Hien Nguyen's Blog, page 3

a blogpost about Viet and Palestinian poems

I wasn’t planning on another blog post before the end of the year, but I find myself (like many) on Christmas Eve feeling immense sadness. I have nothing meaningful to say. But I’ll take time during this post to highlight a few lines of poetry.

Earlier this year, Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Quang Thiều . Part of his poem, “A Song of My Native Village” is below:

Excerpt from A SONG OF MY NATIVE VILLAGE

for Chua, my native village

Nguyen Quang Thieu

Translated by the author and Martha Collins

I sing a song of my native village
In the light of the oil lamp
Left by my ancestors
The loveliest and saddest of lamps.
When I was born my mother placed it
Before me that I might look and learn
To be sad, to love, and to cry.
. . .
I sing a song of my native village,
Bones lying in terra-cotta coffins

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA, published Palestine Is Today’s Vietnam on December 7th of this year. In it, she explores the history of Palestinian and Vietnamese solidarity, and ends with the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s call in 1973, “In the conscience of the peoples of the world, the torch has been passed from Vietnam to us.”

Below is an excerpt from his poem, “In Jerusalem”:

Excerpt from IN JERUSALEM

By Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Fady Joudah

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me . . .

I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter.

The Butterfly’s Burden (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)

An end of the year reminder for myself and others, to read and amplify Palestinian voices, and wishing you the strength to hold yourself and your community in care.

Reflections & A New Start

I haven’t blogged/sent a newsletter in a very long time and I thought now would be a good time to restart. I’ve migrated to a new website platform where everything is in one place, so it seems like a fortuitous time.

2023 was a year that tossed me around like a sack of potatoes, and apparently this is not a unique experience. If that sentiment resonates with you I am wishing both of us a very boring and restorative 2024 (knock on wood).

Some content warnings ahead: discussions of health, hospitalizations, family death & grief.

I got married! Which is very exciting. But despite doing something very small and relatively relaxed, it did involve a lot of prep, planning, and emotional gymnastics to get through. He entered to SHINee, I entered to Beyoncé, & we made everybody cry. It was a great time.

My husband, feeding me our wedding cake but making the airplane noise. Hence, my face.

Then, I was diagnosed with a brain AVM. I underwent evaluation because of my mother’s death from a ruptured aneurysm in 2021. No aneurysm, but lo and behold I have a cluster of veins in my brain that aren’t formed correctly and a bit squishy. My first angiogram was the Monday after my wedding, which was fun. I had to get a second, and eventually went in for radiosurgery in August.

I still had my lash extensions from the wedding so looked nice for the scan lmao

It’s obviously been scary. But my husband and I have been getting through it with humor (I keep call it my ‘brain gusher’ and my husband affectionately calls me ‘squishy brain’). All is well for now, and I’ll continue seeing a neurosurgeon to evaluate it over time. To process this, I wrote a flash fiction piece that is pretty experimental and weird, but was accepted and will be published in Issue 14 of Speculative City 🙌. I guess all of my messy feelings conjure my best writing.

We also moved! Literally right after my radiosurgery. The theme of 2023 is terrible timing! 😂 It was an ordeal to pack up our entire lives, arrange for movers, and then transport both our plants and cats over 600 miles. We survived. It was chaos. I had to carry a box full of litter through a busy Columbus hotel during a country music concert, so the lobby was full of women in cowboy boots staring at aforementioned litterbox.

I’ve lived in the same place for the last 9 years, so it’s been bittersweet to leave. But we’ve made new friends and I joined a local women’s writing group, which has been infinitely affirming & energizing.

My year’s end has also been bittersweet. I have a lot to look forward to next year, especially in my writing life. But I also lost someone very close to me, so my latter part of 2023 has been consumed by driving back and forth to see family, making difficult decisions, shifting through old things, planning a memorial and burial, and all of the complex feelings that accompany grief.

It was a reminder of all the people who believed in me before I did, and who valued my words before I knew they had value.

I’ll be wrapping up my year soon by spending time in California with my in-laws and stuffing myself full of delicious Chinese food. I am grateful for this messy little life of mine, and hopeful as well. I wish I had some clever thoughts to end this, but I don’t. If you are navigating a messy little life too, then be comforted we’re in this together 🤗

I’ll be planning to send out an early 2024 newsletter/blog highlighting some of the Vietnamese mythology & folklore I’ve been diving into 👀 so stay tuned!

Cheers and see you next year 🥂