Diana Khoi Nguyen and Lan Duong: April 13, 2023

Lan Duong reads from her debut collection Nothing Follows and presents images from San Jose, California, in the 1980s. She reads her poems: “San Jose, 1980,” “In This House”, “Sister Play,” “Barbie,” “We Refugee,” “The Edge,” “Three Times,” “Portrait of My Mother,” “Nothing Follows” and “Where the Wild Things Are.”

Diana Khoi Nguyen reads new work, including the poems “Subjunctive,” a sequence of poems titled “Đổi Mới” (these include poems beginning “At the site where the wound will occur,” “Sometimes the skin’s surface needs to break,” “At first, no one in the family notices anything,” and “The longer they remained hiding by the coast").

From a sequence of works derived from transcripts of conversations with Nguyen’s parents, she reads “Omnidirectional,” “The world beyond tennis,” and “When we found small tins....”

Isabelle Thuy Pelaud asks about the impulse to protect versus reveal histories. Lan Duong and Diana Khoi Nguyen respond. Pelaud remarks that there is much shaming and silencing of female authors. She asks about the sense of loss that permeates their poems. Duong responds that “women writers are often language spinners,” and mentions that “both rage and grief do things, make things.” Nguyen replies that “[anger] is not an emotion for the female-presenting body that’s acceptable.” Nguyen discusses her brother’s suicide in 2014, and the emotions and absences that followed and accompanied that loss. Pelaud discusses Duong’s contributions to DVAN, and reads quotes from Duong’s and Nguyen’s work that involve food. Duong and Nguyen respond, discussing spicy food as a metaphor, as well as the symbolism behind eating food that had been left on the ancestral altar. 

In response to audience questions, Duong says “it’s really important to find that impetus to create your own readership.” Nguyen says, “don’t censor yourself. There are so many expectations, internally and externally. But when it’s just you and the page, be playful.” Duong says, regarding the US-Vietnam War, “I think it’s only through words that I was able to articulate how weighty that burden has been.” Nguyen says, “I’m interested in the war as it becomes a context to understand the war in the family,” as well as mentioning that such stories shaped familial history and behaviors.