And Even Second-grade Vietnamese Can Be Abused. “In The Vietnamese Context — And It Might Be Similar

The Romance of Being Unreadable
Vulture
In his debut novel, Ocean Vuong took pains to be illegible, then blamed the reader for reading. In his new book, he is finally ready to talk

And even second-grade Vietnamese can be abused. “In the Vietnamese context — and it might be similar to Chinese — words are like spells,” Vuong told the writer Hua Hsu in 2022, claiming English speakers have a basically primitive relationship to language compared with the peoples of the Far East. This is deeply insulting to Vuong’s much-invoked illiterate ancestors, who were apparently so in touch with the primordial metaphors that they never managed to convey basic information to one another. Of course, what can make the mother tongue seem like magic is the simple fact that one does not speak it very well. Like many children of diaspora — I include myself here — Vuong mistakes his own naïveté for insight. 

More Posts from Moominnie11 and Others

1 month ago

“As no science explains adequately how dreams work, no one can explain how a poem works. Where is a dream, sure, but where is a poem? I believe somewhat in Williams’ formulation that a poem is a machine made out of words, but, finally, the poem isn’t where the words are. The poem is somewhere between the words and the reader, or it is the words taken into the reader, who exists within the general society and its history. You enter the poem when you open to its page or remember it, having memorized it, but it is a much larger world than the page. It is transformed when you say it out loud; and it changes from reading to reading—you, the reader, change it, for one thing, as you change—or is it that it changes for you? If you are reading a poem by Catullus, you are in no way the same as an ancient Roman reading it: you are not that person—that kind of person, though it is that poem, as those words. But even if you know Latin, you don’t “speak Latin,” and you haven’t much feeling for what it was like to be a Roman. A poem, like a dream, has an odd relation to time: it is in time, like a poem by Catullus, but it is timeless, as an object made out of words. A dream lasts a moment but endures as a memory might: but it didn’t really happen. A memory can be backed-up, but no outside observer can find the particulars of a dream in time and space (evidence of REM or whatever isn’t evidence of what happened in your dream). A poem didn’t or doesn’t happen, it’s a still group of words on a page; and a story doesn’t really happen either. We say that dreams, poems, and stories occur in the imagination, or the psyche, or whatever word we’re using right now, to invent another entity that doesn’t concretely exist to put them in. But doesn’t the “real world” exist in some collective category like that? All we do is dream; we live in poems and stories we invent.”

— Alice Notley on Writing from Dreams ‹ Literary Hub


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1 month ago
It’s okay. I can’t complain. I go to work, go to school,
come home, say I’d rather kill myself than go
to the grocery store, and go to the grocery store.

Maria Gray, from “Bad Nostalgia”

1 month ago
— Clementine Von Radics, From In A Dream You Saw A Way To Survive; "The Fear" (via Lunamonchtuna)

— Clementine Von Radics, from In A Dream You Saw A Way To Survive; "The Fear" (via lunamonchtuna)

1 month ago

Having a crush on someone is nice until you start losing your mind.


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1 month ago
枝垂桜 // Weeping Cherry Blossoms
枝垂桜 // Weeping Cherry Blossoms

枝垂桜 // Weeping cherry blossoms


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1 month ago

Oh ok so it turns out ive been borrowing grief from the future ! it turns out ive been preparing to lose the things i love rather than basking in the light of them while they last. Maybe i should nt do that


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1 month ago
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡
𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡

𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡

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