
Nate King:
And that makes sense too, because I … To understand that, like you said, a lot of memoirs are about one individual, but it’s important to understand the other individuals around you and their stories and how that impacts you as well.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yes.
Nate King:
We’ve mentioned the memoir and we’ve also talked about his journalism and radio. In knowing him, did you ever learn of, or do you think he perhaps approached a different form with different mindsets or say he’s writing a journalistic piece, do you think he’s kind of thinking about that differently than say the memoir or a radio segment? Just curious if you have any insights into his process.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I think that’s an interesting question. Obviously, as a journalist, he would’ve a different approach in some ways. I mean, his memoir is obviously very, very personal about his family. But in his journalism, I always got the sense that he had to at least have a … I mean his journalism was oftentimes autobiographical in the sense that he was interested in certain questions because of his refugee background and his cosmopolitan background as someone who had fled Vietnam but had also chosen to remake himself as a Bohemian. But then when he was doing his journalism coverage, he obviously also had to have some objectivity in there that the pieces weren’t only about him. So I think there was a sense of difference between his professional world as a journalist versus his memoiristic world.
But his curiosity in terms of human beings certainly helped him with the journalistic work. And one thing I’ll point out here, that’s personally important to me is that he gave me my first break in terms of doing radio. So he had a show called Pacific Time and he had me record, write and record little personal pieces for that. So that was my first … and I was very young. I think I was in my mid to late 20s. I think that was some of my earliest experiences, writing for an audience outside of academia because I was a graduate student and then a young professor. And I credit that experience with beginning to teach me how to speak on the radio, which I don’t know if that even exists anymore, very much, but it’s taught me a lot about how to perform in general.
So that was sort of the beginnings of my own work in terms of being conscious of an audience came about through his … Again, this model of generosity, but also mentoring as well. So I think that was part of his work as a journalist, not only writing reports and doing the investigations and talking to people, but also cultivating other people as well, cultivating contacts for the network, but also cultivating younger voices.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, and you also wrote poetry and these translations, Vietnamese to English of work he liked. And in terms of … I mean, we met him so many years ago, 1994. But one thing that he really pushed us to do to think about extending supports to Vietnamese American writers, but also to writers in other country, but also in Vietnam, because he made the arguments that some young people in Vietnam are also in between. They went to international school. They’re not a little bit different than people in Vietnam. They’re a little bit different than American and say, “Oh, there’s more similarity than difference between some younger Vietnamese American … Vietnamese writers in Vietnam than writers in US.” And we could not do this right away, but we heard him.
And when we can, we do include Vietnamese writers to translate them into English and to follow his lead. But we had to do it, depending on funding and also just as when we can. But he’s been there, he’s been following what we’ve been doing and gently give us his ideas and what he thought we did well and what he thought we could do better.
Nate King:
Yeah. That sounds like a great mentor. Yeah, and I’m curious if you … and maybe perhaps this is an odd way to describe writing, but we talked about generosity a lot, and would you perhaps call his writing generous? He’s spending his time with people, making connections, human to human, but there’s something perhaps about what he’s left behind to us, perhaps sort of generosity in the words he’s left on the page to us.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
We talked a little bit earlier about how Where The Ashes Are is not quite your typical memoir because it includes the perspectives and experiences of his father. And I think that’s one example of this. Oftentimes, if people are tempted to write memoirs, it’s all about them. And I think he was resisting that idea. That was an interesting model for other Vietnamese American writers. Unfortunately, the writer, Andrew X. Pham, who just passed away a couple of … a week or two ago, also wrote a memoir called The Eaves of Heaven, in which he included his father’s experiences as well. And Andrew is just a little bit younger than Duc was.
So I think that idea that you could write a memoir, but it would not just purely be about you, marks what Duc was doing, but also marks a lot of what we have tried to do with the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network, which is the foreground writers, but not their egos. They try to foreground writers who are also interested in the spirit of community, collaboration, dialogue and so on. And there was no doubt that we absorbed some of that from Duc’s own spirit also.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah.
Nate King:
Thank you for that. And now, I’m also curious if you have taught Duc in your classes or to students, and if so, how do you introduce him and what is the student’s reception if they’ve heard of him before or if it’s the first time reading him? I’m curious how you teach Nguyễn Qui Duc.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Well, the reason I thought it was out of print, because I actually wanted to teach that book actually, and I was looking for it and it was out of print then. So I taught South Wind Changing instead. It was also published in 1994. And it’s more like memoir narrative, also a re-education camp from a young man that students could relate to. But I’ve written about it and they read what I wrote about him. So quoting him, especially at the end when he talks about the notion of home and said something about … I remember talking about the pleasure you found … I mean your peers have found, in his writing, about exploring the pain and staying with the pain.
