The first day--who can say exactly what day it was--that the word ''I' appeared in Vietnamese poetry it was truly surprised. It was as if it were lost in a strange land. This is because it brought with it a perspective that had not been seen in this country: the individual perspective. Since ancient times there was no individual in Vietnamese society. There was only the collective: a large one, the country, and a small one, the family. As for the individual, the individual aspect was submerged in the family and in the country like a drop of water in the sea.1
The arrival of the "I" in non-fiction prose is described in Greg Lockhart's "First Person Narratives from the 1930s," his introduction to The Light of the Capital, which contains translations of two examples of reportage and one example of autobiography (See Section II). Lockhart provides information that helps us understand why something long familiar to Western readers--narration in the first person--has had to struggle to gain acceptance in Vietnam. In pre-modern Vietnam, the pronoun "to^i" ("I") meant "servant" or "subject." It was used, for example, in the phrase "vua-to^i" (king-subject) to refer to first of the three most important Confucian bonds (See Section VI). Its use was associated with the monarchy and with the vertical and hierarchical social and moral system that formed the basis of the emperor's power. Within the family and village, Vietnamese kinship terms did double duty as personal pronouns, so a son or a daughter would refer to him or herself as "con" (son or daughter) when talking to a parent and as "cha'u" (nephew or niece) when talking to an uncle or aunt. "Fictitious" kinship terms were used when addressing people who were not close relatives but were well known to the speaker, so a boy might refer to himself as "cha'u" when addressing a friend of his father's. "To^i" was rarely used in conversation. It was rarely used in traditional literature because toi was too self-deprecatory and also because most traditional story tellers presented their stories as retellings in the third person of ancient tales, not as completely original first-person accounts of their own life and times.2
When the French conquered Vietnam, they set in motion events that promoted the use of "to^i" as an active, egalitarian pronoun. The monarchy was stripped of most of its power. Unable to survive in the countryside, many peasants came to the towns and cities where they became servants, rickshaw drivers, and workers in various trades. These displaced peasants were wrenched out of the old political-moral order. Tam Lang, the author of I Pulled a Rickshaw, was a member of the upper class: his father was a Confucian scholar. By becoming a rickshaw driver and reporting on his experience in I Pulled a Rickshaw, thought to be the first example of reportage in Vietnam, Tam Lang disrupts the old vertical order. His use of "to^i" in his title is not passive and self-deprecatory but assertive: it suggests the possibility of a new more horizontal, more democratic relationship between people who pull rickshaws and those who ride in them (Lockhart 7).
Revolution and the First Person
Revolutionary leaders in the communist movement accepted the use of "to^i" but did not like
excessively individualistic and romantic poetry, nor were they fond of autobiography. Most of the
Vietnamese poets who wrote very individualistic poems in the 1930's joined the revolution (See
Jamieson, "Shattered Identities," Section IV) and stopped
writing the kind of poetry that had made them famous before the war. Instead, they wrote poems
that supported the war effort, works that stressed the collective strength of the people. "Today, a
poem must have steel, / A poet must learn to wage war," Ho^' Chi' Minh wrote in 1942.3
This leader's stress on "steel" in literature and the communist emphasis of the collective over the individual discouraged revolutionary writers of poetry or prose from telling stories of their developing selves. Nguye^~n Minh Cha^u, a well-respected solider-writer, mentions another reason why writers avoided personal accounts. If writers in the resistance wars, he says, had allowed themselves the luxury of individual cries of pain and anguish, they could never have defeated the French and the Americans.4
Once they leave Vietnam, Vietnamese adapt to the Western demand for more personal accounts. Autobiographical accounts in the form of oral histories appear in David Chanoff and DDoa`n Va(n Toa.i's Portrait of the Enemy. These compilers interviewed refugees in the West who had played various roles in the communist-controlled regions of Vietnam. One interesting account is by Xua^n Vu~ who joined the Resistance as a teenager, wrote stories promoting revolutionary heroism, and then abandoned the communist cause. Another interesting narrative, part autobiography, part memoir, is Le^ Va(n Ha?o's "The Path of a Patriotic Intellectual," an account by an anthropology professor at Hue^' University who surfaced as a member of the Liberation Front during the Te^'t Offensive.
In both communist and non-communist Vietnam, writers have felt more comfortable with memoirs,
a genre which because it stresses group achievement is more compatible both with traditional
Vietnamese literature and Marxist ideology. In the 1960's, Party leaders encouraged the writing of
revolutionary memoirs (ho^'i ky' ca'ch ma.ng), accounts by participants in the revolutionary struggle.
