AustLit

In recent years, Vietnamese-Australian experiences and stories have had greater opportunity to reach Australian readers and viewers, with a growing number of works in English now circulating, including autobiographies, films, anthologies and exhibitions. Literary work in Vietnamese produced by writers in Australia, however, rarely has the chance to move beyond the Vietnamese-reading community. As the most populous of all the Southeast Asian diasporic or migrant groups in Australia, it is not surprising that novels, short stories, essays, poetry and autobiographies are written in Vietnamese and circulate amongst readers of Vietnamese across Australia. Yet this literary activity has gone almost unrecognised by Australian literary scholars writing in English. In this article I draw on research for the AustLit database conducted by myself and Boitran Huynh-Beattie to bring a part of Australia's Vietnamese writing into focus. In particular, the poetry of Uyên Nguyên and Trần Đình Lương provide a basis for commentary upon experiences of displacement and loss experienced by Vietnamese-Australians, as well as raising questions regarding the relationship between diasporic writing and the literature of the host nation. [from Kunapipi 32,1-2, Abstracts, p. 244]