Vietnam by Removes: Storytelling and Postmemory in Minh Tran Huy

Summary

Responding to the French colonization of Indochina, Vietnamese literature in French, Vietnamese francophone literature, and Vietnamese French literature participate in and produce a postcolonial literature that interrogates French and American (neo)imperialism and their lingering effects on the Vietnamese diaspora. The very multiplicity of this literary terminology speaks to the diverse cultural production arising from the displacement of large populations of Vietnamese people to France after the military conflicts of the First Indochina War/Anti-French Resistance War and the Second Indochina War/Vietnam War/American War.

Early Vietnamese literature in French was published under French colonial rule and sought to posit a better understanding of Vietnamese culture and experiences for the French colonial audience and French-reading public. Fictional works, such as Nguyen Phan Long's Le Roman de Mademoiselle Lys [‘The Book of Mademoiselle Lys’] (1921) and Truong Dinh and Albert de Tenuille's collaboration Bà-Ðầm [‘Madame’] (1930), critique Western culture and French imperialism while presenting detailed descriptions of Vietnamese cultural practices. The proliferation of Vietnamese literature in French from the 1940s to the early 1960s occurred during a period of political and historical change, including the Japanese occupation of Indochina during the Second World War and the First Indochina War, resulting in the end of French colonial rule at Điện Biên Phủ and the Geneva Accords in 1954. Prominent authors were recognized by French literary circles; among them, Pham Duy Khiem received the Prix Littéraire d'Indochine for Légendes des Terres sereines [Legends from Serene Lands] (1942) and the Prix Louis Barthou from the Académie Française for Nam et Sylvie [‘Nam and Sylvie’] (1957) written under the pseudonym Nam Kim, and Pham Van Ky's Perdre la demure [‘The Loss of Home’] was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman in 1961. This early period was notably dominated by male Vietnamese writers.

The sixties saw a decline in Vietnamese writing in French, as mass migrations occurred within Vietnam from north to south as well as out towards the French métropole in response to the division of Vietnam along the 17^th Parallel and the end of French Indochina. Ly Thu Ho importantly inaugurated a postcolonial Vietnamese francophone literature that includes Vietnamese women writing from an authorial position in displacement and diaspora.