Not many have been translated, but some have, including Tra^`n Tu+? Bi`nh's The Red
Earth, Nguye^~n Duy Trinh et al.'s In the Enemy's Net, Nguye^~n Thi. DDi.nh's No
Other Road to Take, and Vo~ Nguye^n Gia'p's Unforgettable Days.
In both communist and non-communist Vietnam most of the memoirs that have been published are
by high-ranking political and military leaders, not common soldiers. Communist writers, no doubt
fearing charges of bourgeois individualism, are careful to avoid making their accounts excessively
personal. If they include personal details, usually they are ones that reveal their growth in
revolutionary consciousness. Since these memoirs are only sporadically personal and since some
of them fit nicely into other categories (Colonial Literature, Accounts of Imprisonment), I haven't
always placed their primary entry (with annotation) in this section, but all of them are listed here.
Nguye^~n Thi. DDi.nh wrote in Vietnamese for a Vietnamese audience. Mai Elliot's translation
allows students to overhear a discourse that was not written for them but that can teach them a lot
about the motivations and way of thinking of people in the revolutionary movement (Pelzer 98). In
explaining what inspired them to join the military, American writers such as Philip Caputo and Ron
Kovic speak of the powerful influence of John Wayne movies. Nguye^~n Thi. DDi.nh speaks of
gathering with her family to listen to her brother read Lu+?c Va^n Tie^n, a 19th century
poem glorifying the Confucian virtues of loyalty, filial piety, kindness, and humanity. When she grew
older, Nguye^~n Thi. DDi.nh explains, she realized the landlords who kept her family poor were like
the wicked characters in Lu+?c Va^n Tie^n. Between John Wayne's The Sands of Iwo
Jima and Lu+?c Va^n Tie^n lies a world of difference. It is a gap not easily bridged, but
a course on the literature of the war can begin to study the myths that help us understand behavior.
Aided by works such as John Hellman's American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam and
Loren Baritz' Backfire, we can help students discover intertextual links between John Wayne
movies, John Kennedy's speeches on counter-insurgency and the New Frontier, stories of frontier
heroes such as Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone, and the Puritan John Winthrop's speeches about
America being a City upon a Hill, a moral example to the rest of the world. In Section VI, I've listed
some works that will assist students in understanding the myths and legends that have motivated
Vietnamese.
During Renovation (See Section XI), reportage documenting the ills of
society was revived and, ironically, some of the new reports published in the 1980's describing life
under the communists resemble accounts in the 1930's and 1940's depicting life under the French
colonialists (accounts by Ngo^ Ta^'t To^' and Nguye^~n Co^ng Hoan, for example; see Section II). Readers in Vietnam were quick to notice the
similarities.5 To my knowledge, the only example of recent reportage that has
been translated is Phu`ng Gia Lo^.c's "The Night of That Day, What a Night!", an account which
reveals that communist officials can squeeze taxes out of poor peasants just as mercilessly as
mandarin officials could during the period of French domination. In an interview Phu`ng Gia Lo^.c
says that after his story was published in Literature and the Arts in 1988, local communist
officials interrogated his wife and five people mentioned in his story. They all told the officials that
everything in the story was true--that conditions if anything were worse than his story suggested.6
The novels by Ba?o Ninh and DDu+o+ng Thu Hu+o+ng (See Section XI) are not classified as reportage, but like Phu`ng Gia
Lo^.c's story they document suffering and injustices and are clearly based on the writers' actual
experiences. Like their predecessors who wrote in colonial times, modern writers in Vietnam know
that it is usually safer to express truth in the guise of fiction.
Personal Essays, Memoirs
Although non-communist writers in central and southern Vietnam produced autobiographical
accounts after 1945, some favoring an approach that resembles reportage and others working in a
genre that the Vietnamese call tu`y bu't--literary essays filled with personal impressions--no
reportage and only a few tu`y bu't essays by Vo~ Phie^'n have been translated.Strong Recommendation: No Other Road to Take
One memoir that I would definitely assign is Nguye^~n Thi. DDi.nh's No Other Road to Take.
