Đặng Thơ Thơ
Biography
Đặng Thơ Thơ is a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and author of Ai, her first novel (Da Mau Press, 2024) and two collections of short stories The Winter Exhibition (Phòng Triển Lãm Mùa Đông) (Văn Mới, CA, 2002) and Possibilities (Khả Thể) (Người Việt, CA, 2014).
She is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Vietnamese literary e-zine damau.org and President of Da Màu Foundation, a registered non-profit organization (501(c)3). From 2002-2004, she served on the Board of Directors as Literature Chairperson for The Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association (VAALA). From 2003-2005 she was on Hợp Lưu Magazine editorial staff. Her works have been published in many Vietnamese magazines and publications including Văn, Văn Học, Hợp Lưu, Khởi Hành, Thế Kỷ 21, Gió Văn, Chủ Đề, Ăn Mày Văn Chương, Ajar. She is also featured in the anthology Beyond Borders (Da Màu Press, CA, 2024), showcasing stories from the Vietnamese diaspora.
She currently lives in California and is an active member of the LGBTQI community.
Books
Ai is a novel about the disappearance of the self, of human beings, on the stage of life as a museum. Ai is organically constructed as a fugue about the journey of escape, exile, asylum, and transformation of human beings in modern times. Ai represents a novelistic composite of creative forms such as film, narrative, metafiction, to create a space for ideas to reflect on each other, as if they are material or concrete representations for an installation art exhibit. Ai opens up a playground for the game of language that needs to be further explored and excavated. Ai is an experiment on time for the reader to formulate their own answers.
Ai là tiểu thuyết về sự mất tích của bản thể, của những con người, trên sân khấu của đời sống như một viện bảo tàng. Ai ngẫu nhiên được hình thành như bản tẩu pháp (fugue) về hành trình trốn chạy, lưu vong, tỵ nạn, hoá thân của con người trong thời hiện đại. Ai là sự kết hợp các hình thức sáng tạo trong tiểu thuyết như phim ảnh, tường thuật, truyện lồng trong truyện (metafiction), để tạo một không gian cho các ý niệm phản chiếu lẫn nhau, trong màn triển lãm nghệ thuật sắp đặt (installation) dùng ý tưởng làm chất liệu. Ai mở ra sân chơi cho trò chơi ngôn ngữ đang cần khai phá thêm và khai quật lại. Ai là một thử nghiệm về thời gian để người đọc tự tìm kiếm câu trả lời cho họ.
The central theme uniting the 15 translated short stories in Beyond Borders is the multifaceted idea of borders. What constitutes a border? Is it a tangible demarcation, such as a fence or checkpoint that physically divides geography and peoples? Or has the term evolved to encompass more intangible boundaries, such as the linguistic, social, and cultural structures that shape our identities and interactions? The stories in Beyond Borders are written by mostly first and 1.5 generation Vietnamese refugees, featuring original works written in English or via translation from the Vietnamese. Wide-ranging yet unique in its scope, Beyond Borders acknowledges intergenerational trauma, explores queer desire, illustrates coping behavior of elderly characters who lose both their collective and personal memory, and revels in aesthetic expressions professed by rebellious exiles. Beyond Borders also depicts the refugee’s resistance to assimilation, which can also be read as a social critique of both capitalism and communism