And I know we used the word romantic a little bit earlier on, and I remember in the French Romantic 19th century, this idea that you kept scratching your scab, because you wanted to keep the wound open. And I’ve written about that a little bit and to stay with that, I mean, I don’t know if I would say … think this way, but there was something, I don’t know, Bohemian romantic aspect of him and how he used language and poetry and his wellbeing was as that. So I read excerpt from the book, but I never taught the book because I really thought it was … A few time I look he was out of print. So now, I’m glad it is in print now. So I don’t know, I’m going back to teach in the fall.
Nate King:
We mentioned it before and what you just said, remind me again Isabelle, but like … I mean, I’m curious to learn more about the persona that he crafted, that you talked about and more so and more specifically if and how that perhaps impacted his writing or was everything crafted kind of, do you think simultaneously like persona and writing or did any sort of his outward persona impact his writing at all?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Well, it is hard to tell, but he was just one of a kind, the way he dress. He has a very keen attention to aesthetic. I mean, his badge, if you look at it, is really his style. His house in the mountain is a mixture of … I don’t know, it’s Duc style, but there’s a little bit of Asian’s theme and maybe some European theme, rustic bohemians, but very beautifully, aesthetically way beautiful. And then also with clothing. I think he was actually … He designed clothes and he sewed clothes and object and sculpture. So I think it was just a real artist in that sense that everything it touch had this aesthetic … pay attention to aesthetic. And on his body too, the way he dress, the way his glasses were, the way he shaved, the way his hair, it was part of him.
It is just the artist and persona and the generosity. And he always had food and alcohol around and smoke. And then when guests came, he took them around. He took the time to show them around and make people special. But I think also, he ended up costing him some of his health too, right? He was sometime at his expense because when he was ill, he was still doing that for a long time. And I don’t know how he did it actually with … I mean, I couldn’t have this lifetime. I was staying a plate like this. It had to be really physically strong to do this. Yeah, so I think it’s more about his way of being and all of that, came across in whatever he touch, whatever his aesthetic, the outside world, but also his writing. And he had a very keen ear for poetry and really wanted to support others in that spirit. That’s what I’m saying.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I knew that he was working for a long time on a novel. I never saw any pages of it. I don’t know what became of it. I’d be really interested in that. I mean, part of his fast … I think the novel had something to do with Morocco because he was fascinated by Morocco. That part I know for sure, he spent a lot of time there, that he found some type of second home or third home as the case might be in Morocco, partly because of the shared history of French colonization there. But I think just also a fascination with the culture there. And he had told me a long time ago that he was working on this book set in Morocco, which would fit this entire trajectory we’ve been talking about in terms of exile, colonialism, self-fashioning, the role of the writer in terms of imagining and forging their own life for themselves.
And the idea of the cosmopolitan, which in Duc’s case I think was always rooted not just in the cosmopolitanism of the expat, but the cosmopolitanism of the person who’s forced into exile as a refugee. And that history of Morocco and Vietnam, I think is still something that needs to be written. We’re starting to see some glimpses of that because there has been an overlapping history between Morocco and Vietnam in terms of the Moroccan soldiers who went to Vietnam to fight with the French colonial army, but then also the other trajectories of the Moroccan and Vietnamese mixing that Duc represented.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, and then, what I’m going to add to this is that Duc talking about this novel that Viet was talking about, from what I remember it was from the perspective of a White man going natives. And he was very frustrated because he couldn’t find a publisher to publish that because it was from a perspective of a White man. And then not about the war, not about the Vietnam War, not about his identity as a refugee. And he was very frustrated that although he knew his writing was good, if he didn’t write about his personal experience, he will not be published. And I think a lot of my work up to this days would be influenced by something you thought was very problematic. And I kept hearing from other writers through the years, things have changed.
Now I think he has some writing translations and also essays, collection of essays as talking … Actually, we were just talking to this partner actually maybe to potentially publish it through our imprints. I mean we still … I mean, when she’s ready. But he has a manuscript that nobody have seen. Yeah.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Who has the manuscript Isabelle?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Phuong, it’s in his computer.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
That’s his partner.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, we’ve been talking about it.
