Đổi Mới (ii)

from novelist Đô Hoàng Ngọc Ánh

Judge a book by its cover. What it’s for.

Đổi Mới

The Vietnamese Communist Party applied the word at their sixth congress, in 1986. The capitalist press spoke of it as Vietnamese перестройка, restructuring, and гласность, transparency, under the capitalist theory that all communists are alike.

We at last stopped translating that way when Mikhail Gorbachev led his Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the banners of glasnost and perestroika to join both Leon Trotsky and the Mensheviks on the ash heap of history. That was in 1991.

Of course Hu Yaobang already had died in 1989, joined by nobody knows how many funeral marchers at Tienanmen Square, human sacrifices at the tomb of his democracy movement. Đổi Mới kept ticking right along.

In literature we speak of it ending around 1991 when the VC cracked down on authors Dương Thu Hương and Nguyễn Huy Thiệp who had responded to the call by the party secretary for critical realism.

But those were early days yet in for instance the reconciliation with the United States of America which has only grown deeper and wider as we have fallen out with Beijing and Moscow.

Đổi Mới means new, mới, change, đổi. Transformation, like that rice shoot is doing on the cover. Back in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the party used it to name camps of moral reform for prostitutes.

Đổi Mới suggests growth rather than the bureaucratic reform of гласность and перестройка, which the life of the Soviet peoples broke apart. By convention now in English we say Renovation when they say Đổi Mới.

Đô Hoàng Ngọc Ánh

The author is himself one of the rice shoots of that vintage. Who touches Đổi Mới touches Đô Hoàng Ngọc Ánh.

Born in 1982 in Ha Noi to family from Thai Binh, the next city north, a sanctuary for the final war against Paris. He did tertiary studies at Malaysia. Now he works for a living in information technology.

He lives in Ho Chi Minh City. He works for art in the short story and the novel. His previous collection is [The Guy who Lost his Roots], 1991.

“The road is long, coming and going. When you don’t go you don’t come back. The story of a life right or wrong, whatever, that is coming will come. The story that has passed has passed.”

[Something like that. Try it on your translator: Con dường dù dài, có đi thì có đến, không đi thì khong đến. Chuyện đời dù đúng sai, chuyện đến gì sẽ đến, chuyện đã qua đã qua.]

Alpha Books knowledge is power

Better knowledge better success is the English motto on the website of Công ty Cổ Phần Sách Alpha, the Alpha Book Joint Stock Company. They have some relationship with Harvard Business Review press, founded by my youngest aunt.

4 hundred and 12 thousand people follow their page on Facebook. That is as much as I know about that. Publishing in Viet Nam has changed since I worked in Ha Noi over 1994-6. At that time only state-owned enterprises could publish.

Nhà xuất bản Dân Trí

Publishing house is a literal translation of nhà xuất bản, also of maison d'édition. Dân suggests the people, and trí means mind, both memory and intellect.

The intelligence of the people? All I know about Dan Tri Publishing House is what I read on their website.

They look like a general publisher, bringing out a variety of books with a family resemblance. 6 hundred and 12 people follow their page on Facebook.

This was the second Viet Nam letter of 2 so far about Đổi Mới by Đô Hoàng Ngọc Ánh. The first arrived on May 29, 2023.

9 previous letters had addressed The Renovation by Do Hoang Ngoc Anh. The first appeared on February 16, 2022, the second on February 23, 2022, the third on March 12, 2022,

the fourth on April 2, 2022, the fifth on May 2, 2022, the sixth on June 4, 2022, the seventh on July 16, 2022, the eighth on September 10, 2022, and the ninth on September 14, 2022.

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.