Introduction: Interview with Trương Huy San (Huy Đức) (i)

from historian Peter Zinoman

First things first.

The Regents of the University of California have published at the website of their Press with a capital P this introduction by Peter B. Zinoman to his interview 12 years ago with Huy Đức now in the current issue of their Journal of Vietnamese Studies.

Peter serves as Professor at the Department of History at Berkeley. His rank is 2 stars, a major general or minister counselor, a rear admiral at the flagship of the 10 research universities of the University of California, the most populous and prosperous of the United States of America.

Now hear this, a démarche. Huy Đức is a friend of ours. Not of mine, but of ours, our thing, the United States of Americans who can point to Viet Nam on a map.

Who Huy? Huy who?

I had never heard of the man. I am not the kind of area studies scholar and scientist who develops opinions about how another nation should run its affairs.

I have especially ignored the Vietnamese Communist Party and their Socialist Republic of Viet Nam all this century. They don’t want to hear from me and I don’t want to hear from them.

Peter introduces Huy Đức as their critic, a reporter of their renovation after 1986, who in 2012 turned author of their contemporary history from the fall of Saigon in 1975 and unification in 1976. Click on either photograph and you may learn from Peter as much as I have already.

I have since ordered a copy of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies to read the interview itself, as well as the first volume of the man’s book, to learn more. What I do know about Huy Đức already is that he enjoys the friendship and respect of many in high places in Viet Nam and across its government.

Were that not the case the VC would have walked in and shot him long ago. What they do when nobody is looking.

Since 1979, when Nguyễn Chí Thiện got his prison poems out through British diplomats, readers around the world have helped the better half of Viet Nam defend the honest and intelligent and talented by paying attention. All we can do.

All we got to do. It works.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.