Nate King:
Well, that is exciting. I’m curious if you know of any of Duc’s favorite writers. Did he have any writers that he especially liked to read or any favorite novels or books or anything that came up a lot in your conversations?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
You know the name of that famous Vietnamese singer in Vietnam.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Trịnh Công Sơn.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yes, he translated that singer. And then I think he translated Pham Cong Tien, who is a philosopher from Vietnam who studied in Paris and very dark and nostalgic and tormented. Really, he translated some of that, thinking like that. I don’t know, Viet, if you know more.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I mean, Trịnh Công Sơnn is super famous among the Vietnamese. And unfortunately the term used to describe in … and I really hate this term because it asks for an equivalence, is the Vietnamese Bob Dylan … And I guess it gives you a sense of who Trịnh Công Sơn was during the 60s and 70s. But again, I just dislike that kind of a comparison. But Trịnh Công Sơn is a songwriter whose body of songs was suppressed by both the communists and the anti-communists because these were anti-war and pro-peace songs. So he wasn’t necessarily very ideological, but those songs really marked an entire generation of South Vietnamese people, including the refugees and the exiles among whom Duc would be counted.
And the most famous renditions of Trịnh Công Sơn songs were sung by the singer Khánh Ly, who was also the most famous of the Vietnamese singers of that generation. And it was, in my mind, always associated with smoke and alcohol and nostalgia and longing and loss, all of these themes that we’ve been discussing. So yeah, I think that if there was a musical equivalent to Duc, it would probably be like Trịnh Công Sơn. And so it would make sense that he was influenced by that model.
Nate King:
Did he also play music himself, any instruments or anything like that?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
I don’t think so.
Nate King:
Just an appreciator of the art. Yeah.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
He would invite all kinds of different musicians to Tadioto in Hanoi.
Nate King:
That’s great. Have either of you been to the Tadioto?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yes.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
They went through different variations. So I don’t know which variation I went into, but I think I probably went into one of the earliest ones. I think it was at two or different locations. But yeah, I mean, it was not a place, as far as I know, that was featured in the backpacker guides, for example. So if you go to Vietnam … Maybe I haven’t been to Vietnam since 2014, and I haven’t traveled with one of these backpacker guides in a long time. So I don’t know how accurate these comments are. But back in the 2000s, if you went to Vietnam, you knew exactly where to go if you were of a Western backpacking or low budget kind of a background, backpackers alley in Saigon or the equivalent in Hanoi, that was not the kind of bar that Tadioto was.
Tadioto was more for the cognoscenti, I guess. The people who were connected in some way through these circuits of the expat world, NGOs, artists, the diplomatic circle. The multilingual group of people who would not be caught dead in a backpacker’s hotel, not because of the money issue, but simply because the backpackers are stereotypically being drawn to these places, where it was all about billiards and cheap beer and all that kind of thing. And Duc’s Bar was much more elegant, I think. And that’s what I remember about it, dark, elegant with a host who was always ready to have a drink with you.
Nate King:
It sounds like a great place, honestly. It sounds like a great spot to spend an afternoon and catch up. I like the idea of it too, of the notion of a space, a physical space too, because that’s kind of been … I’ve thinking about that, our whole conversation, you mentioned that building that community of Ink and Blood at first. But just … It is a physical space too, but then Tadioto is also of physical space, but then also has more of a spiritual meaning almost, or sort of significance in that sense. So I’m just curious if you have any thoughts on what Duc has taught you about place and spaces and creating ones for yourselves?
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I remember the last time I visited Tadioto, and I have a poor memory about time, but it was a night where he had performances there and he himself performed that night. So there was a slideshow of images while he read his poetic prose there. But the images, it wasn’t only him. There were other artists as well, but there are some writers whose work we turn to with their books. And then, we forget who they are as individuals. Whereas with Duc, I think it’s almost the opposite. He’s left a memory of who he was as a person, as a performer, as an organizer, as a person who created spaces for people. And I think there’s great value to that as well.
So in that sense, your question about sort of a kind of spirituality, I don’t think he was religious as far as I can remember, but I think art was his muse and his persona was lived through that muse. And I think that’s what the strongest memories about Duc are.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah. And then, this is … The business very much attached to his charisma, his persona as we say, because now, the business continue, but it’s just not the same. And he was going to do something else, but it will be very difficult for people to continue what he did without him. People was drawn to the space he created, but also to him as a person.
