Tayari's Blog: Monique Truong Remembers Her Father

Posted by TayariJones on June 18, 2006 09:02 PM
Filed under Bookshelf

My friend, Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt, has written a lovely remembrance of her father in today's NYT. (The title of the essay, imposed by the editors, is a little off-putting. Such headline-grabbing silliness seems to try and make a political cliche of a daughter's moving-- and complicated-- elegy for her father.) Here's an excerpt:

He could speak Vietnamese, but he could not write it. Not a business letter. Not a love letter.
My father was instead fluent in French and English, the languages that raised him. Along with his flat nose and his hot temper, I as an adult would share with him the frustration of having to reach for Vietnamese words, like an itch at the middle of our backs.

Click here to read the entire essay.

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