Nguyen Chi Thien’s booksigning of Hoa Lo/Hanoi Hilton Stories:  readings and revelations

 
            The November 17, 2007 Vietnamese American Authors Book Fair at ViVo (Vietnamese Voluntary Foundation, Inc.) in San Jose featured the English translation of the Hoa Lo Tap Truyen by Nguyen Chi Thien published by the Yale University Council on Southeast Asia Studies two weeks previous (November 1, 2007). 

           A dialogue reading from “The Moon and Waters of the Red River” – a story from his new work – was presented by Bryan Do of San Jose playing a death-row inmate and Mai Trinh, a student at San Jose City College portraying a 19-year old girl at the Hoa Lo (Hanoi Hilton) prison where the author was incarcerated from 1979 to 1985.  She was condemned to death because she had burned the house of a local policeman who had sexually harassed her and ordered her moved to a New Economic Zone when she was selling small necessities and low cost food stamps without a license to earn her living and to support her parents as well.   The policeman, his wife and his children died in their home when it was burned, and the young woman was a celebrated figure among the Hanoi populace. 

             All those awaiting execution in Vietnamese prisons are fastened in leg stocks.  Nguyen Chi Thien was also in leg stocks in a solitary cell at Hoa Lo for bringing his manuscript of poems composed in his memory (not allowed paper or pen) during fifteen years in the Reeducation Prison Camp system to the British Embassy in Hanoi on July 16, 1979.  Nguyen Chi Thien was first imprisoned for “anti-propaganda” in 1961, until 1964.  He was reimprisoned—this time without trial or charge—at various camps in North Vietnam until 1977.   His manuscript was published as “Echo from the Abyss” in 1980 by the Vietnamese language press in America.  In 1985 they were translated by Prof. Huynh Sanh Thong of Yale University and published by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies.  Hoa Dia Nguc/Flowers from Hell (which is being reprinted to accompany the prose Hoa Lo/Hanoi Hilton Stories) won the Rotterdam International Poetry Award in 1985 while it is was not known where Nguyen Chi Thien was imprisoned or if he were alive or dead. 

 
    Nguyen Chi Thien was adopted as one of six “Prisoners of Conscience” by Amnesty International in 1986. The author’s sister, Hao-Thi Nguyen, began a campaign for her brother by sending copies of the photograph that is the cover of this book to overseas Vietnamese, especially in Europe. The image was published by Amnesty International in 1990, resulting in an international outcry to release the dissident poet and his subsequent release in October of 1991.  He spent 27 years in the Communist gulags in Vietnam. 

   
    The seven narratives in Hoa Lo/Hanoi Hilton Stories are based on true persons and events.  The characters are nicknamed according to their roles:  The author appears several times in the stories called the Old Man, although he was in reality known in the prison camps as Zen Master. In “The Moon and Waters of the Red River” the two inmates are called Death-Row and The Maiden.  They pledge their love in dialogue that is in charming contrast to the gritty realism of most of the stories.  Because they are in prison, in solitary cells locked in leg stocks, this must be their wedding.  They “transmigrate” to West Lake and are able to kiss each other on a park bench without the Red Flag Youths (a paramilitary police force) stopping them because “we are ghosts and they can’t see us.”  The banks of the Red River, where the author played as a teenager with his friends and where The Maiden was actually born, is sacred space. 

          
The revelation came from the author Nguyen Chi Thien in an interview onstage with the student who plays The Maiden.  Mai Trinh asked him to tell about the real person she portrayed.  Although the young man who was on death row for stealing from a state-owned pharmacy was executed, the author advised the young girl in the cell next to his to write a letter asking for clemency to Truong Chinh Dang Xuan Khu, (1907-1988)  Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1943-1956), Politboro member, Chairman of the National Assembly, and again Secretary-General at the time of the story (1980s).  The author explained to the Vietnamese community audience that Truong Chinh had never suspended a death sentence.  He helped her by editing the letter and her sentence was changed to life imprisonment.  Later she was released and is alive today in Hanoi, living an ordinary life as a housewife. 

    That this revelation about the author’s intervention is published in English is due to the intense impact the story has on Viet Si, Speaker for the International Movement for Religious Freedom and Democracy in Vietnam (affiliated with Vietnam Catholic Conscience) and a former Prisoner of Conscience after April 30th, 1975 in Vietnam. 

Hearing the story in the audience, and later as facilitator of the speech of Nguyen Chi Thien “Nhan Quyen Tai Viet Nam Hom Nay” in the second half of the program, Viet Si was moved to translate the interview into English for publication:  “According to Vietnamese culture and ethics, for so many generations, in past or forever in the future, Truong Chinh Dang Xuan Khu was the most disgusting and blood thirsty Communist in history.  During the "Land Reform" he even killed his own parents.  Years later, Ho Chi Minh admitted to the People his “Land Reform” and his mass killing had been a strategic mistake and asked People for forgiveness."

             Viet Si and Vietnamese people are not the only ones to criticize the late close associate of Ho Chi Minh.  In the obituary of Truong Chinh Dang Xuan Khu in the New York Times, Glenn Fowler wrote: “Mr. Chinh is credited by Communist historians with being ''the first builder and commander' of the revolution. But Western historical sources depict him as a ruthless leader whose attempt at agrarian reform in the mid-1950's led to large-scale dispossession of families and the killing of as many as 50,000 dissenters.”   (New York Times, October 2, 1988) 

As many as 200,000 North Vietnamese citizens, mainly small landholders and peasants, are estimated to have been killed by the Communist regime during Land Reform (1953-1956).  The present government admits to 179,000 deaths at the hands of the early revolutionary government. 

        The author was honored at the event by literary readings by Vietnamese American teachers in the public schools of San Francisco and Oakland who were students and VSA activists at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1980s.  Bui Van Phu and Nguyen Khoa Thai Anh held a public poetry reading and English translation of  “Echo From the Abyss” at UCB and Evergreen Valley College (San Jose) in May and June, 1981. 

“The Moon and Waters of the Red River” was translated by Nguyen Ngoc Bich from the original Vietnamese “Trang Nuoc Song Hong” in Hoa Lo (2001).

The Vietnamese American Authors Book Fair was organized by Jean Libby, proprietor of Internet Bookselling—Multicultural Perspectives.   Much appreciation is due PhuocDiem Truong, friend and business associate; Thiettranh Tran Pham at ViVo and her husband Dr. Yao, who did the bookselling; the Northern California Vietnamese American Community Center, Nguyen Ngoc Tien president, for the refreshments; Dr. Ngai Nguyen and Le Huu Phu, who contributed to the rental of the room at ViVo; Prof. Merylee Shelton of San Jose City College for trusting me to create a spoken word project for her Communications student; performers Bryan Do and Mai Trinh; speakers Nguyen-Khoa Thai Anh, Bui Van Phu, and Viet Si, Speaker of the International Movement for Freedom and Democracy in Vietnam.  Que Huong Radio is most warmly appreciated for announcement during and after the event and for sending callers to Internet Bookselling—Multicultural Perspectives (www.atozproductions.com) to buy the signed Hoa Lo/Hanoi Hilton Stories published by the Yale University Council on Southeast Asia Studies. 

I would like to thank most of all the dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien for sharing his internal being with the wider world.