12/29/08
Text: Chau Tu
Usually the stories are enough. But when Nam Le put together his debut short story collection, The Boat, he threw a little of himself into the mix.
In the collection’s first story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” Le is the central character, a student on a writing fellowship who debates following the trend of “ethnic literature” and using his father and their Vietnamese background as the basis for a story. In revealing his personal history with identity and family, Le sets an intimate and genuine tone for the rest of the stories.
As a first-generation Vietnamese-American with parents who endured the collapse of their home country and the harrowing journey across an ocean, Le’s stories based around his own heritage hit me emotionally hard. But so did the other stories and characters in the collection, from the 14-year-old assassin from Columbia facing an all-too-mature decision to the aging and lonely artist in New York City who struggles with the meanings of fatherhood. Le takes on diverse perspectives throughout history and from around the globe but brings out the emotions and humanity that connect us all.
And it all begins with the first story, personal yet powerful. So what if Le did end up writing “ethnic literature”? The Boat was finally the right way to do it.
