Thuy Da Lam was born in central Vietnam, grew up in the northeastern US, and now lives in Honolulu. She holds a BA in creative writing from Hamilton College and a PhD in English from the University of Hawai‘i. She is a recipient of the George A. Watrous Literary Prize for Fiction, the Myrle Clark […]
“Like a strip of curtain between the dead and the living, Fire Summer is at once ephemeral and expansive. A haunting debut from a writer whose characters, lovingly described, pass not only through rivers and airports, but also despair and separation. We are ferried with them to the other side – one where the fractured are […]
she saw a footbridge swaying in the breeze. Go across the bridge to the marketplace. She looked around. She heard the buzzing of a market and smelled roasted meat. She crossed the footbridge. The open marketplace spread along the lakeside. “Mua đi! Mua đi!” a blind peddler cried, clutching her basket of pink mountain apples. “Come buy! Come buy! Fresh […]
A folk hero of Vietnam, Trạng Quỳnh has bequeathed laughter to generations of Vietnamese. This folk character is based on a historical figure, Nguyễn Quỳnh who lived during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Trạng Quỳnh exploits the polyglossic and heteroglossic conditions of Vietnam, a boundary-crosser who disrupts and transforms the established Truth of […]
The story of Hòn Vọng Phu, a wife who turns into stone waiting for her husband’s return, shapes and is shaped by the physical terrains of Vietnam and its people’s artistic expressions. In all four provinces, from central highland Vietnam to its northern border with China, stands a wife rock atop a mountain cradling a […]
October 10, 2020. Hawai’i Book and Music Festival, “Playing with Reality,” with Kawai Strong Washburn, Lee Siegel, and Don Wallace. February 7, 2020. Pohai Nani, Kaneohe, HI. December 15, 2019. da Shop, 3565 Harding Ave., Honolulu, HI, with D. Nandi Odhiambo, M. Thomas Gammarino, and Maureen Medved. October 11, 2019. University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, […]
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour –William Blake
In our present day of globalization in which cross-cultural understanding is crucial in establishing a worldwide community of diversity within unity, striving to be mirrors for others as well as seeking mirrors in others for self-reflection is necessary for genuine understanding. Both components are essential in our work toward cross-cultural understanding, toward a “fusion of […]
I stopped waiting for her years ago. Ba said she was my Má. Whenever she held me in her arms and smoothed the waves out in my hair, she said I must have belonged to a black GI and another woman. Still, she sang songs to me that were written before liberation. At the age […]
