Lotusland (ii)

from novelist David Joiner after đổi mới

“Nathan Monroe is a 28-year-old American living in Saigon who falls in love with a poor but talented Vietnamese painter.”

You might too as I did when I met her at the bottom of the first page of the first chapter of the novel. She has got pink hair, fashion-forward when the couple meet on the Unification train, local from Saigon to Ha Noi, about 20 years after the Vietnamese Communists declared unification in 1976.

I am crushing as well at the publishing professional who wrote that summary at the top of the outside back cover, above left. They read the book! They narrate its 350 pages in 3 sentences then present the theme in 1 more, in terms of the action.

Oh, maybe the writer of the summary was the author of the novel, who writes well enough to work in publishing as most authors do not.

“Lotusland transports readers far away from narratives about the Vietnam War. David Joiner takes Vietnam as many people have come to know it and shows what it’s like today. A wonderful, important, debut.”

Le Ly Haslip has won distinction twice as a literary author, pleasing many in several languages and pleasing long through generations of readers. She is entirely capable of having written that blurb. Le Ly also is a peasant woman.

We met one time only, eating crabs with a hammer on a spread of newspaper on the cement floor of a basement in my father’s ancestral Maryland, not far from where in childhood I had fished many crabs to eat. You eat like a peasant, she said.

Nailed it, as few in Vietnamese studies do. My father and all four grandparents were peasants. My mother’s father was in Vietnamese Communist terms the son of a middle peasant, where you hire seasonal labor, while the rest were poor peasants, seasonal workers. My older brother too.

So, Le Ly has got an eagle eye. She has also hosted the author at her village where she receives the most wretched of the earth. Kind. Expertly kind at the world-class executive level. A delegator, a brigadier if not lieutenant general officer in the army of angels. So maybe she didn’t exactly pen her authentic endorsement. “Debut?”

Le Ly is not herself a debutant or on the dance committee. She was a grown woman of formidable compassion, endurance, and strength well before her own debut as an author. Le Ly has represented Viet Nam as a woman for a long time. On that back cover she in turn commends David Joiner’s representation of Viet Nam.

Hey I do as well and I have read only the one chapter. David captures a moment that was unanticipated and now is unremarkable, a woman on the unification train with hair that is pink like that lotus on the front cover.

Viet Nam letters have addressed the novel Lotusland by David Joiner 4 times so far: first on August 27, 2022, then third on August 31, 2022 and fourth on June 9, 2023.

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.