Other Moons Read online

  OTHER MOONS

  OTHER MOONS

  Vietnamese Short Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath

  Translated and edited by

  Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock

  Foreword by Bao Ninh

  Columbia University Press / New York

  Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Pushkin Fund in the publication of this book.

  Columbia University Press

  Publishers Since 1893

  New York Chichester, West Sussex

  cup.columbia.edu

  Copyright © 2020 Columbia University Press

  All rights reserved

  E-ISBN 978-0-231-55163-2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ha, Quan Manh, translator. | Babcock, Joseph, 1985- translator. | Bảo Ninh, writer of foreword.

  Title: Other moons : Vietnamese short stories of the American War and its aftermath / translated and edited by Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock.

  Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019055643 (print) | LCCN 2019055644 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231196086 (cloth) | ISBN 9780231196093 (paperback) | ISBN 9780231551632 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Vietnam—Fiction. | Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Influence—Fiction. | Short stories, Vietnamese—Translations into English. | LCGFT: Short stories.

  Classification: LCC PL4378.82.E5 O84 2020 (print) | LCC PL4378.82.E5 (ebook) | DDC 895.9/223340803581—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055643

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055644

  A Columbia University Press E-book.

  CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].

  Cover image: © Tran Tuan Viet / Gettyimages

  Cover design: Lisa Hamm

  CONTENTS

  Foreword: Writing About War Is Writing About Peace / Bao Ninh

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: A Note on the Selection and Translation of Stories / Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock

  1. UNSUNG HERO / Nguyen Van Tho

  2. WHITE CLOUDS FLYING / Bao Ninh

  3. LOUSE CRAB SEASON / Mai Tien Nghi

  4. BIRDS IN FORMATION / Nguyen Ngoc Tu

  5. A CRESCENT MOON IN THE WOODS / Nguyen Minh Chau

  6. MS. THOAI / Hanh Le

  7. THE CORPORAL / Nguyen Trong Luan

  8. RED APPLES / Vuong Tam

  9. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE VILLAGE / Ta Duy Anh

  10. BROTHER, WHEN WILL YOU COME HOME? / Truong Van Ngoc

  11. WAR / Thai Ba Tan

  12. THE CHAU RIVER PIER / Suong Nguyet Minh

  13. STORMS / Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong

  14. THEY BECAME MEN / Pham Ngoc Tien

  15. AN AMERICAN SERVICE HAMLET / Nguyen Thi Thu Tran

  16. LOVE AND WAR / Nguyen Ngoc Thuan

  17. THE PERSON COMING FROM THE WOODS / Nguyen Thi Am

  18. OUT OF THE LAUGHING WOODS / Vo Thi Hao

  19. THE SORROW WASN’T ONLY OURS / Luong Liem

  20. A MORAL MURDERER / Lai Van Long

  Permissions and Acknowledgments

  FOREWORD

  Writing About War Is Writing About Peace

  BAO NINH

  Since 1995, when the United States normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam, Americans have been visiting Hanoi, and many of them are veterans who fought in the American War. A veteran myself, I am able to have open conservations with them. I like the way American veterans talk about the war because they are sincere and straightforward, always saying what they think.

  Although individual Americans may perceive Vietnam and the Vietnamese people differently, they are usually all surprised by the fact that they encounter no hatred from their “former enemy” in postwar Vietnam. Even two decades after the end of the war, it was hardly a forgotten past in 1995, when Americans first started visiting our country, because the remnants and catastrophic consequences of the conflict were ubiquitous throughout Vietnam. So why did most Vietnamese people treat American veterans as friends rather than enemies? Australian and South Korean veterans—U.S. allies during the war—whom I met were also astonished by the Vietnamese people’s peaceful attitude, and they wondered how the Vietnamese could possibly change their attitude toward their former enemy so quickly and easily; they found this difficult to comprehend. But if one reads the history of Vietnam, one will realize that this is by no means incomprehensible.

