Watermark: Vietnamese Poetry and Prose (Asian American Writers' Workshop) - Hardcover

"Watermark is simply some of the best writing from a new generation of Vietnamese writers in America. Eloquent, poignant, funny -- the writing goes beyond war -- taking us into the towns and fields of America. This is the Vietnamese literature of the future, 'a taste of the pure, sea salt sadness of the outcast' (to paraphrase Monique T.D. Truong) made inclusive by the editors' uncommon and judicious selections." Russell Leong, Editor, UCLA Amerasia Journal "Vietnamese-American literature is young. You can hardly tell it, though, from this collection of stories published by the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York. Here is an array of diverse talents that surprise and delight. Keen observation or exuberant fancy. Gentle humor, urbane charm, or devilish wit. Real life or that magic of dreams. Read Watermark and treat yourself to some fiction that transcends mere documents of the Vietnamese-American experience." Huynh Sanh Thong, Publisher and General Editor, The Vietnam Review

This title is distributed by Temple University Press for the Asian-American Writers' Workshop. Here, the most innovative contemporary Vietnamese-American writers explore thematic and stylistic territory previously overlooked in other collections, which have traditionally focused on the all-too- expected theme of war. Watermark lifts all constraints, leaving the works to reset the boundaries for themselves. And, they do - using poetry, fiction, and experimental forms to venture further into the fringes of the Vietnamese-American psyche. There they find a dead dog and hockey puck, a frozen (literally) grandmother, a hairpiece, Gertrude Stein, and a stick of spearmint gum. Here, fiction and poetry reflect and refract on adolescence, sexuality, language, death, and distance. The result is a sly, haunting, wry look at life anywhere. Barbara Tran was the recipient of a Cornell Woolrich scholarship at Columbia University, where she earned her M.F.A. Monique T. D. Truong is a writer and attorney in New York City. Luu Truong Khoi graduated from Harvard College, and the Boston University Creative Writing Program.