Q&A

I’ve been very fortunate that my books have received academic attention. They have been read by junior high school students as well as doctoral candidates. Since the publication of Catfish and Mandala (CM), I’ve been fielding questions from various quarters. Some are very incisive and brilliant.

I’ll try to dig up old Q&A interviews and will be posting them here to help suffering students who have waited till the last minute to write their term papers.

Q: In CM, you mentioned that your parents owned a massage parlor for American GIs. Can you elaborate?

A: It was an entertainment complex built, owned, and operated by the U.S. Army. My parents did not own any part of it. When my father was serving as a military liaison for the American and Vietnamese Special Forces, he helped my mother secure a laundry contract for the American base near Phan Thiet. The entertainment complex was already operational, but the U.S. Army had difficulties securing a reliable native manager to oversee day to day operation. At this time, my mother was nearly thirty years old with four young children. She had a thriving laundry business in town. The base commander saw my mother’s skills and business acumen and offered her the position. She managed the complex, which included a massage parlor, a bar, a diner, and occasional live music and stage shows. Some of the women who worked as masseuses there, certainly, did offer sexual services to U.S. soldiers, but it was on their own volition–a private transaction between them and their clients. My mother did not have connection to this side of the U.S. Army’s business, which was considered a wartime necessity.

It was my fault for being unclear in the book. I was writing my story under great duress with time constraints and emotional upheavals caused by the very act of exposing our private lives.

So allow me to be clear now. My parents did not own or run a prostitution business. The U.S. Army did–and they still do wherever they have soldiers stationed. This is a long known fact and tradition of every army, not just the US Army, dating back centuries.

 

Q: Do you consider yourself more Vietnamese or more American?

A: I am usually more American than I think and less Vietnamese than I feel. But fast changes are upon us. The America of my adolescence has changed. It has grown more diversified and more open to multi-faceted identity. I would say it is easier for ethnic minorities to be assimilated into American society without losing their cultural identity now than it was when I was growing up.

 

Q: You have been earning a living as a writer for twenty years. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

A: Not including my years of freelance work, I’ve written four book length manuscripts (working on the 5th), but as you can see, I’ve only published two so far.

For me, writing books is similar to endurance sports. To go the distance, a writer needs to be fit both in mind and body. Generally, it is unsustainable to write in violent spurts while abusing one’s being with alcohol, rage, or tobacco. (I drink, smoke, and rage in moderation:)

When we’re young, it’s all about the words–everything can be sacrificed for that passion. When we’re older and a tad wiser, it’s about life first and the words second. We know that the latter flows from the former, through experience, steeped in time.

My literary friends debate this one often:

Q: Should an aspiring writer get an MFA?

A: From all the discussions I’ve had with other published authors, the general consensus is that it depends on a whole lot of things and among these are two important points:

1.  What the writer wants to do. Does he/she want to write or teach, or both?

2.  Does the writer enjoy immersing himself/herself in the MFA format (classes, workshops, thesis, mentors, etc.)? Can he/she thrive and blossom within an MFA program or will it strangle his/her development as a writer?

The natural followups to the previous question often crop up …

Q:  What’s better, learning how to write on your own or going to school?

A:  That’s a hard one to answer. I think it depends on the person. Both paths have their merits. From experience and observation, I would say that formal education, in any field, provides structure and a standardized breadth of knowledge which is very useful and time saving. On the other hand, self-learning fosters self-reliance and places very high value on depth and expertise in one’s particular areas of interest. Whereas the former method forces the student to learn a broad spectrum of knowledge, the latter form is disposed towards independence and specialization.

I think that some people are naturally better students and others are naturally better independent learners. I have a short attention span. I could never keep my mind on a boring lecturer. My entire life, I slept or daydreamed through the vast majority of my classes. I get through school simply by reading the texts and doing my assignments. I knew quite clearly from the beginning that I was a lousy student who got good grades.

The only exceptions so far were writing workshops where I must participate, debate, and evaluate other students’ work. This I found very engaging, at times even thrilling.

Q:  Why didn’t you get an MFA?

A:  I would have applied to an MFA program if …

1.  I hadn’t already incurred a scary amount of educational debts (undergrad + grad MS engineering + grad MBA = decade of crushing poverty).

