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MAYA NGUYEN


Based in Chicago, b. 1996, VN/RUS, Interdisciplinary Performer. Nguyen incorporates disparate (and often clashing) material sources into forms that remain conceptually indeterminate, such as performance lectures, sound improvisation, and participatory sculptural interventions. Her favored materials include: speech fragments, mistranslations, painful sounds, urban recordings, sounds imitating nature sounds, breast pump parts, internet debris, and videos of daily life.
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text

LAND / WATER
Essay
Asymptote Journal
2020

Print (Design by Eli Harrell)
Edition of 300
Goethe-Institut of Chicago
2026

︎︎︎https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2020/05/27/land-water-a-chronicle-of-vietnamese-as-a-diasporic-condition-2/

Land / Water: A Chronicle of Vietnamese as a Diasporic Condition

If the Vietnamese language is what it is today in large part through the influence of Chinese imperial powers, Portuguese missionaries, French colonizers, American fighters, and global diasporas, what of it is, in the end, Vietnamese?

This essay posits the condition of being Vietnamese as inherently a diasporic condition. Weaving quotations, fragments, lyric, and reflections all the way back to Vietnam's creation myth, its history within Imperial China, French colonialism, American War, and to the contemporary diaspora, the country and its language is shown to be deeply tied to that of other people, not in spite of, but because of the Vietnamese way. To be Vietnamese is to embody a porous border between land and water, independence and co-dependence, nationality and relationality.

First published online on Asymptote — an online journal of literature in translation. It was edited by Xiao Yue Shan, and included still images from Landscape Series #1 (2013) by filmmaker Nguyen Trinh Thi. It was printed in 2026 with graphic design by Eli Harrell.