  From its birth over two thousand years ago up through the last few decades of the twentieth century, Vietnam has continuously fought against foreign invaders, all of whom were far more powerful than the Vietnamese, militarily. Therefore, whenever Vietnam was invaded, the country had to bear great calamities: the land was reduced to ashes; death was everywhere. After each war ended, in order to survive, the Vietnamese not only had to work hard to rebuild houses and villages but also had to try their best to free themselves from the nightmares and catastrophic psychological devastation caused by war.

  That meant we had to learn to quickly “close down the past.” In order to achieve this goal, we needed to reconcile with our former enemies and hold no hatred toward them, because hatred is poisonous. If we kept holding resentment in our hearts, we would be killing ourselves, our fellow citizens, and, more broadly, our country. Resentment or hatred would make the country sink permanently under the weight of the horrifying and tragic memories of the war. Hatred would make us unable to live a normal life: we would be devastated physically and psychologically, and we, as well as our children, would never be able to live happily. This is a valuable lesson that the Vietnamese have learned throughout centuries. Generations have been practicing this philosophy—a philosophy of loving peace and harboring no xenophobia. These are defining characteristics of the Vietnamese people.

  Antixenophobia might seem to be paradoxical in the Vietnamese people, but I think it is an admirable trait. The Vietnamese have fought several wars, but they love peace and are essentially peaceful people. We are neither militant nor vainglorious about our victories. We are courageous in fighting against foreign invaders, but we treat foreign people with respect. We are known for our nationalism, but we do not practice the narrow form of nationalism prevalent elsewhere in Asia.

  It is our love for peace and antixenophobia that make us more open-minded and eager to learn new and useful things, especially from other cultures, even from our invaders. This is evidenced in the relations between France and Vietnam from the nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century.

  From 1858 to 1954, France invaded and colonized Indochina—Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. That was one hundred years of hatred, violence, and exploitation. The Vietnamese rebelled against the French colonizers, and in turn, the French suppressed the Vietnamese revolutions violently and brutally. But during the nearly century-long French occupation, Vietnamese society, which was influenced by French culture, was able to free itself, relatively speaking, from the feudalist system that had dominated Vietnam for thousands of years. French Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Diderot had a great influence on Vietnamese intellectuals, who eventually turned away from Confucianism. The French Revolution of 1789 promoted freedom, equality, and human rights, all of which were later introduced to Vietnamese society and, as a result, weakened the domination of Confucianism over Vietnamese culture.

  The Vietnamese also adopted the Roman alphabet from Europe. At the end of the nineteenth century, with no hesitation, we began using the Roman alphabet rather than the logographic chu Nom system composed of Chinese characters. Chu Nom had been used in Vietnam for severa
l years, but it was rather complicated and difficult to learn, write, and read. Therefore, for years the majority of the Vietnamese population was illiterate. The Roman alphabet, which the French colonizers used, was easy to learn, use, and print. Getting rid of chu Nom and adopting the modified Roman alphabet (chu Quoc Ngu) used in modern Vietnamese was considered a great cultural and linguistic revolution.

  And literature, in fact, was this revolution’s greatest beneficiary. Young Vietnamese poets of the New Poetry period in the first half of the twentieth century—who were, for the most part, educated in French schools—used chu Quoc Ngu to write poetry and were no longer bound by the Chinese language and the outdated chu Nom system. Vietnamese novelists and poets of this period learned the quintessence of French Romantic and realistic literatures, and between 1930 and 1945 they produced several great literary works and introduced Vietnamese literature to the Western world. I consider this the golden period in Vietnamese literature, especially prose fiction. Novels written in this period were influenced by great French authors, and one can see the absence of the classical Chinese prose movement in them. The language they use is more familiar, the characters are easy to relate to, the plots are more interesting, and humanism is promoted. Two prominent authors from this period are Vu Trong Phung and Nam Cao, whose fiction is as great as any world masterpiece, even today.