Nate King:
Yeah, well said. Thank you for that. We’re getting close to the end here, but before we wrap up, was there anything that either of you wanted to mention that we haven’t discussed yet about Duc or your own connections with him?
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, I mean this thing of the title of his book, Where the Ashes Are, and then sometime I’m sad to hear about what happened to his ashes and his family brought his ashes to weigh, where his family is and maybe his partner say, “Oh, what he wanted his ashes to go to Dalat because he was the most happiest there.” And we still … To this day, we will not know exactly what they wanted, but the family decided. But something about … I don’t know, it just reminds me of that, his title of his book and how that was related to home, the notion of home. And we spent a lot of his time and life to define home in his own term. And he happened to be in Vietnam. I mean, he really went to Vietnam because it was cheaper to take care of his mother. But he did it here as well with us. And I believe he did some of that the same ways in England when he was there. So where he was, he created homes.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I remember that in the early to mid-90s, we at Ink and Blood staged a play called Tony Dee. And Tony Dee was based on a short story by the Vietnamese writer, Le Minh Huy, who was actually a North Vietnamese war veteran and was therefore also a communist party cadre and became one of the better known Vietnamese writers of the war generation and the immediate post-war generation. And the story of Tony Dee is about the bones of an American GI, in these efforts by this Vietnamese people to get those bones and to turn them over to Americans. So it was actually a short story and a play about reconciliation.
And when we staged that play at San Francisco State, it was a big deal because hundreds of people from the Vietnamese American community in the Bay Area came out to protest us. And it was ironic because they were protesting the play because Le Minh Huy was North Vietnamese war veteran, therefore the enemy, even though Le Minh Huy’s story is about reconciliation. And I think that exemplified Duc’s spirit in the early to mid-90s doing anything that was about reconciliation was tantamount to embracing communism for the Vietnamese American community, and yet he did it. He was the one who I think instigated the whole thing. And it was a good lesson for me because number one, none of us were playwrights, none of us were directors or actors, and yet we decided to put on a play. How did that happen?
That we had to assemble all of these elements to make the play happen. And then, we had to have the courage to put on the play despite these kinds of protests that were taking place. And I remember San Francisco State University brought out its police department to protect us and to make sure that the play went on. So that was a good lesson for me early on about number one, the importance of art, when it comes to reconciliation, but also the necessity for artists to stand up for what they believe in, even against their own community. If the Vietnamese American community is our community, we still had to put on this play, even if we were going to be protested by them.
All of these lessons I think are still really, really important for me, have helped to shape me in terms of my willingness to stand up and be protested against for various reasons. But I remember that moment as being a very exciting one, challenging one in both artistic and political ways, but also an evanescent moment. We’ve talked earlier about permanence and archives and legacies and things like this. And there is no … as far as I can tell, archive or legacy about this performance except in my memory and the memory, whoever was the … And yet, I think that’s still important. The idea … We haven’t really talked about too much as someone who put on performances, but performances are different than literary books and texts.
Literary books and texts are there in print. They can be recovered from an archive if they’re out of print. But performances are not necessarily meant to last, which would also be a commentary about the performance of one’s own life as well.
Nate King:
I don’t know how to follow that one up. Yeah, I love that a lot. And I love the fact that, like you said, there’s no archive or record of it, but it is in your body, your memory has it for sure and impacted your own work since then. So it’s good to point out the connections along the way that have brought us through the community to where we are now. Well, Isabelle, Viet, thank you so much for joining me today. I had a blast chatting with you. And you both have books coming out or just came out, right? Could you tell us a little bit about your stuff that just came out?
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Thanks, Nate. It was great talking to you about our dear friend Nguyen Qui Duc. It’s always a pleasure to be here with Isabelle, my collaborator on a book that just came out called The Cleaving, Vietnamese Writers of the Diaspora. It’s a collection of 37 Vietnamese Diasporic writers conversing with each other. We think of it as rather a landmark book. They’re not too many books like this about any particular national group of writers in exile. And it really demonstrates this vast range of Vietnamese Diasporic writing with people coming from the United States, Canada, France, Australia, and even Israel, where Vietnamese refugees ended up as well. And I also just published a book called To Save and to Destroy Writing as an other, which are a set of essays on that topic.
