Live in October 2024: Beyond Borders, a Da Màu Anthology of Short Fiction
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Santa Ana, California --The central theme that unites the short stories in Beyond Borders is the complex and multifaceted notion of borders. As the title implies, each narrative offers a distinct exploration of this concept. What constitutes a border? Is it a tangible demarcation, such as a fence or checkpoint that physically divides spaces and peoples? Or has the term evolved to encompass more intangible boundaries, like the linguistic, social, and cultural structures that shape our identities and interactions? Perhaps in our increasingly interconnected world, borders have nevertheless become omnipresent, both explicit and implicit.
The stories in this anthology are linked by shared experiences of mostly first and 1.5 generation Vietnamese refugees, featuring original works or translations by Paul Christiansen, Cung Tích Biền, Đặng Thơ Thơ, Đinh Từ Bích Thúy, Đỗ Lê Anhđào, Hoàng Chính, Hồ Như, Lê Đình Nhất Lang, Lê Sông Văn, Lưu Diệu Vân, Nguyễn Đức Tùng, Nguyễn Hoàng Nam, Nguyễn Lâm Thảo Thi, Nguyễn Quí Đức, Phùng Nguyễn, Trần C. Trí, Trần Doãn Nho, Trần thị NgH, Trần Nguyên Đán, and Trịnh Y Thư, all are well-known writers of both print magazines and online Vietnamese literary websites. While the world has celebrated the achievements of Vietnamese American writers writing in English and embraced translated works of renowned domestic Vietnamese authors, a vast and vibrant body of Vietnamese-language literature has flourished overseas for nearly fifty years since the fall of South Vietnam. Beyond Borders, as a pioneering effort in translating the diasporic Vietnamese experience, represents the beginning of our commitment to showcase the richness and diversity of the Vietnamese literary tradition on the world stage.
As many characters in this anthology have witnessed tragedies due to their various conditions of displacement, there’s a Dionysian aspect to their yearnings. Representing ecstasy, emotional release, and convergence, this Nietzschean spirit reconciles these individuals to the starkness of their existential suffering, and in the process transporting them beyond both self-imposed and externally-mandated borders. In this sense, all 15 stories in Beyond Borders can be said to be one story, one dream world, one collective unconscious of the Vietnamese diasporic mind, where a broken obelisk, an abused wife with directorial ambitions, fabled banyan trees, nostalgic flâneurs, angel-faced demons (or demonic angels), queer lovers, victims of hate crimes, doomed musicians and writers, and con artists transcend their individual narratives by merging into one mesmerizing Boschian tapestry, or an interwoven “mosquito net” as imagined by the late artist Dinh Q. Lê (1968-2024), showcased in the 2014 exhibit Crossing the Farther Shore by Rice University, now selected as the cover artwork for Beyond Borders.
Analogously, the collaborative process of translation undertaken by Da Màu Editorial Board, which has carried over most of these stories from Vietnamese into English, is also a Dionysian gesture