InvestigationAfter having been in the shadows for a long time, novelists of Asian origin have, in recent years, seen their identity forged in writing workshops or in the world of poetry, while being inspired by African-American authors. .
In one book, A brief moment of splendor (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous), the American Ocean Vuong caused a sensation. As soon as it was released in the United States in June 2019, this intimate and raw novel, which combines reflections on Vietnamese immigration, homosexuality and a description of loneliness and contemporary youth, was placed in the list of the best sales of New York Times.
Released in France in mid-January by Gallimard, the book is already an esteemed success. A feat for the first attempt of a novice novelist. But a success that many observers had anticipated, Ocean Vuong being a household name among lovers of English-speaking poetry – in 2017 it received the prestigious T. S. Eliot award. To the point that his novel was, before its publication, the object of fierce auctions, carried by the publisher Penguin Press (subsidiary of the mastodon Penguin Random House).
Charismatic, very present on social networks, Ocean Vuong, born in Vietnam in 1988, is a literary phenomenon. And, if we are to believe the many comments on his Instagram posts or the fiery opinions aboutA brief moment of splendor, a model for young people of Asian origin.
Heirs to often forgotten stories
Like Ocean Vuong or Charles Yu, whose novel Chinatown, interior, published last fall in France by Aux Forges de Vulcain, was rewarded in November with the National Book Award, more and more figures from this community appear in North American letters. Psychological thriller writer with Hong Kong parents Celeste Ng – who signed the book The Season of Fire (Sonatine) -, the Chinese-American Ling Ma, praised for her first novel, Les Enfévrés (Mercure de France), the young writer of South Korean origin R. O. Kwon, but also the journalist Jia Tolentino.
Author Celeste Ng
All of them cite, support and encourage each other in newspapers or on social networks. And assert themselves as the heirs of particular and often forgotten stories. Those of the Vietnamese, Koreans or Japanese marked by the wars which opposed them to the XXe century to the American giant; Chinese workers who arrived en masse in the 19the century then banned in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act, before being welcome again in the second half of the last century; Indonesians, Filipinos, Indians … These memories, established in the Korea, China or Japan towns of American metropolises, constitute the lifeblood of the asian-american : ambivalent, militant, painful and pugnacious.
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