2.  I had believed that some place would find me worthy as an MFA candidate (At the time, I had just started writing after 5 years of purely technical work and could barely tell the difference between a colon and a semi-colon.)

After penning about 150pages of a fantasy novel, I felt lost and thought I should get some instructions. I enrolled in a couple of creative writing night-courses at the local community college geared for working adults. I enjoyed those classes, made one very good writer-friend, and learned a decent amount of craft.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience unlike my years of mathematics, engineering, chemistry, accounting, and marketing.

In fact, if I received an MFA scholarship today, I’d happily be a student all over again–even now when I occasionally teach MFA level classes! There is always something more to learn.

On the flip side, an MFA alone does not a writer make. To write things of worth, one must first breathe, hurt, love, suffer, endure, risk, despair, persevere, and dive into life.

This is the part that presupposes my favorite Hemmingway quote:

“Find the authentic language of your unique experience.”

The next 8 Q&A’s are from an interview with Genevieve Erin O’Brien on Diacritics.com

Q:  Can you tell me a bit about your new project this cookbook with 40 recipes?  

A:  I’ve been a foodie ever since I could remember–probably because my entire childhood and adolescent were filled with stretches of hunger and brief periods of fabulous feasts. When I “grew up” and began to earn a professional income, the first thing I did was buy some nice suits, and then I struck out on the town, hot on the trails of restaurant critics. My good friends were all professionals with expense accounts, some with executive sales accounts–the holy grails of free dining. We took turns treating each other to wonderful meals while discussing business, of course. This really got me interested in food and was the real beginning of my culinary education.

When I landed in Southeast Asia for my decade long sojourn, I began eating my way back and forth across four countries and collecting recipes. These are my favorites which naturally includes 14 of my family’s recipes. It’s not just a cookbook, it’s travels, flavors, and memories–basically everything I know about food.

 

Q: How did you get from biking across Vietnam to writing a cookbook?

A: A touring bicyclist can easily burn up to 6,000 calories per day. The reward for putting out all that sweaty effort is prodigious gorging and imbibing of all things magnificent without gaining a pound. To really eat well, a touring cyclist must know a little about food, whether it’s food in a restaurant or food cooked at home. I know plenty about food and cooking, and I’m a writer and a restaurant critic. It is perfectly logical that I should write a cookbook. In fact, I’ve always wanted to write a “true cookbook” by which I mean a book that celebrates not just food but everything that surrounds it.

 

Q:  What is your favorite recipe/dish from the cookbook?

A:  For me, a dish is invarriably tied so a memory, a place, a sensation, and/or people. Eating springrolls always brings me a sense of happiness because this is my family’s food of celebration. It is the one dish that my grandmother and mother have consistently made to express their joy and to share that feeling with the whole family. This is my favorite recipe, and IMHO it’s the best darn springroll I’ve ever eaten.

 

Q:  What is your earliest childhood memory of food?

A:  My parents used to go out of town for business and left me with a nanny who often abandonned me at home alone. I usually survived on claypot catfish and a tub of rice for a couple of days. Many strange emotions have been entangled in the flavors of this dish.

 

Q: What one dish just never tastes the same as it does in Vietnam?

A: Pho. In Vietnam, there are numerous distinct recipes. Oddly, in America, pho is basically variations of the three of the most successful (read accessible) recipes.

 

Q:  How does food relate to family for you?  

A:  That’s still in development as I don’t have a family of my own yet. When I was a child, dinner time at our house was a bizzare affair. My parents ate in one room, while the rest of us ate in the other.

 

Q:  How does it relate to a sense of home?  

A:  A home without an active kitchen, full-table meals, and festive dinner parties is just four walls and a roof.

Q:  Where would you consider home to be?

A:  Home, for me, is a three-fold concept. First, it must be a place that has a past–that is to say a person must inhabit a place long enough for it to become home. Second, it is a state of presence–whether he is in a hotel room or in his house. In other words, it is a state of mind. Third, it is a place where a person could envision his future.

For me, home is a small wooden bungalow I built on the Mekong with a fishpond filled with water lilies and a view of Elephant Mountain within hiking distance.