The Colors of April: Fiction on the Vietnam War's Legacy 50 Years Later
Ha, Quan Manh (Editor) , Tran, Cab (Editor)
Three Rooms: 2025
Paperback: New
9781953103574
Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, literary voices of the Vietnamese-American diaspora as well as Vietnam-based authors speak to the experience of those who left and those who stayed in THE COLORS OF APRIL, a collection of new short fiction curated by award-winning translators and editors Quan Manh Ha and Cab Tran.
For much of the twentieth century, Vietnam played an outsized role on the global stage, charting the destinies of superpowers and reshaping the world's politics. Now fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War comes an anthology of fiction that finally speaks to the global Vietnamese experience: voices of both those who left and those who stayed, what was gained and lost in the half century since, and--for the generations that followed--what it means to be Vietnamese.
More than two dozen distinct literary voices are featured in this collection, including Viet Thanh Nguyen (Pulitzer Prize winner, The Sympathizer), Andrew Lam (PEN/Beyond Margins Award winner, Perfume Dreams), Barbara Tran (Lannan Foundation Award winner, In the Mynah Bird's Own Words), Vu Tran (Whiting Award winner, Dragonfish) and many more.
The stories are as diverse in style, tone, and subject matter as the ancestral lands of the Vietnamese people. From the rubble of the Ancient Citadel in Quảng Trị to the makeshift orphanages outside Sài Gòn, from Palo Alto to a tony Lincoln Park apartment in Chicago, the narratives straddle continents and generations, the political as well as the personal. But what they share is much greater than their differences. They speak to a common language, to a culture steeped in history and myth and storytelling that vividly captures the enduring spirit of the Vietnamese people.
Table of Contents:
Introduction by the editors
War's End by Vũ Cao Phan
In Silence, In Rain by Trần Thị Tú Ngọc
5A, 5B, DEST: SGN by Andrew Lam
Laws of Motion by Barbara Tran
The Immolation by Viet Thanh Nguyen
A Rockfall Dream by Nguyễn Thị Kim Hòa
A New Perspective by Lê Vũ Trường Giang
A Vietnamese Arrière-Boutique by Kevin D. Pham
The Fish and the Banyan Tree by Elizabeth Tran
Oakland Night Question by Phùng Nguyễn
MIA, MIO; POW, POP by Lưu Vĩ Lân
A Jarai Tribesman and His Wife by Nguyễn Đức Tùng
Country in a Glass of Water by Vi Khi Nao
The Blood Lily by Vương Tâm
Bad Things Didn't Happen by Gin To
Night by Nguyễn Mỹ Nữ
Lost Love by Vu Tran
What the War Left Behind by Nguyễn Minh Chuyên
Chị Nhàn at the End Time by Thuy Dinh
A Mother's Song by Annhien Nguyen
The Passed Season by Bảo Thương
Echoes by Văn Xương
Six's Sign by Anvi Hoàng
Editors
Quan Manh Ha (editor) was born and grew up in Vietnam. He came to the United States at the age of 22 for graduate studies and graduated with a doctorate in English from Texas Tech University in 2011. He is currently Professor of English at the University of Montana, where he teaches and researches American literature, Vietnam War literature, multiethnic US literature, and literary translation. He is the co-translator of Other Moons, Hanoi at Midnight, The Termite Queen, Longings, and 'Light Out' and Modern Vietnamese Stories, 1930-1954. He lives in Missoula, Montana.
Cab Tran was born in Vietnam and emigrated to the United States with his parents during the diaspora. He holds an MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Iconoclast, Black Warrior Review, Parcel, Oleander Review, Distinctly Montana Quarterly, Missoula Independent, and elsewhere. He lives in Helena, Montana.