  In the autumn of 1945, Vietnam gained its freedom from the Japanese imperialists and the French colonizers. But soon after that, Vietnam was at war again. There were three consecutive Hot Wars in the second half of the twentieth century: the Vietnamese-French War (1945–1954), the American War (1960–1975), and the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979–1990), also known as the Border War with China. Then there was, of course, the Cold War—the global ideological battle between communism (from the former Soviet Union) and capitalism (from the United States).

  When the country was at war, literature suffered the same fate. Vietnamese authors, whether voluntarily or reluctantly, wrote to serve the country’s revolution against foreign invaders. They were considered “soldiers on a cultural battlefield” who used their pens as weapons to destroy the enemy. Therefore, they had to put artistic and literary values aside and quickly produce revolutionary works that conveyed the spirit of fighting. These works are often characterized by blood, fire, and hatred.

  Vietnamese literature from the period 1945–1990 was also influenced by the dictates of “socialist realism.” Socialist realism, or Stalinist and Maoist propaganda literature, dominated literary production and artistic expression in communist countries, including Vietnam. As a result, Vietnamese literature lost its traditional beauty and gentleness and alienated itself from global modern literary trends.

  The concept of “realism” in the term “socialist realism” is, in fact, a kind of antirealism. It glorifies socialism and denounces everything that is contrary to or different from socialism and its ideology. It rejects individualism and advocates for collectivism; thus, it is intended to be the literature of the masses. Although there are a few good—even great—literary works of socialist realism, oftentimes these works are heavily politicized and read like political documents that have been “literaturized.” Socialist realist fiction tends to be tedious, dry, vain, and xenophobic. During the Cold War, Vietnamese readers had access only to this kind of literature written by socialist writers from the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China.

  Vietnamese readers eventually lost interest in literature produced under the paradigm of socialist realism, and nothing written with this political ideology is known outside of Vietnam. Even today, with conditions much different than those in the pre-1986 period, not many contemporary Vietnamese works have been translated into other languages, and many have been rejected for publication in the West.

  In fact, since 1986, especially after the collapse of the communist bloc in 1990, Vietnamese authors have courageously freed themselves from literary restrictions imposed by politics and by the government. The pioneers of this newer style of writing are Nguyen Minh Chau and Nguyen Ngoc, who were once considered important Vietnamese socialist realist authors. They wrote articles, gave talks, encouraged Vietnamese authors to boycott political literature, and called for reform, otherwise known as Doi Moi.

  Doi Moi refers to reforms started in 1986 in order to help the Vietnamese economy transition to a market economy by abandoning the cooperative economic model. Although these reforms primarily targeted the economy, they had a sweeping, positive influence on all other aspects of Vietnamese society. Human rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of artistic expression all benefited. Censorship of the media and publishing became less strict compared to that of the pre-1986 period. Vietnam started to open its doors to the world, and literature written by American, British, French, German, Spanish, and Italian authors—both classic and contemporary works—were now translated into Vietnamese and published in Vietnam. This was a great opportunity for Vietnamese writers, especially the younger generation, many of whom are featured in this anthology. They include Ta Duy Anh, Nguyen Ngoc Tu, Suong Nguyet Minh, Thai Ba Tan, Nguyen Van Tho, Vo Thi Hao, and Nguyen Thi Am.

  A common characteristic in the work of this younger generation of Vietnamese writers is their rejection of socialist realism. This is evidenced especially in their works about a very old topic, and the focus of this anthology—the war—which was once considered a strength and a source of pride in the Vietnamese socialist realist tradition. Writing about the American War in Vietnam, these young writers of the post-1986 period condemn war, whereas authors of the pre-1986 period had glorified it. Before 1986, even well-informed writers had sometimes written propagandistic epics about the war and heroism. For example, Nguyen Minh Chau’s story “A Crescent Moon in the Woods,” which is considered a “gentle” story and portrays mostly realistic characters, still romanticizes the tragic war with America. Although it is well liked by many readers and is taught in Vietnamese high schools, it is still a work of what I could call “socialist half-realism.” In contrast, Thai Ba Tan’s story “War,” which is rather simple and not as famous, successfully and subtly addresses the cruelties of war and the misfortunes that the Vietnamese people—men and women, soldiers and civilians—experienced.

