Spotlighting Women Authors: Celebrating Women’s History Month with Phuong T. Vuong
By Lizzy Young
Today, Phuong T. Vuong is the featured author for our celebration of Women’s History Month blog series.
Phuong T. Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet and essayist who cannot stop thinking about language, memory, and migration. She is the author of The House I Inherit (Finishing Line, 2019). Her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Asian American Writers’ Workshop: The Margins, and elsewhere. Hailing from Oakland, by way of Hue, Viet Nam, Phuong is currently a Ph.D. student in Literature and a James K. Binder Fellow at the University of California, San Diego, situated on unceded Kumeyaay land.
Lizzy Young: Who are some women authors that inspire you?
Phuong T. Vuong: Mai Der Vang, Hoa Nguyen, Monique Truong, Toni Morrison, Saidiya Hartman, Octavia Butler, Carmen Maria Machado, Ana Castillo just to name a few!
LY: How do you hope your work adds to the rich history of books written by women?
PTV: I hope to say the things about which we’re not supposed to speak, because secrets only have power through what they’re hiding. Speaking about the shadowy things means we can wield them rather than be dominated by them. At the same time, I want us to be critical about how much we share and for whom. Not everything is for everyone. I also want us to question what we mean by “women” and to maintain the instability of gender.
LY: Who are some of your favorite female characters in literature, and why?
PTV: The immediate answer I have is Lauren Olamina from Butler’s Parable of the Sower. She’s grounded, empathetic, courageous; a visionary who understands the practical need for planning and surviving the present. I think she stands out because she’s what I hope to be!
This is not a character, but I recently read Jennifer Huang’s poetry collection Return Flight. The speaker was so deftly rendered as vulnerable and thus, strong.
Phuong T. Vuong’s poetry collection, A Plucked Zither, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press this spring.
A Plucked Zither explores what happens to language and thus emotions and relationships under conditions of migration, specifically refugee migration from Vietnam and its aftermath. Crisscrossing between making a home in the US and home in Vietnam, the speaker tries nonlinear, multilingual voice(s) that demonstrate the disparate nature of memory and the operation of other ways of knowing. Efforts to speak reflect the severing created by historical forces of war and imperialism, while speaking makes connection possible and remains tied to that very history. Vuong leans on the anti-war Vietnamese singer and songwriter, Trịnh Công Sơn, for a poetic lineage on grief, longing, and justice. Rather than being sunken with loss, the speaker(s) move with it, leaping across gaps.
Preorder her collection here today!
