by HAN PHAM

This is a book that belongs to you.

It is small and starkly white, with 140 pages of words and images from Vietnamese American artists. It is called simply AS IS: A Collection of Visual and Literary Works by Vietnamese American Artists.

Each of the artists in the book belongs to you and you to them. They write, photograph, paint and create so that there is a record of a people who have come from one place and have slipped through time toward others:

“To have started out life in a place that was turning from Sai Gon to Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, a place that was shaken by unfathomable cataclysms, changing, making up its mind, a fourth generation Chinese-Vietnamese baby girl, in the year of the fire snake, where can you go from there?”

This artist, this Chinese-Vietnamese woman born in the year of the fire snake, is Sylvia La, and, along with the other artists in the book, she helped create a visual and literary sanctuary for Vietnamese Americans, where, for a moment, the questions about identity are both raised and suspended. They understand what it means to journey in both body and mind, and share this understanding with their audience, because it is their journey too.

“You flee, you migrate, you wander. Perhaps to the sea, to an island in Malaysia your parents calls Boula-bidong, and you have to trust that you were there at age two, because you can’t find it on a map; perhaps you remember going to school in the Netherlands, where you ate wheat bread with chocolate sprinkles and kaas during recess; recall those long distances by car across the US, unbearably hot by day, dangerously slippery by night, the millions of lights in New York City, the arcades in blonde, dusty Kansas, mountainous Colorado, where you were impressed by your aunt’s two Chihuahuas and Saint Bernard and corn dogs, and sunny Oakland, California, which has become very familiar.”

According to poetry editor Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen the idea for the book was born at the same time as the creation of the San Francisco Bay Area-based Vietnamese Artists Collective.

“One of the founders of the VAC, Tony Nguyen, held a fundraising party at his house in Oakland before the VAC opened up. It was the first time all the artists got together, and I was so impressed with Dandiggity and the other people that were reading,” Anh-Hoa recalls. “I told Tony at that time that I wanted to put together an anthology of Bay Area writers.”

In the fall of 2004 and Anh-Hoa was one of the only Vietnamese American Master of Fine Arts students at Mills College in Oakland.

“I had done a lot of book arts at Mills and was thinking a lot of starting my own publishing venture.” Anh-Hoa purses her lips and silently shakes her head as she remembers the lack of Vietnamese American literature which prompted her to start dreaming about the book that would eventually become AS IS.

“I just definitely felt there was a need for it, especially on the west coast. Most of the Vietnamese writers were coming from the east coast at that time. I had read Watermark (a book of Vietnamese American writing by editors Barbara Tran and Monique Truong) and wanted our book to be a little less academic. I wanted it to include newer genres like spoken word, so that [readers] could get a better sense of the vitality in the Bay Area.”

At the Oakland fundraising party in 2004, Anh-Hoa met the other artists who would eventually become the backbone of the VAC and, eventually, part of the book.

“Dandiggity read a poem about his mother, Me Oi, which really moved me. Tan Khanh’s paintings were there. I was impressed by the vision in them,” Hoa says. It was the disparity between the ability to present both literary and visual work on an even basis in the group’s live shows that eventually led to the creation of the book.

“We felt that there were many new voices, and visions that needed a more permanent exposure beyond our shows, and we thought something more tangible, like a book, could be the vehicle,” says Anne Ngan Nguyen, the book’s designer.

Editor-in-chief Danny Thanh Nguyen agrees. “I remember one past member in particular, Sylvia, was challenging the group to think outside of live shows as a means of presenting art. Ly, who would be our managing editor, knew of some grants that were coming up, and the group entertained the idea of doing a publication.”

Within the next few months, the group won grants from the City of Oakland and the Puffin Foundation, who supported their vision for a book to mark the new tide of Vietnamese American art and literature.

Danny Nguyen sits at the kitchen table, his hands steadying themselves momentarily against the wood as he attempts to speak. He is normally an irreverently-humorous man, but now he is quietly considerate.

“One thing I have to admit is that there were a lot of older Vietnamese artists of a different generation who were limited with the kinds of things that they talked about. I mean, a lot of these people who did art for the community, [also said] we need to get away from this war stuff. Wouldn’t it be great to advance beyond being boat people, [the] American dream, immigration stories?” muses Nguyen. “Now we’re moving beyond that. When I look at the Vietnamese American community, I see so many growing up stories, intergenerational gap stories, stories about the very distinct tiers of Vietnamese American class. I’m really thinking about the Bay Area and this is what the book is really about.”

One of the book’s writers, Tony Luong, is a tall fellow with a mop of wavy dark hair and a wide smile who is eager to champion the community of Vietnamese artists he has found. His story, “The Barber,” touches upon the generation gap.