Kim Th煤y
On Oct. 6, 91亚色鈥檚 Canadian Writers in Person course presented聽Kim Th煤y聽reading from her latest book, 惭茫苍.听91亚色 teaching assistant Dana Patrascu-Kingsley聽sent the following report to聽YFile.
For the second instalment of Canadian Writers in Person this year, Kim Th煤y visited 91亚色 to talk about her book 惭茫苍, translated in 2014 from French by Sheila Fischman.
In so many respects, Th煤y surprises and delights 鈥 on the page, through her writing, and in real life, with her infectious humour. She trained as a translator, worked as an interpreter, became a lawyer and practiced law for a few years before having children, then decided to open a restaurant, which she ran for five years. After all this, to hear her tell it, she kind of fell into writing as the next adventure that was awaiting her.
Her first novel, Ru, was published in 2009 to great acclaim. Ru was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, received a Governor General's Literary Award and won the nationwide book competition Canada Reads.
惭茫苍, her second novel, came out in 2013. As The Huffington Post notes, 鈥淜im Th煤y allows us to discover Vietnam through its history, its vocabulary, its food and its customs鈥. In addition to bringing us the happy and tragic destinies of immigrants, 惭茫苍 also proves that Kim Th煤y is the greatest of romantics.鈥
A book about love and food, and the connections between love and familial duty, 惭茫苍 makes us aware of the complexity and variety of human emotions and the intricate ways in which they can be expressed. 惭茫苍 is about life in Vietnam before the war and then immigration to Canada where 惭茫苍, the protagonist, raises a family, makes friends, and experiences love.
Th煤y herself spent her childhood in Vietnam, fleeing with her family as 鈥渂oat people鈥 and immigrating to Montreal, where she learned both French and English鈥攁t her mother鈥檚 insistence that, as a Canadian, she must be bilingual.
In her writing, Th煤y pays very close attention to the nuances and the beauty of words in Vietnamese, and in French, the language in which she writes. She says she wrote this book in order to be able to share with us a poem by Edwin Morgan that she encountered and loved. With this poem, and with 惭茫苍, she makes us aware of how literature can help us imagine worlds otherwise unknown to us.
Th煤y spoke about how 惭茫苍 was born out of a conversation with a friend of hers who had been seeing a therapist for 10 years about how her parents hadn鈥檛 said 鈥淚 love you鈥 to her growing up. From that conversation, Th煤y realized that she herself grew up in an environment where she didn鈥檛 hear the words 鈥淚 love you,鈥 but she knew that in her own family there were other ways in which people showed their love for each other鈥攎ainly, through preparing and sharing food. Out of this revelation, 惭茫苍, a book about the depth of unspoken emotions, was born.
On Oct. 20, Frances Itani came to 91亚色 to read from Tell and on Nov. 3, Greg Hollingshead will read from and talk about Act Normal.
Readings are free and open to any member of the public. All readings are held Tuesdays from 7 to 9pm in 206 Accolade West Building, Keele campus.
For more information, contact Professors Leslie Sanders at leslie@yorku.ca or Gail Vanstone at gailv@yorku.ca.