Nguye^~n Thi. DDi.nh grew up in Be^'n Tre Province and joined the revolutionary movement when
she was in her teens, rising eventually to the rank of Deputy Commander of the National Liberation
Front Armed Forces. In her memoir, she emphasizes her warm feeling toward her family,
particularly her older brother Ba Cha^?n whose revolutionary activities inspired her own. She
describes how pleased she was when an older cadre, a friend of her brother's, proposed to her,
and her sadness when she learns he has died in prison not long after their marriage and the birth of
their son.Reportage
As for reportage, during colonial times, investigative reporting of political events was a dangerous
activity, so writers favored the fictional reportage (pho'ng su+' tie^?u thuye^'t) that I've already
discussed in Section II. After 1945, fictional reportage exposing injustice ceased in the communist-
controlled areas. The reportage that was done was a type of revolutionary journalism represented
in the Vietnamese Studies issue entitled Vietnamese Women. One could assign
Xua^n Vu~'s account of the uprising in Be^'n Tre, both as an example of this type of writing and
also as a companion to Xua^n Vu~'s oral history mentioned earlier: this was the kind of writing that,
according to Xua^n Vu~, the communist culture and propaganda cadres insisted he write--stories
glorifying revolutionary achievement. In the South, beginning in the 1960's some journalistic
accounts appeared, including, for example, Phan Nha^.t Nam's vivid accounts of combat, but I
know of none that have been translated.
Sources
Memoir by a soldier, Party organizer, editor and propagandist who defected in 1990. Author was
close to ruling elite and includes a great deal of spicy information about Ho^' Chi' Minh, Tru+o+`ng
Chinh, Le^ Dua^?n and other high-ranking leaders. A kind of "kiss and tell" account, this memoir
contrasts sharply with official works about party leaders.
Interviews with Vietnamese who played various roles in the communist movement--guerilla fighters,
writers, peasants, opposition political leaders. The compilers gathered these oral histories from
Vietnamese now living in Europe, the U.S., or refugee camps in Southeast Asia.
Originally published in 1938 and immediately banned, this work is a rare example of non-fiction
reportage during colonial times. In these three chapters Hoa`ng DDa.o, a member of the Self-
Strength Literary Group, exposes the suffering caused by colonial taxes and the monopoly on
alcohol production.
A fascinating account by a former schoolteacher in Saigon (now living in Canada) about her
experiences as Propaganda and Training Officer and member of the Executive Committee of the
Association of Liberated Women in Ho^' Chi' Minh City, an association set up by the communists
after their victory in 1975. Describes how women would join such associations with feigned "joy
and zeal" to gain favor with the new government--favor they hoped would help speed their
husbands home from reeducation camps (or present them from being sent) or protect the family
from being sent to a New Economic Zone. The term "liberation" is used ironically: though the
author turns some housework over to her husband, she is liberated only to attend boring meetings
and study sessions and to write glowing reports on the association's activities.
Intended primarily for children, this is a collection of tales about growing up in a village in the central
highlands of Vietnam. The author, now living in the U.S., is a veteran who was permanently
paralyzed by a gunshot wound. Most tales feature animals--a family water buffalo named Tank,
dangerous horse snakes, crocodiles, and giant catfish.
Account by a young man from the Mekong Delta region of his time in reeducation camps.
Interesting description of friction among the prison guards between northern and southern cadre
members and of the author's escape first from a re-education camp and then from Vietnam to the
U.S. where he earned degrees from Bennington College and Brown University.
An account of a French-educated professor at the University of Hue^' who became involved with
students in pro-Buddhist, anti-American demonstrations in Hue^' and worked as an underground
supporter of the National Liberation Front. During the Te^'t Offensive in Hue^' in 1968 he surfaced
and became Chairman of the Thu+`a Thie^n-Hue^' People's Revolutionary Committee.
A useful discussion of why and how first-person reportage (pho'ng su+') emerged in the 1930's.
Focuses not on documentary fictions (See introduction to Section II) but on first-person non-fiction
accounts. This essay introduces two examples of reportage and one of autobiography (which
Lockhart wants to call "self-reportage"). See the annotation
for Light of the Capital in Section II for information on the three works translated. Lockhart
associates the emergence of the "active 'I'" in this reportage, a sharp break with traditional practice,
with the destruction of the monarchy, the movement of people from families and villages to the city,
and the formation of a new class of laborers and tradesmen. These developments, Lockhart
argues, displaced people from the traditional hierarchical system in which the "I" (to^i) was a
passive form meaning "servant" or "subject" (of a monarch) and fostered a new kind of horizontal
social relationship.
These student essays were written in a Southeast Asian cultures course taught by the editors at the
University of Massachusetts. Includes essays by students from Cambodia and Laos as well as
Vietnam. Most of the essays by Vietnamese students focus on their memories of life in Vietnam
and the trauma of leaving their homeland.
Memoir with some personal details by a woman who was a revolutionary leader in Be^'n Tre
Province. She eventually became Deputy commander of the National Liberation Front Armed
Forces. A well researched introduction by Mai Elliot describes the historical context for the events
described by the author.
