Uyen Nicole Duong
 C 2012


LETTER TO A FELLOW VIETNAMESE: SWEATER OUT OF TRASH, ONE SNOW DAY

Dear Nhu Thuong,

Thank you for sharing your work "Se Lòng" with me. I look at your latest essay posted on your web blog as the dearest statement of friendship. And more.

You wrote on your experience of arrival in America and how a black laborer, a garbage man, has gathered warm clothes, separated them from the 'trash,' and out of that pile, chosen the best one to give you. I was very touched by the story - the dignity and humanity you expressed. 

The story has also reminded me of my own sadness as a Vietnamese American writer. Yet, like the music of Chopin, the sadness also  laces my soul with the beauty that spells eternal hope.  Let me explain.

Like in any ethnic group in America, it is unfortunate that there are Vietnamese and minorities who hold artificial values. To me, these individuals stand against humanity and not for humanity. These Vietnamese discriminate against those who are of a different skin color and culture.  They build their self-worth and the worth of others on degrees and money, have no compassion for others, practice ethnocentrism, and hold a sense of superiority about their achievements and status as the newly rich of America. They don't think of 'giving back' to the less fortunate and, instead, deny their heritage, their roots, and their past - the very essence of diversity that has nurtured them and brought about their materialistic success.  Many return to Vietnam to display their wealth, show off their status in America, or seek an identity that they cannot otherwise obtain in America.

Equally disheartening is the fact that in Vietnam, the "nouveau riche" of the "market economy" and the new ruling class exhibit the same attitude and behaviors.   There, in the Vietnam you and I once called home, the gap between the rich and the poor continues and widens. Discontent is a way of life for the suffering poor while the rich flaunts their luxury. For many, the promise of the revolution -- a society of prosperity and happiness -- remains an illusion.  Where is the history we once learned and the culture we once cherished?  Now, the display of culture and history in Vietnam lies in slogans, tourism, and, very sadly, new structures with uniform motifs, replacing historical sites that have been demolished instead being preserved.   Many of these structures are now called history. For many in the new generations, they are history.  So, I have always been sad.

But your story speaks just the opposite of the sad reality I just described. I call your story, "Sweater Out of Trash, one Snow Day." 

Perhaps the details might not be exactly the same as you experienced them years ago, but I think your feelings and the symbolism you perceived makes your  story among the most lasting of the Vietnam experience.   As I said earlier, the story has laced my soul with renewed eternal hope:   I draw from this story the Vietnamese immigrant's appreciation of life and people across boundaries, plus the courage to face adversity with a sense of modesty and grace. This is the value that I try to uphold, in my writing and with my life; yet I can't help but being saddened by the fact that many Vietnamese on this and the other side of the Pacific Ocean cannot understand or welcome this universal value - the value of humanity and an appreciation of the human spirit.

In your story, the giver of an early Christmas gift and welcomer of the new poor Vietnamese immigrant was a black laborer, a garbageman. The sweater he gave her was pulled out next to the trash.  The kind and friendly trash collector had gathered, from God-Knows-Where, all the wearables for the winter. Apparently he had selected the best in the pile to give the young woman.  

In this woman the poor kind man had placed his good heart - the heart of humanity.   The gift of surprise was given spontaneously in the first snow of a winter day, so unexpectedly and poignantly, yet full of a naturally felt compassion. 

The young Vietnamese woman had to face the dilemma of how to thank him in a foreign language, when a simple 'thank you' seemed too difficult because the first words of English were already burdened with layers of emotions that laced her  soul (the same lace that has revived my hope now). 

Most of all, she had to decide whether to accept it as the first "charity item for free" in America.  The gift was from a fellow human being -- one who stood for the working class in America and who looked so different from her.   In all that pure sparkling white snow stood the black garbage man and his pile of trash and winter clothes,  out of which sprang the sweater that enveloped the speechless and timid Vietnamese woman, petite, skinny, dazed and lost.  To her, the sparkling white snow has become a blank page of a new diary, and in her hidden tear lies eternal hope for the days ahead.

What a beautiful painting of humanity.

All of the poignant facts of your story that make up such a painting carry great symbolic significance for a writer like me.   For artists, it takes one to know one, a personal experience.   But eternal hope can only be found in the kind of beauty that must be understood and received by all. 

Because you call it non-fiction, I think of the story as your life, simply and abbreviatedly told.   I think that underneath the white paint on the canvas, there are multiple colors lying  in criss-crossing patterns.  In your story, there is also the subtext of all the unspoken facts of your past - your family, their struggles, the city where you were raised , its sky and ground, its rains and winds,  its bright sun and dark nights, and all the deaths and ruins that go with it.   This subtext lies underneath that white snow,  the warmth of that sweater, the extending hand and smiling face of a stranger.  

These lives and places of the past and your intense feeling of that one day in America have woven themselves into the tapestry of Vietnamese immigrants in this country. It is this tapestry that tells the history that has put us here, the part of history that we have lost and must recreate.

So I consider this story a gesture of friendship and a great gift from you to me, as well as to other fellow Vietnamese.   It reminds us of who and what we are and what we should be proud of - not the empty rhetoric of ethnocentrism, but purely the human spirit that spells our name,  and what American means or should mean to us. I thank you not only for your friendship, but also for renewing my hope. 

The eternal hope is that you are your story. By giving me that hope,   you have in a way placed yourself in my hand.   It is my honor if, as your reader, I am able to use the hand that holds the pen to speak for you in English (now it means the typing on a computer keyboard), in a way that makes the translation of your story unnecessary.   Speaking means bringing a little bit of your heart to a non-Vietnamese speaking audience.  
 

I hope, therefore, Nhu Thuong, that these words of mine will help bring your story beyond the circle of Vietnamese friendship to those readers who can't read your Vietnamese text, yet wanting to see and feel your heart, as I have. 

   

Cordially,
UYEN NICOLE DUONG (NHU-NGUYEN)

Copyright 2012

NOTE FROM UYEN NICOLE:

Nhu Thuong is the pen name of a Vietnamese poet, writer, and blogger.
She writes exclusively in Vietnamese.
Her blog in Vietnamese can be found at:
 www.nhuthuongbmt.blogspot.com

Nhu Thuong lives and works in Florida. Daughter of a former Vietnamese political prisoner, she came to America with her family in the early 1990s.