And really reached back to my own experiences as an undergraduate where I started to think about what otherness meant, including with Ink and blood. This predecessor to the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network. Isabel also has another collection that she can tell us about, the Make-Believers.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
The Make-Believers, yes, but I was not editor. I was editor of this book. So that was a lot of the cleaving that we gathered, those dialogues at our residencies and public event or with COVID, the public events where we had to close, we have them on Zoom, and then we framed them and is published by UC Press. And very proud of this book, the Make-Believers was … We’re invited by McSweeney, which is very established literary magazine to create. All the writers and staff were also writers for my residency to create, to contribute and to make this special issue for the … To commemorate the 50 years of the end of the Vietnam War.
And I love it because while it’s designed by Thi Bui and by other Vietnamese American artists, the inside of different booklets, and we really … it was with the spirit, you see everybody smoking and drinking and eating. Nguyen Qui Duc, he was supposed to be there. Duc was supposed to be there, but also everybody felt free to write. I always say, Nguyen Qui Duc was very frustrated that he couldn’t really speak on the own term because he have equally wanted to write, to publish a book about this White man going native in Morocco and couldn’t publish that book because of … He’s a good writer. So it has to do with expectation of the publishers. But here, we really emphasize through those residencies about Speak Your Truth, just give each other strength and courage to do this and collaborate with each other.
So there’s dialogue. There’s very quirky short stories. It’s like the definitions of Vietnamese language, how Vietnamese-American or French-Vietnamese or other Vietnamese in diaspora use it and recreate kind of dictionary and is humorous, funny, quirky. And also, sometime very deep and very sad, which encompass more the whole humanity of those writers, instead of more of slivers that is usually invited to be presented in mentoring culture. So that is great, yeah, it’s beautiful text.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Two things that Isabelle did not mention, the residency in question was in the south of France. So it was really a cool … I wasn’t invited, so it was a really cool for everything I saw-
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yes, you were. You were, you were supposed to be there. You were supposed to be there. No, you were supposed to be there and you could not be there.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
My memory is faulty, so I was not there. But there’s a bunch of other great writers there from France and the United States and Vietnam, I believe. But the other thing about the Make Believers, which is officially McSweeney’s 78th, is that it’s a one-of-a-kind collector edition. I don’t think there’s that many copies of this. It’s not a book, it’s actually a boxed set. And inside the box are all kinds of goodies, which I can’t really describe because I’ve been so busy. I haven’t even opened my box set yet of the Make Believers. And we can’t show it to you because this is a audio podcast, but trust me, go to McSweeneys.net, number 78. And it is really kind of … McSweeney’s always does something unique with each of its special issues, and I’ve never seen anything like this.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Yeah, and then, if I may say, this other thing that came out for the 15 anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War that we created … produce big events in San Francisco. It’s a base of diacritics. And this Diacritic started with a blog, started by Viet like what, 15 years ago. And we collected the best of those essays, and now it’s going to become a print magazine in December. So this is a launch of this with the new website. And then, in the spirit of Duc, since we are going to … This is a theme of this podcast is what we try to do with Divan, just to have establish writers to present with emerging writers, to bring attention, to bring support. So we’ll do this through a print magazine who would be with established writers, written by established writers and artists or maybe organic intellectual intellectuals.
But also on our website, we’ll continue to have essays by emerging artists and writers to continue with this legacy of mutual support. And to move away from this idea of tokenism, only one writers can represent the whole community that Duc sometimes felt pressure to take on, and some have argued, it can … I think when it’s wrong, that it can really stifle one’s creativity. When you be the first one to represent, you have only one chance to speak for the community, represent the community. So this is really moving away from that. So more people with this talents can be free, to really be free just maybe 50 years after the war. Maybe that’s the time to do this openly.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
You can see more about Diacritics and the Make Believers on dvan.org, which is our website that has all these resources about all the many things we’ve been discussing that DVAN does from publishing diacritics to our residencies, to our talk show and podcast, accented dialogues of the diaspora, hosted by me and many other things. Again, all of these things are done in the spirit of Duc. They are done with almost no resources and no money initially, and then we grow them into something larger for the entire community.
Nate King:
Yes, thank you for that, Viet. And there are links in the episode description for you listeners to check out everything, these books and issues and all that as well. Viet and Isabelle, thank you again.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Thanks so much, Nate.
Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud:
Thank you so much for having us. It’s really a pleasure.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Nation of Writers Podcast, part of the American Writers Museum podcast network. If you’d like to learn more about American writers and our impact on our history, our culture, and our daily lives, find us online or come see us in person. The American Writers Museum is open Thursdays through Mondays from 10 AM to 5 PM, only closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Once again, thank you for listening and to all you writers out there, thank you for writing.
