“What I like about the Vietnamese Artists Collective is that we all came together with a strong urge to do work together as Vietnamese artists. And I also found it great to find a family of artists who, being Vietnamese, understand where I’m coming from. So it was really special to find this group of people. I haven’t found another group like it.”

Even with these shared values, the editors of AS IS fought their own struggle to realize their vision.

Designer Anne Nguyen, a soft-voiced woman with a delicate face framed by wire glasses, found herself hard-pressed to defend her viewpoint on the book’s look at many staff meetings. “We each had many visions, and the challenge was how to compromise, and let the works speaks for themselves.”

She admits, “I wanted to scream so many times. In the beginning, we were always behind on deadline.”

Danny expands on the nature of the conflict.

“We were all volunteers. None of us were getting paid. There were moments when we didn’t know people’s commitment [to the project]. There were times when they wouldn’t show up for meetings and we weren’t sure if the book would pull through because we were really pulling on individual talents—design, managerial, editorial—and we really needed every single person on the project. When a person didn’t show up, we thought it might not work. We had to work on trusting each other. You learn to respect and hold each other’s opinions so closely that when you finally disagree, it’s like you realize for the first time your childhood best friend doesn’t share your same values.”

He continues, “There’s something about selecting pieces the team knew should be in the book, because we knew we wanted to have an eclectic mix of voices and subjects. But it was completely something else when you knew why these pieces belonged in there—they spoke to various audiences, and achieved this connection through various means, yet they represented what many of us came to understand as the new generation of Vietnamese American artists. Looking at The List—what was to be the book—it was one of those cheesy violin-music-plays-in-the-background-while-we-look-off-camera-in-a-knowing-way moments. We knew we were going to pull through.”

This story of a fighting to make a dream happen is your story, is anyone’s story. This last memory is yours, too: It is Lunar New Year. The eight people who are the backbone of the book are celebrating together in Ly Nguyen’s Oakland home. There are silver pots and pans full of steaming food in the kitchen, mixed among bottles of plum wine and sake. In the den, the eight are gathered on floor pillows, giving birth to the book’s title.

“We broke not bread, but banh xeo together. I issued everyone losing lottery tickets, Han made everyone nhan booze, Jim went on a bean sprout hunt, and Anne introduced the idea of ‘AS IS’ as our book’s theme,” recalls Tony Luong, Fiction Editor.

“The idea of AS IS stemmed from the pressure we felt from having to make a statement/establish a label/give a reason for this book. The book is what is it is—a collection on new visions and voices from Vietnamese American artists—take it for what it is, what you see is what you get, no more no less, unapologetically,” says Anne.

“Of all my design work, I am most proud of this book. Professionally, it affirms my love for books, and design. Personally, it confirms my voice as an artist, a teacher, fighter, migrant, daughter, and a work-in-progress. I kept thinking to myself, if this is what we could do as a first book, imagine the 22nd, or 100th.”

Sylvia La welcomes the simple name. “It’s great for me to be part of this book because I’m at a point with my art work where I don’t want to be pigeon-holed. People of color, women, Vietnamese, these and other identities we put a name to when we start off doing our work are good and necessary because these are what provoke us to start asking questions and searching. It’s also great to garner a sense of community. That’s why we called ourselves the Vietnamese Artists Collective. We wanted to take pride in our identity in the face of a dominant culture that is all about assimilation. But it’s also dangerous to be too emphatic about identity. As we do our work in-depth, we don’t want to be emphasizing that we are Vietnamese or this or that. Of course we are. But at the same time, take the work as it is.
We are artists and this is our work.”

In their final meeting, the group tears open brown cardboard boxes and lift the final books into their hands. The book launch is a little less than a month away, and they have a moment to rest before the frenzy of planning how to introduce the book to the world begins anew. They settle again at that familiar kitchen table, some sharing a chair together, and muse about a possible book tour amid a dinner of bo kho made by Anne’s mother. The destinations they dream of for their tour —Lion’s Plaza in San Jose, Little Saigon’s Bolsa Mall—make them laugh but also is serious. This is a book born of banh mi shops and Bolsa shopping malls, of trips to the Vietnamese market abroad and at home, of dinners around a kitchen table in Oakland.

“We knew that there was a strong chance the collective wouldn’t exist forever, so we wanted to create something that was lasting,” says Ly Nguyen.

Danny Nguyen agrees, “Art and literature has more than one purpose. It builds community, it represents camaraderie, and puts a marker of what human beings are.”

For the members of the VAC, this is a book for the community. This is a book that belongs to you.

AS IS debuted on July 29, 2006. For more information on the Vietnamese
Artists Collective visit www.vacollective.org. To order the book, visit store.atozproductions.com/collectiveasis.html.

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