An account of a female liaison agent, political organizer, and participant in the armed struggle in
Be^'n Tre Province. The heroine accepts some traditional female roles and rejects others. For a
discusson of this biography in the context of gender relations, see Christine White's "Vietnam: War,
Socialism, and the Politics of Gender Relations in Vietnam" in Promissory Notes: Women in the
Transition to Socialism, ed. Sonia Kruks, Rayna Rapp, and Marilyn B. Young (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1989), pp. 172-192.
A commentary on these memoirs and an argument for assigning them in courses on the war.
Accounts by Vietnamese, Pelzer argues, that are written in English with American co-authors are
inevitably "tailored to American sensitivities." These memoirs, however, allow the reader to "listen
in on the dialogue . . . of revolutionary Vietnamese" (98).
Originally published in 1988, this story is an example of reportage (pho'ng su+').
Stories gathered by the author between October, 1985, and May, 1986, from refugees at the
Phillipine Refugee Processing Center. Vietnamese narrators--all ordinary Vietnamese, not famous
generals or politicians--speak mostly about how the communist takeover in 1975 affected their
lives.
A bilingual edition of poems found in documents captured by American military units between 1966
and 1972. Written by ordinary soldiers of the revolutionary forces, these poems may strike
American readers as simple and sentimental, but they should also humanize the enemy.
Originally published in Saigon in 1956. A non-fiction account of the starvation that occurred in
Vietnam in the years 1944-45 when the Japanese and Vichy French were ruling Vietnam.
An account by a wealthy southerner who took part in the formation of the National Liberation Front
and became minister of justice under the Provisional Revolutionary Government. Later he became
disillusioned with the communist regime and fled Vietnam by boat in 1978. Some historians believe
that the author claims more credit for himself than is warranted, but this is a revealing, intriguing
account of political and military developments within the NLF.
An account of how the women of Be^'n Tre Province carried out demonstrations protesting the
Die^.m regime. A good example of revolutionary journalism by a man who later rallied to the
Saigon side and now lives in California. Could be assigned with Xua^n Vu~'s oral history in
Portrait of the Enemy, ed. by David Chanoff and DDoa`n Va(n Toa.i.
Xua^n Vu~'s account of his experience as a writer for the revolution and his later disaffection with
communism.
Footnotes
1. Thi Nha^n Vie^.t-Nam [Vietnamese Poets](Saigon: Hoa tie^n, 1968) 52.
This work, a well-known critical anthology, was originally published in Hanoi in 1942.
2. For a comparison of traditional and modern styles of prose narration, see Cao thi.
Nhu+-Quy`nh and John C. Schafer, "From Verse Narrative to Novel: The Development of Prose
Fiction in Vietnam," Journal of Asian Studies 47 (1988): 756-777.
3. The four-line poem from which these lines come is included in Ho^' Chi' Minh's
Prison Diary, p. 97. See Section IX.
4. Nguye^~n Minh Cha^u, "Writing about War" [Vie^'t ve^ Chie^'n Tranh], Va(n
Nghe^. Qua^n DDo^.i[Army Literature and Art]: (Nov., 1978). Rpt. in Tra(m Hoa Va^~n No+'
Tre^n Que^ Hu+o+ng: Cao Tra`o Va(n Nghe^. Pha?n Kha'ng Ta.i Vie^.t Nam (1986-89) [A
Hundred Flowers Still Bloom in the Native Land: Dissident Literature and Art in Vietnam]
(California: Le^ Tra^`n, 1990) 103.
5 After the story by Phu`ng Gia Lo^.c described in this section appeared in
Literature and the Arts, several readers wrote letters to the editor in which they commented
on how this story resembled fictional reportage by the older writers. Two of these letters are
reprinted in the issue of Manoa that contains Phu`ng Gia Lo^.c's story.
6 A translation of this interview appears in the issue of Manoa that contains
Phu`ng Gia Lo^.c's story. Phu`ng Gia Lo^.c insistence that his account is true suggests that we
should consider his work an "essay in realist literature" as opposed to a "documentary fiction," to
use the terms favored by Ngo^ Vi~nh Long (See the introduction
to Section II).
Yale University Council on Southeast Asia Studies
Dan Duffy, Editor Viet Nam Publications
danduff@minerva.cis.yale.edu
P.O. Box 208206, New Haven CT 06520-8206
203-432-3432
Web Author: Andrew Kuklewicz
akuklewi@minerva.cis.yale.edu
Revised: June 18, 1996
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