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 poetic essay responds by positing the condition of being Vietnamese as inherently a diasporic condition. Guided by the central thread of đất nước — literally “land water” the Vietnamese word for “country” that embodies in its two syllables a central rift — this essay charts the meandering development of the Vietnamese language through a geographic and literary cartography. Weaving quotations, fragments, lyric, and reflections all the way back from 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.

This essay was published in its first form online in 2020 by 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.