Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 507 - Why Vietnamese Folklore Is Secretly A Gory Horror Story? - Kim Tran

Transcript

507 - Why Vietnamese Folklore Is Secretly A Gory Horror Story? - Kim Tran · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I today have Kim Tran from major books, publishing company.
0:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And you are from London, from Britain.
0:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have been following you through your peers in Britain and here we are.
0:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to talk about so many different things you're working publishing as well as a new exhibition.
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You have coming up.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast, Kim.
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a pleasure to hear.
0:32
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to tell the audience, as you all are listening, Kim speaks perfect English, and I had to ask, while old you were when you, or you know, ask you if you were born and and Britain, because you're English is so fantastic, and I'm beginning to steal a lot of young Vietnamese people throughout the world.
0:55
[SPEAKER_01]: speak perfect English coming out of Vietnam and you know, I'm growing up in Vietnam and being perfectly bilingual at this point.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So, key to a little bit about your history coming from Vietnam.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I am born and raised.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I was born and raised in Vietnam.
1:12
[SPEAKER_00]: My entire family is so Vietnam and the only person in the UK.
1:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I came to the UK when I was 17 to do my any levels.
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: COVID hit, I went back to Vietnam for about two years, which is, you know, it's a great charge because as a young adult, when you move forward, once you move away, you don't have that much more chance to be your parents, children, and so forth.
1:41
[SPEAKER_00]: First, through that tiring Vietnam, and a friend, a colleague, approached me and asked if I was interested in starting a book company.
1:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, you know, as every wide-eyed freshly graduated, a young person, not sure if full of hopes and dreams or not, but But I thought, you know, why not give it a go?
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the pandemic.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: People make strange decisions and somehow that strange decision has gone with me till now.
2:22
[SPEAKER_00]: and then I came back to UK to finish my masters and decided to open major books, which is the second published in company.
2:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So core books are Vietnam, we translate, which translate what nature share into Vietnamese, and most of us that's the opposite.
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We try to, if we're in Vietnamese literature, to be English speaking world.
2:45
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: What made you decide to study comparative literature?
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, well, I've always studied literature, I believe, in the sense that in Vietnam, the school system divides you into specialised classes.
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is literature specialised class, there is a math
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: specialised class, physics, chemistry, et cetera, and because I absolutely self-get math and also subject, I thought that maybe humanities would be more interesting, but yeah, for some reason I have always found myself in a literature specialised class.
3:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I was fascinated with stories growing up and I didn't
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: English literature for really a little bit, but I was thinking that I was much more out of fantastic pictures, Mr. James White's actual college.
3:46
[SPEAKER_00]: He quickly made me realize that I was much more interested in literary theory than the actual reading of, well, that sounds like I'm slagging just literature off, is not it is amazing, but I was much more interested in world
4:06
[SPEAKER_00]: than just your English literature.
4:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But you brought up an interesting word.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You said, theory, like your fester said, you're much more interested in the theory.
4:18
[SPEAKER_01]: What can you break that down?
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?
4:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm literary theory.
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I was very, very fascinated by the way that I'm so interested in understanding how
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: how things work in this world, you know, system of power, power dynamic exchanges, like ideas of why ideas behind feminism, movement, ways of reading, things, ways of seeing things, theories of translations.
4:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's no such thing as a single way of looking at the world or understanding anything, but there's so many, so many, brilliant ways.
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And all these thinkers, the great thing about form is that they have,
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: such command over lagging and debilitating to like we all have these questions inside our minds right but they have their ability to put it down into words so succinctly so precisely so logically just to break it down to us like to show us like oh yeah this thought you have it actually it's valid you know you're not you're not just being simply as I was fascinated with
5:28
[SPEAKER_01]: As I was learning about your work and what you do with in publishing, you know, I kept thinking about my father and you know, we talked about this earlier, um, for better or for worse, how it affected me, the way he looked at Vietnamese literature growing up.
5:46
[SPEAKER_01]: really affected me, because I think he was, you know, he was educated in the French system and D'Abaia in Vietnam.
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were meant to, they were made to study French literature quite a bit.
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think anything that was translated from the French was part of their reading assignment.
6:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think my father had a lot of respect.
6:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he didn't.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: He said it all the
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Vietnamese literature, and I bought into that.
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Looked line in sync were as a kid.
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I really, I was like, yeah, I mean, I could see the vastness of English literature.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And now that,
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I get to meet a contemporary like somebody like you who understands, okay, there's there's the range of of literature and there's theory on how we even in the 60s when my father's being educated, understanding that under colonial sort of circumstances that he's looking up at the French and whatever and so it trickles down on to us.
6:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But all of that for better for worse in my life has developed into the Vietnamese podcast today, that all lives within me, and I wanted to ask you.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: How can I, what are the books, or you don't have to explain titles and writers, but what is it about Vietnamese literature that you have so much confidence that we need to get it out to the West?
7:25
[SPEAKER_00]: with your father is something I've been thinking about a lot, actually, because to tell you the truth, the motivation behind major books was a feeling of anger, I'd motion to it's myself, more than anything.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So unlike your father, I was brought up in the 2000s,
7:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the early 2000s, especially around that 2008, 2009, 2010's period, when I was growing up, I was a teenager, is that that age where you're very young, you're very impressionable.
8:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam was going for a process of absurd, like immense economic growth.
8:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And we suddenly have an influx of Western media, Western music, like Disney Channel, HBO.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: like we consume as a kid, you're consuming what's in television.
8:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you just, in many ways, I'm sure mimicking your dad, we were shown these things.
8:29
[SPEAKER_00]: We were, you know, we were desiring these things.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We watched these films with these young and bright and free and beautiful people who are, you know, dancing, happily, we can't, we can't trust that with our own very still,
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: valleys and household as a young person really shapes you and it makes you me and I load myself and a lot of people in my generation we were very western, like western focus in a way, like in a way I felt like I felt like we went through a period of looking down on our own culture.
9:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, first of all.
9:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that goes on today, rampantly.
9:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that that has gone away.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still very much in our DNA.
9:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
9:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And the shift that Vietnam as a nation, we are a small nation compares to the political, political powers of the world.
9:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And even myself, even though I specialize in literature, since I was in Vietnam,
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: international literature and even my thesis of diversity, it was on Kafka, so I was in UCL my university and I realised that, you know, it's a big university, it claims to be one of the biggest, and most forward thinking of diversity in the world and yet there was only one person in charge of teaching them entire cohort on Eastern literature, at Eastern
10:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Japanese, you know, the fantasy age is not as, like, jumbo Asians in the word of her.
10:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so I was very, of course there was no such thing as the presence of Vietnamese literature in the curriculum.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was at first annoyed at the absence in the curriculum, but then I realized that this anger should have been directed towards myself because I am a part of the problem,
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: looking down onto our culture that makes, that makes the invisibility, you know, this is what caused it.
10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a very big kind of realization moment and that led to a desire to
11:09
[SPEAKER_00]: hurt people, what joined me along in this re-education, self-re-education process, so yeah, that was the motivation behind major books, and to answer it, it doesn't run about way of sharing my thoughts, but why do I think, be it any literature or half, you know, so what it takes,
11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: such a long and complex history, even, even a language of bear, it's a language itself, bear the mark of so many layers of influences.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We were colonized for 2000 years by China that, you know, that erase our own, that are even the loomscript, like their Chinese, we used to have the Chinese script that is the official written script.
12:09
[SPEAKER_00]: for while under Chinese wars and Chinese influence.
12:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And then their scholars at that time decided to invent the norm script as a derivative of the Chinese script.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when the Portuguese came, the Portuguese missionaries came, and they wanted to spread the religion.
12:38
[SPEAKER_00]: of Vietnamese and then when the French came over they wanted to really eradicate influence of China and fusionism on that is around Vietnam.
12:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So they started to heavily impose their Latin script.
12:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But even though on the surface it looks like our script is a Latin script.
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But phonetically we belong to Australia's chaotic groups.
13:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So phonetically we sound more similar to Thai.
13:06
[SPEAKER_00]: The vocabulary is heavily derived from, you know, the history we're trying to, there's so, and people have been writing for thousands of years, writing, creating, and then, you know, you can't not talk about the war and the literature during the war, the literature of a nation, reviving itself after the war.
13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: narratives, the, and people have always been righty.
13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think they're just incredible stories that, you know, just the premise is already interesting, like why, why wouldn't you want to read it?
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy how you have so many people like my father who feel that way, who feels that our literature is, I mean, I believe it.
13:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe him.
13:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm here talking to you as a result of that belief that I have about Vietnamese literature.
14:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I think it's going to take
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: to talk to more people like you.
14:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm starting here, you know, I'm starting here.
14:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm starting to ask what?
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of comparative literature, what do we, what?
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: can we hold on to other than that, 2000 year history of milestones of complexity, right?
14:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we, and is this even important, do we produce major thinkers?
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that even an important thing?
14:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it important that we see the beauty of our own
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: reflection of who we are is that more important than like these big thinking like the pyramids and you know like and and and you know there's all this correlation that I have it's like we don't have anything big but is that even important and this is something that I talk about all the time I'm obsessed with
15:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Is our reflection more important than building a pyramid or the iPhone tower or like these strange real big book literally, you know, works?
15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I mean, it is a very difficult question.
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say that I've not let's discuss that together a little bit, like, by, by great, like, how do we define what is a freight thinker, what is a great achievement?
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if we base that on, you know, like, what is the canon in the truth of that is always a question, what is the canon?
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And we base that on the the opinion of say
15:48
[SPEAKER_00]: great thinker than I say, the literature, the literary cabin, how it bloom, major figure in literature, in major critical, major literary critic, have considered the tale of guilt to be one of the world's greatest, to be to belong to the world's
16:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is okay.
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's already a minute.
16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'll define how I just how I feel as a regular and lay person.
16:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I think greatness for me in any artwork, like food or books or music, for me is it so different from anything that was there before, right?
16:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's one of the criteria for me.
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you think way beyond the zeitgeist at the time?
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you make me feel?
16:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you move me to kind of like tears or to like laugh where I couldn't stop laughing?
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever that emotion and these are just like very basic pedestrian sort of like definitions for me for greatness is how original was it and then from that originality just as original did it move me and those those are sort of my two kind of like feelings about anything that I consume.
17:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I might be very biased, but I do believe we have titties, very few, I mean, if we're not talking about literature, it's just talk about, let's just talk about a figure, you know, so people have different opinions of him, but somehow the figure of our present at Ho Chi Minh have managed to inspire and move an entire generation of people to
17:42
[SPEAKER_00]: to fight for deliberation, that is something that, you know, not any normal human being can have for me, that is greatness in terms of literature, it is such a personal thing, I have
18:08
[SPEAKER_00]: amongst the most incredible and original things I've ever ever read on one of the books that were publishing later in the years called Cross-Rotely Lampcoes by Tansan, it's a...
18:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called Cross-Rotely Lampcoes.
18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Cross-Rotely Lampcoes by Tansan, who is one of Vietnam's most prominent modernists poet.
18:31
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote this incredible book in incredible novel,
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: from the perspective of a soldier who deserted the French army right in the period of communist takeover in the north of Vietnam.
18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And it perfectly demonstrates this incredible dizzying chaos of experience of not knowing when one war has ended and the new war has begun.
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It is
19:06
[SPEAKER_00]: people around him, not trusting him, and he wanting to be trusted, but he also can't trust the government that is now granting him this sort of work freedom.
19:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an incredible incredible, it's incredibly original, both in perspective, both in cadence, he's a poet, he's right with such a incredible
19:30
[SPEAKER_00]: cadence of musicality, I thought it was one of the best things I've ever written, I've ever read.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's entirely different.
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very personal and I think it is, as you mentioned, how we see ourselves, we must have that pride before, you know, before we start seeking the approval of others.
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think that, you know, the way that a lot of people measure
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: these international prize, like the book of prize, or the police of prize, etc.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think that the one thing with these prizes is that there needs to be an English version available first.
20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So before these work too, it can be even considered.
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're just trying to give these books a chance by translating them into English.
20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't want to move past Ho Chi Minh because that is a huge divisive figure from my community, right?
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just want to address that.
20:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that my community of Southern, Vietnamese, Southern government,
20:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Second generation in America Vietnamese diaspora, we are unable to look beyond a lot of things.
20:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And you talked about Jen Zun, and his work as writing about a soldier who fought for the North, and it's blending sort of these worlds and in Ho Chi Minh.
21:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's
21:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that being able to look past the politics for my community or for the audiences that are listening I'm not making apologies for where I come from but I'm asking my audience right now to
21:30
[SPEAKER_01]: listen and keep an open mind and let's follow this idea of nuances and being able to have a conversation.
21:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to get ahead of it, right?
21:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, the backlash of like, oh my god, I can't believe she said that, but no, I I welcome this because if we are going to talk
21:59
[SPEAKER_01]: that he thought, you know, Ho Chi Minh was thinking in a very original and it moved people to change the trajectory of this, of our country, right?
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's, that's, that's can be defined as greatness in that in that realm.
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then greatness in the literature that you know, the book that you just mentioned,
22:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also something that's very hard for our community to swallow because like how do we commit to reading a book about like the early days of the Vietnamese?
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like right, you know, making that transition jumping from the French into fighting for the Vietnamese, but I hope that the community can
22:37
[SPEAKER_01]: can listen and can consume within open mind and have critiques beyond this idea of politics.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a very tough job for me sometimes to really have to answer to these things.
22:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But that being said, I am a fan of free speech.
22:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a fan of like we should be able to talk about whatever we need to.
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: All that being said, how do I find this book?
23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Jen's on, right?
23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: How do I find his, I mean, you said you're going to release it later this year, right?
23:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, in November.
23:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah.
23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's from Vietnamese to English, right?
23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
23:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm interested in reading it in Vietnamese because it sounds, but what do I get that version?
23:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The very important thing is, it's sold in Vietnam, so it is sold widely in Vietnam, it is stunning, the writing is absolutely stunning.
23:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I cannot recommend it more difficult.
23:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
23:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And then so when you get this translated from Vietnamese to English, I've always wondered, how do we know, how do you know when you've hit the mark on a on a soul level that the book was aiming for?
23:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's so many different, I guess I'm asking there's so many different ways
24:07
[SPEAKER_01]: in the spirit of the writing?
24:09
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we know that?
24:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I put my faith in my translator.
24:15
[SPEAKER_00]: My translator is a wee of all the ways what we're later speaking, because I really do believe that people are really do believe that the translator needs to be able to
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: and the nuances of the original manuscript in order to, in order to involve the human rights and I preserve the aura of the original text.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also believe that because the translators are the people who have the live between languages where they're constantly living between two or several different languages, different cultures, a lot of the times.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: living and studying in America, in UK, or even in Vietnam, they have an incredible sensitivity to its language that I think that sensitivity is really, really, really important in the process of transitioning on an English and what culture to another.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no such thing as a perfect translation.
25:31
[SPEAKER_00]: hands on my heart, I believe this.
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that, and there's no, and I also don't like the ideas of that all later, like, a more one translation is more correct or should erase the previous translation.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the idea of having multiple translations of many things, and I think each
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: a great thing.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in our translators, we work with them, we choose them, or they even choose us.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no such thing as a perfect translation, but as long as you can, you're proud to stand by your interpretation.
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm proud to publish it.
26:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you ever have corrections after you read a draft?
26:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you ever say, okay, I have like 25 corrections, I think you need to change these?
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course we do, is a constant dialogue, you know, like I remember when we were translating soft folks making a ball, because he wrote this in the 1920s, and there are a lot of,
26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: the vernacular at that time is no longer what it is nowadays and there's a lot of words that even I don't really understand anymore and we really have to go through the go have to do our research and really try to understand you know what he's referring to in here and then how do we convey that in English etc so that is very fun.
27:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Your day-to-day is, you're the founder of this publishing company, but are you sitting there doing that work?
27:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Making sure the aura is correct.
27:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we are, because we are a very small team of three people with myself being the main editor at every main publisher in editor.
27:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, I am working directly with every single section.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you find the confidence to put your imprimator, your stamp of approval on phrase that goes from Vietnamese to English?
27:51
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you know that?
27:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, in terms of confidence, I actually, I'm not sure if I'm that confident about my credentials, you know.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I genuinely believe that I might not be the most qualified person to be doing this because before me, there are so many,
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many researchers and people working in literature in Vietnam who have worked so hard for a long time for the championing of Vietnamese literature.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But I am very privileged, I am lucky, to be based on the UK.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm privileged to have the financial means to be doing this type of opportunity.
28:40
[SPEAKER_00]: and from great researchers, writers, fanulators who have worked long and hard in trying to bring Vietnamese literature to the West, I'm very grateful for them.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And the confidence comes from consulting with them, the confidence comes from also having to
29:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Just trying to what we don't know, we try to do our research as much as we can, we try to feel that path of knowledge, because, you know, after all at the end of the day, our writers have put their faith in us.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, by doing this, I have given them my word, and I think it's very important to honor that word.
29:33
[SPEAKER_01]: in major books or in choral, which where I, I, both are my love child.
29:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And in, in many ways, I think that choral books somewhat reflects my, my actual personal library a little bit more.
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and no, but also, but in a way, because in coral books, it's like I want to bring to Vietnamese readers the same joy that I had in discovering all these funny works, you know, around the world.
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We all these fun things that you can read.
30:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas in major books, I feel
30:24
[SPEAKER_00]: and responsibility in presenting the image of Vietnamese literature.
30:31
[SPEAKER_01]: What are some of the titles that you brought in from the English world to Vietnamese translation?
30:39
[SPEAKER_00]: We, at Coral, we have a lot.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We have my favorites, and most my favorites in the round of the Hungry Ghost by Dr. Gabon Matte.
30:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a nonfiction.
30:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We have Mary Gates still this is pleasure, which I absolutely love.
30:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the blue as eye by Tony Morrison.
30:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
31:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That was solo known by Tony Morrison.
31:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we have a lot of very very hairy James were publishing later in the years.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We also have a lot of very very fun work.
31:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So, how does the economics work?
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, I'm just so curious about the economic models now.
31:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Like,
31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: There seems to be obviously a lot more titles that you can go from English to Vietnamese, so it's not plethora, right?
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also probably a lot that can go from Vietnamese to English, I assume.
31:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's just bigger titles, bigger authors in the English-speaking world.
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: How does the economics work out for Coral and for Major?
31:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to get into the dollars, but it seems like a bigger market to go from English to Vietnamese.
31:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would start by saying that books, if you want to make money, just maybe don't go into independent money because you don't, you just don't.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I am very lucky and privileged to be able to do this, to follow my passion.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a brutal industry that is to say the least.
32:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Books, you know, books
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of products because it is not a daily necessity that people will be, it was to some people, it's a daily necessity, I'm sure, but in general it is not a daily necessity that people will be buying every single day, but it is also not a kind of luxury for speech products that people are willing to pay so much money for.
32:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that as a
32:50
[SPEAKER_00]: and inaccessible at price point.
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas, but people, what people don't realize is it costs a lot of time and effort to make a book.
33:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a simple object, right?
33:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But behind it, there is royalties, there's translations.
33:07
[SPEAKER_00]: there is editing, there is design, there is printing, there is shipping, there is commissioning to, you split the, you split commission to warehouse this to booksellers, like you end up with your profit margin at the end of the day is like foreign independent publisher, like if you sell 2,000 copies then you make about one or two percent profit margin, it is, it is crazy, it's a game scale, that's why the bigger
33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: are the only one who has been survived, or yes, I'm always kind of half joking that in this industry, there's either the one who are actually starving or the one who pretends to be starving.
33:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, it is a brutal, brutal industry.
34:01
[SPEAKER_00]: In Vietnam,
34:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Western mostly but also just international literature is I think it has taken over about 80% of the publishing market, but which is also one reason why I want to, I want, I want major books to be a success because I want it to be a motivation for writers in Vietnam to.
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: to be encouraged that there is a publisher who's rooting for you, who's here to support you, and we are, as long as we put Literary Merit at the number one criteria, so as well as our work is good, we are willing to support you.
34:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not just for writers inside Vietnam, you know, any writer, identify as Vietnamese, is around the world.
34:52
[SPEAKER_00]: As long as your work is good,
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're doing God's work.
35:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I really respect what you're doing.
35:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
35:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the optics of it looks a lot greater than I do so.
35:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But we trials this.
35:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
35:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you just need a whole lot of passion to really pump into the grit, you know, and to do what you do is
35:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's a very difficult path.
35:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I recognize that, you know, when you say, Feaster, I mean, it just sounds like famine a lot, you know, every now and then you get Feast, but I hope that the trajectory of reading habits in Vietnam and throughout the world increases as we, you know, as we go along and we're fighting AI and, you know,
35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: these ideas came out of human beings.
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the hopefully that's the relic that is able to kind of like stand the test of time after AI is really just doing its thing in the world.
36:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, and I think the statement, you know, you go around publishing and you hear a lot about people saying that, yeah, AI writing is bad, but I think that's a wrong question to appear, you know, because if you say that we don't read AI writing because it's bad, then it means that what is okay to read at one is good, like that's missing the point complete, right?
36:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So because at the end of the day, I think the point is, what is the point
36:43
[SPEAKER_00]: As a child, I was curious about whether I wanted to learn about people, I wanted to connect with people.
36:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I was curious if everyone else have the same feelings and thoughts and fear as I do.
37:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And then on reading a book, you suddenly is like giving this incredible insight into
37:09
[SPEAKER_00]: and you're like, wow, I'm not alone in this world, which is a very special feeling, and that's literature for me.
37:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So what has this work given back to you?
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It has given back to me so much in terms of the community, you know, being able to make people like you, like if I don't do this,
37:38
[SPEAKER_00]: people doing several things in the autistic communities, in the UK, and in Vietnam, where I like to be undergoing incredible producer in the UK, many, many incredible artists in Vietnam, the ability to meet the family of the writers who, in Vietnam, of writers who I, you know, I was a student, I could only dream of,
38:07
[SPEAKER_00]: also just the fact that, you know, sometimes people come to me in the UK, people of Vietnamese diaspora come to me and say how much this means to them.
38:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And I realize that this is much more much bigger than I thought.
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But on a personal level, it has given me, you know, it's pushing me constantly.
38:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's constantly making me
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: having to reflect upon myself, upon my practice, upon what I have to do.
38:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And because, of course, I have to acknowledge how complex translation as a process is.
38:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I am constantly in need of further educating myself.
38:57
[SPEAKER_01]: My biggest fear in life, one of the biggest fears that I have is that all cultures throughout the world eventually become part of this mainstream river.
39:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't recognize the cultural elements of people from Guatemala or Korea or Vietnam.
39:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It becomes one just big giant mainstream river.
39:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're all in this river that doesn't make any,
39:26
[SPEAKER_01]: a cultural specificity sense and that would just like one.
39:32
[SPEAKER_01]: gray color of water just dumping into a bigger ocean of just main stream.
39:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when you, when I recognize like work that people like you are doing, it just makes me, it revives the sense of like humanity and the hope for humanity that we can maintain these individual colors of our cultures.
39:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so important.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And thank you.
40:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope so.
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I share the same fear and I hope so.
40:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So that all being said, I have a really a basic question is, who are some of the writers that are popping off for you in Vietnam, modern or old writers?
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: president of the, of the Vietnamese writer's association, but I think he's one of the most like the bravest and he's one of the most fantastic contemporary authors.
40:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I, I, I have breath.
40:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I think his work is enigmatic to the, that's the perfect work for it.
40:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have a sense of power in them.
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There is also
40:55
[SPEAKER_00]: She writes from her writing, have that distinctive sudden voice of the makeup delta.
41:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's contemporary, it's called, it looks at life in such a, at first, you think of it as a very cold, and full way of looking, but then you've realised there's so much tenderness and humanity behind them.
41:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I love her writing.
41:22
[SPEAKER_00]: holding them with a fantastic contemporary writer.
41:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I think his book Parallel's book published is remains the best game of all out of Vietnam for me.
41:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're also very excited to be publishing and to soon be publishing when we're here who is another fantastic writer of short story, a master of short story writing.
41:52
[SPEAKER_00]: which I'm just very excited.
41:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
41:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listing those names.
41:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Now my follow-up question to that is this.
42:01
[SPEAKER_01]: These writers are perhaps writing about daily life, the writing about ideas, painting portraits of life and Vietnam.
42:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I think about
42:22
[SPEAKER_01]: the limitations because of maybe censorship or because of government sort of ideology.
42:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel like writers in Vietnam try to push on the ideas of like limited freedoms of communicating?
42:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a tough question for me to answer that I think that writers, good writers will always be able to have good writing.
43:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's been for of himself has said, sometimes a lot of times writers don't write to be published.
43:10
[SPEAKER_00]: They write just because they have to write and to be a writer is to write.
43:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
43:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, obviously, I come from a very, you know, it's a very polarized place.
43:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I respect your answer, you know, I completely get that answer.
43:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, can we talk about the exhibition of what's coming up?
43:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that would be, literally.
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I think that you are,
43:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You're publishing a book, or you publish a book, The Tales, Vietnamese Tales, and it's being put out there.
43:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And how did you pick these tales?
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And why did it make it into this volume?
44:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but we publish it in March, we actually publish it in March, but with the exhibition coming, it's like the proper launch of the book, is the official name is,
44:19
[SPEAKER_00]: and it is essentially a collection of 11 illustrated Vietnamese folk tales, for me, to publish folk tales, is very important.
44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I love children's literature.
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I always eat no, I want it to do children's literature, but I also think the book, first and foremost, this book
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: second third generation of Vietnamese immigrants whose children are now now have children and who also have all shown a strong desire to reconnect with their comfort heritage, but they may only not have the language barrier.
45:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And these kids are growing up, you know, only have
45:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It tells Tote Oralee by their parents, or by their grandparents, them.
45:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It is Disney and Anderson, and Grimm's fairy tales, which I just want them to know.
45:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want them to know and to feel proud that we have a very, we have a phenomenal cultural heritage.
45:36
[SPEAKER_00]: That is on par with the Grimm's and the Disney and the Anderson.
45:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The feeling behind the publishing of this is first and foremost, a dedication to all of my friends.
45:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And that the collection, the stories picked for these, but are from a phenomenal work of a phenomenal Vietnamese folklore,
46:12
[SPEAKER_00]: basically his entire life collecting 200, over 200 stories and the etymology, like the origins of each of himself and different versions of these pills.
46:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And he compiled it into five massive volumes of work of incredible work detailing not only his version of these stories and where they came from, like how they came to be and I really wanted to honor his works.
46:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Technically, I have no author, right?
46:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But we still want it to, I want it to, oh, no, it's work.
46:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So I asked for permission from his family to apply the rights to use his version for hotels.
46:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I picked these 11 because it's the first volume.
47:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And this and the theme behind it is different depictions
47:09
[SPEAKER_00]: essentially Vietnamese woman in it folk culture.
47:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing.
47:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So there will be more volumes after this one?
47:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there will be.
47:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So he published, you said 200, so he was tracking 200 of these folk tales.
47:30
[SPEAKER_00]: and even more because he has another body of work on legends and niche as well, he's like dude's honestly in front of us.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a guy, he's a guy, he's a guy that we should be actually having a book about him, right?
47:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
47:49
[SPEAKER_01]: What years was he active on?
47:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he's sadly passed away for a long time now, but he has been active since, you know, I think there's what was he writing this stuff?
48:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he published this originally in the 60s, if I'm not wrong, but yeah, he's, I think he spent his entire life.
48:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So his children are now in their 80s.
48:20
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why this work.
48:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like you and I doing this work is so important because I grew up thinking that we only had maybe five or 10 legends and myths, right?
48:38
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a human being out there that collected all this stuff and like broke it down, made ethnographies unlike where these things came from.
48:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and why would this 200 stories not be in English so the rest of the world can understand this, you know?
48:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea.
48:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so.
49:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's 200, so we'll try.
49:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that maybe if it will be so much quicker, because his works is like, each volume is like, yay, thick, it comes in like five volumes.
49:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But the version I wanted to make first was I wanted it to be accessible to children.
49:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why I wanted it to be just a story, just a book on tails and illustrated, but stunningly illustrated.
49:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's five volumes on this 200.
49:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So you'll tell you about the the the legend or the myth the folktale and then break down like where it came from and sort of use it and knowledge of it.
49:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, literally he would trace almost he would tell you all the versions a lot of the versions of it.
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: the Cinderella story with the fact that there are over 500 stories of this around the world and he's breaking down the elements in the some-game story and how it mimics different Cinderella's around the world and how it differs.
50:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It differs during the levels around the world.
50:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It is incredible body of work.
50:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is in the 60s.
50:14
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no internet.
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no anything.
50:17
[SPEAKER_01]: There's
50:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we must have started this in the 20th, in the 1920s.
50:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, yeah, there's no tragic B.T.
50:32
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no Google, there's like, you know, these guys are doing their filter, they're going around, they are finding the books, are speaking to the people, they're doing their footwork research.
50:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, scholarly work is incredible.
50:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we don't give enough credits to such as in scholars.
50:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm sitting here thinking back to the 20s.
50:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like witchcraft, right?
50:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how does this guy even pull that information in the 20s and 30s?
51:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Even in the 60s, you know?
51:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Even in the 60s.
51:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
51:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
51:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I show.
51:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I reckon that people back in the days like, if people back in the days must be looking at us and thinking like, what do you mean by you can't just read, you know,
51:16
[SPEAKER_00]: 500 page research or to find the information that you read.
51:20
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you mean?
51:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, just, Charles.
51:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you need a machine to break it down?
51:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder how many Vietnamese people in America, you know, the diaspora knows about this guy, right?
51:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how many of us, I've never heard, I mean, I don't know a whole lot about anything, but like, how is it?
51:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if I can go into the bookstores in Orange County and find the five volumes, right?
51:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, I, I'm, yeah, I'm not sure if if I follow you to have a bit of translated, but if you want it to have a taste of his stories, you can find out books for asked a reason.
51:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So we distribute in, we distribute all version of the hotels in America through asked a reason books.
52:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, then I can buy this on Amazon eventually.
52:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, great.
52:10
[SPEAKER_01]: That'll be awesome.
52:10
[SPEAKER_01]: When
52:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so this book, Church of Vietnamese Folk Tows, I can buy it right now.
52:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Great, that's awesome.
52:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And the person that you're talking about, should you have to deal with the family's state, right?
52:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Of the writer.
52:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
52:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And can people have writer one more time for us?
52:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, it's Witton, no tea.
52:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
52:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we should all, you know, I really beg the audience to look into this and we should study it.
52:50
[SPEAKER_01]: We should make it, we should make it general knowledge for our Vietnamese and beyond, communities beyond to know that we have a, we have a vast richness of folktales that come from Vietnam and I think we should make it more available to the world.
53:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are not the choice people to do this, you know, like there have been efforts of there are efforts of writers before us, people before us trying to publish versions of Vietnamese cocktails, but they've all been very scattered and the translation and the translation is often.
53:34
[SPEAKER_00]: some of them I think they get a bit too much to its young children, so they never translate the full version of the story, which for example, like this Cinderella story I mentioned them gum, it's quite boring, it's quite gruesome, it's like the original grim's rudder's tail, and so a lot of the poetry have been having removed a lot of, I think to try to make it more familiar
54:01
[SPEAKER_00]: like they try to make the structure more familiar to like more similar to Cinderella, for example.
54:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But you didn't, did you water yours down?
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: No, absolutely not.
54:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We were really, yeah.
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: What, why do you think that folk tells, in all these traditions, we're so gory?
54:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it was a very different time with very different beliefs and moral attitude.
54:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we shouldn't try to impose our modern society think of as morality or acceptate behavior onto the ancient
54:50
[SPEAKER_00]: culture, I think.
54:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It shows up in all parts of the world, how glory these booktails are all around the world.
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's like a lot of blood killing, you know, a lot of really, and then you know, why are we so addicted to four films today, right?
55:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like human beings have this innate need for, you know,
55:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's amazing that it's showing up in Vietnamese literature.
55:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
55:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to my professor of Professor Rachel Valdi of the other day, when we had the exhibition launch party, and just wondering, like whether it was because to many cultures, these tales, especially for the Grims, I think these tales were, or not the Grims were maybe a certain version of German,
55:47
[SPEAKER_00]: folk tales like they were really intended to be tales of to be cautionary tales.
55:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and I think that, you know, a spectacle of horror has always been terrifying and fascinating to people.
56:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So back in the day before you have things like police and, you know, a legal system that can, that can, that can regulate, that then you have to just scare people off doing that.
56:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Where can we, if we're, it's in London, right?
56:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So if we're in London, where can we catch the exhibition, how do we learn more about it?
56:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So the exhibition is free, so we try to make it as successful for people as possible.
56:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It is running for the entire month of June and the beginning of July.
56:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It is in the Museum of the Home in Hoxton.
56:48
[SPEAKER_00]: or on our social media, majorbooks.uk on Instagram and a website major dashbooks.com.
56:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But the exhibition is a fascinating museum.
57:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like showcase the way that that home in Britain has like if all homes through different periods like the 20th or 60s or 70s and there's even
57:14
[SPEAKER_00]: of Vietnamese room in the museum, which is really, really cool.
57:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I value my guess so much in today proves once again that the work of getting to know
57:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Vietnamese culture in the modern world.
57:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And the unfurling of our culture is such a beautiful and precious thing.
57:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thank everybody for listening to this podcast episode today.
57:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And Kim, thank you so much for really enlightening me and bringing so much to the surface today.
58:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's so much nerve as it's also been very, very insightful for me.
58:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You ask a lot of very important questions that really force me to really make me have to think and reflect, which is what we need every day.
58:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to let you know that my doors are open, always.
58:24
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have another book, if you have another exhibition, if you have any events, please feel free to come back.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I, you know, this is always for me, the opening, the start of new relationships.
58:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to stay very, I want to stay up on all of the things that my guests are doing in the future.
58:47
[SPEAKER_00]: amazing, thank you.
58:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, I just also wanted to highlight that the reason why this book is so special is not just because we're showcasing the work of Wittlope T, but also for stunning illustration by an incredible artist.
59:03
[SPEAKER_00]: His name is Jeet-Soul.
59:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the first Vietnamese person to win the Kyoto Carnegie Medal of Illustration.
59:10
[SPEAKER_00]: His work for another work for another previous work.
59:18
[SPEAKER_00]: that his illustration for this book is the best is incredible.
59:25
[SPEAKER_00]: He has really drawn inspiration for the illustration from Vietnamese traditional art techniques, such as the campaigning conge in LA, Vietnamese pottery, he has managed to showcase the beauty of our folk art, not only just illustrating the stories,
59:48
[SPEAKER_00]: what Vietnamese art has to offer, which was really, really invisible.
59:52
[SPEAKER_01]: As soon as I hit stop recording on this podcast, I'm gonna order the book.
59:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's can't wait, yeah, I can't wait to hurt and the literature, all of it, it sounds so fascinating.
1:00:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very thankful.
1:00:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Kim.
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, Kenneth.
1:00:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope it has been a joyful for you.
1:00:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It definitely has.
1:00:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
1:00:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
1:00:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
1:00:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.