  I am arguing here that the literary reform since 1986 and the topic of war and its aftermath are a return to the theme of humanism that has always existed in Vietnamese culture and literature for thousands of years. Because Vietnam’s history is associated with war, most Vietnamese magnum opuses, like Nguyen Du’s The Tale of Kieu, Dang Tran Con’s The Song of a Soldier’s Wife, or Nguyen Dinh Chieu’s Luc Van Tien, are related to war. Although the wars depicted in these texts are not real battles—no winning or losing, no swords or guns—the stories are about people and their sorrows, tragedies, and suffering caused by war. Similarly, most contemporary works about the war are not directly about the conflict itself but about how people lived and suffered during and after the war.

  And this holds true for many of the stories in this anthology. The characters in the stories collected here are common people—soldiers, civilians, peasants, men, women, and children; they are neither generals, nor high-ranking military officers, nor heroes. The reality of the country and the war are seen through these characters, their lives and their fates.

  Unlike writers of socialist realism, contemporary Vietnamese authors write about the war to oppose war rather than to promote or advocate for it. In other words, they write to express their love for peace and promote cross-cultural understanding and global love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Collaborative projects like this one always depend on the gracious help, participation, and support of dozens of people. We would like to thank, first and foremost, the twenty authors whose work appears in this anthology. We realize that placing one’s writing in the hands of others is an act of trust, and we feel honored and privileged to have had the opportunity to translate and share your art with a wider audience.

  We had trou
ble initially contacting some of the authors represented here and relied on the generous help of friends and colleagues, including Le Van Han, Le Trung Binh, Vo Thi Le Thuy, Ta Duy Anh, Suong Nguyet Minh, Quoc Phuong, Truong Hanh Ly, Do Han, and Truong Thi Thanh Binh. Without your diligence—and, in some cases, amateur detective work—this project never would have become a reality. A big thank you also to our friend Nguyen Thi Minh Hanh, who was always willing to help wrangle copies of Vietnamese-language books.

  We are deeply indebted to Bao Ninh for committing his writing time and energy to composing the foreword to this anthology, and for his generosity in welcoming us into his home in Hanoi last summer.

  A special thank you to Wayne Karlin, who was generous enough to read an early draft of our proposal and manuscript. We were buoyed throughout the final stages of this project by your continued support, encouragement, and advice.

  Thank you to everyone at Columbia University Press, especially Christine Dunbar, Christian Winting, and James R. Purcell, for their work on and commitment to the project. It is thanks to editors like you that often-overlooked short fiction in translation like this has a chance to reach a wider audience.

  We would like to acknowledge the generosity of the Humanities Institute at the University of Montana and the Unit 18 Professional Development Fund at the University of California at San Diego for funding our project-related trips to Vietnam.

  And finally, a big thank you to our parents, Dinh Thi Hai, Noel Harold Kaylor, Richard Babcock, and Gioia Diliberto for their support and encouragement. We love you and can’t thank you enough for everything.

  INTRODUCTION

  A Note on the Selection and Translation of Stories

  QUAN MANH HA AND JOSEPH BABCOCK

  The American War in Vietnam was an extremely controversial and complicated event in the context of both Vietnamese and U.S. history. In our selection of the stories collected in this anthology, we have tried to be as inclusive and diverse as possible in terms of both the author’s background and the content, style, and themes present in his or her work. Still, some readers may notice that only one perspective on the conflict is represented here—that of the war’s victors, the Vietnamese communists based in the northern capital city of Hanoi.