“Is he the guy that gave you a ride earlier?” The daughter smiled wistfully. “Mom, he asked you that when I was just a little girl.”

  “True. You were a child back then but he was not. And ever since then he’s been asking me to let him marry you. He helps me a lot around the house. I’m too old to do much maintenance, after all.”

  “But I just got out of jail and I can’t dream of getting married.”

  Mrs. Ba sighed and stroked her daughter’s hair.

  “I’m just letting you know. It’s true, when we rely on good people, they may turn out to be wicked, and then we have to put up with them. I believe that Tuân is a good man, but I respect your decision.”

  The daughter looked at Mrs. Ba and nodded.

  A fat black cat sauntered into the kitchen and burrowed its head between her ankles. Mrs. Ba bent down, picked it up, and held it in her arms. She caressed the cat and brought it closer to her daughter, saying, “Black cat, your sister has come back to play with you.”

  The daughter petted the cat’s head and took it from her mother’s arms. She looked at Mrs. Ba and both of them smiled.

  Suddenly, they heard the sound of the Honda 67 at the gate and Tuân’s voice: “Mom, I’m coming to help you prepare lunch.”

  Acknowledgments

  In the pursuit of bringing the constellation of Vietnamese women literary voices to a broader audience, we stand on the shoulders of many whose unwavering support and collaboration have made this book possible. To each and every individual who has contributed to this literary endeavor, we wish to extend our deepest gratitude.

  Our heartfelt appreciation goes to the authors whose stories grace the pages of this anthology. Your trust in us and the generous granting of permissions to translate your narratives have been the anchor of this project. Your stories are not just words on paper; they are bridges connecting cultures, fostering understanding, and celebrating the diversity of human experiences.

  We are deeply indebted to Travis Snyder, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) for their invaluable insights, generous guidance, and unwavering commitment to the vision of this anthology. Your passion for literature and dedication to promoting cross-cultural understanding have been instrumental in shaping this collection.

  Special thanks to Paul Christiansen, Thúy Đinh, and Professor Huỳnh Như Phương for their aesthetic and scholarly contributions, which have added depth and context to the translated works. Your expertise has enriched the anthology and provided readers with a more profound understanding of the cultural nuances embedded in each story.

  The success of this project would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the entire Texas Tech University Press team and the anonymous reviewers. Your generosity, talent, and professionalism have transformed this book from a vision into reality.

  A special nod of appreciation to our copy editor Hubbard Savage, whose meticulous attention to detail has polished the anthology to perfection. Your dedication to linguistic precision has ensured that the essence of each story remains intact, while sparking scintillating leaps of the imagination. We would also like to acknowledge Christie Perlmutter for her conscientious proofreading and Hannah Gaskamp for her splendid design work.

  To our friends Trần Ngọc Cầm, Kiều Bích Hậu, Võ Thị Lệ Thủy, and Võ Thị Xuân Hà, who facilitated connections with the authors, your generosity and support have been invaluable.

  As always, we wish to thank our beloved family members. Your devotion, compassion, and endless support have inspired our creative endeavors and made this book a labor of love.

  Contributors

  An Thư was born in 1987 in Thanh Hóa, northern Việt Nam. Growing up in an indigent farming family, An Thư had a humble but peaceful childhood. After finishing her undergraduate studies in journalism, she took a job at the Thanh Hóa Television Station. Not a professional writer, An Thư considers literature a hobby. Thus, she writes sporadically when inspiration strikes or special circumstances demand it. She didn’t know she had a talent for short fiction until 2012, when she turned twenty-five and was tasked with writing a historical article that required research. The research inspired her to write her first story, which was published in a local journal of arts and literature. Within the following year, she penned ten more stories; they were published in Arts and Letters Magazine, Journal of Military Literature, and Tuổi Trẻ Sunday News. The ancient grave referred to in “The Red Cushion” is the tomb of a descendant of national hero Lê Lai, located in Hoằng Hải Commune, Hoằng Hóa District, Thanh Hóa Province. The body is buried in an upright position in this type of grave in accordance with a traditional belief intended to bless the dead’s subsequent generations.

  Dạ Ngân is among Việt Nam’s most famous authors writing about the American War and its aftermath. She was born as Lê Hồng Nga in 1952 in Hậu Giang, southern Việt Nam, and currently lives in Hồ Chí Minh City. Although she is technically retired, she remains an active contributor of articles and short stories to newspapers and literary magazines. Dạ Ngân is a prolific author, having published nine short-story collections, four novels, and six books of nonfiction. Her story “Above the Woman’s House” appears in The Other Side of Heaven (Curbstone, 1995), and “The House without a Man” in Love after War (Curbstone, 2003). The English version of her novel An Insignificant Family was published in the US in 2009. When she was a child, Dạ Ngân excelled at literature in school and found literary inspiration from the simple, natural beauty in her home garden. At the age of fourteen, she joined the Việt Minh, and when she was a soldier in the Trường Sơn Mountains, she read books by French, American, British, Chinese, and Russian authors. She started writing after the war ended, realizing how the war continues to cause severe damage to the Vietnamese people and their homeland. Thus, her fiction depicts the tragedy of the Vietnamese during and after the war. She asks herself: Can the Vietnamese, both at home and in exile, reconcile, and why does hatred still dominate the hearts and minds of many people? The story “White Pillows” depicts the tragedy of one family caused by the cruelty of war.

  Born in 1975 and raised in a mountainous area in northern Việt Nam, Đỗ Bích Thuý has emerged as a well-known writer of ethnic narratives in Việt Nam. Her first story was published in the Tiền Phong News in 1994. During her twenty-year career, Đỗ has published twenty books of short stories, novels, and essays. She writes compassionately about ethnic minority communities, traditional cultural values, and women and young girls in mountainous areas. The English translation of her short story “Sage on the Mountain” appears in Wild Mustard (Curbstone, 2017). Besides writing short fiction, Đỗ pens plays as well as movie and television screenplays. The short story “The Sound of Lip Lute Behind the Stone Fence” has been made into a celebrated film, Story of Pao, in Việt Nam; it won the Golden Kite Award at the National Film Festival in 2005.

  Born in 1972, Kiều Bích Hậu studied at the Hà Nội University of Foreign Languages, where she won a literary award for her short story “The Legendary Beauty.” She published her first short story, “That Haunted Hill,” in a newspaper for teenagers in 1984. Her works fall into the genre of magical realism and are often described as romantic, sarcastic, witty, and clever. Her style and themes have evolved over the years, due partly to her itinerant lifestyle and connections in international literary circles. Her stories span environments, regions, and borders, and the settings’ vastness inspires characters who collide comfortably with contemporary life’s challenges and landscapes. She has garnered several national literary awards and published fourteen collections of short stories, novels, and poetry. The English translation of her story “Waiting for the Ferry” appears in Wild Mustard (Curbstone, 2017), and her bilingual poetry collection, The Unknown, is published in Italy (IQdB, 2020).

  Nguyễn Hương Duyên is a full-time writer in Quảng Bình, a province in central Việt Nam. Born in 1977, she writes fiction that records the emotions, perspectives, and events she witnesses in her quotidian life. Nguyễn is interested in depicting female experiences and obstacles, as well as women’s ability to overcome life’s challenges. She believes that rural women in Việt Nam rarely have the opportunity to educate themselves about individualistic advancement and gender equality. They generally live for their husbands rather than for themselves and accept prescribed gender roles while blindly complying with social expectations. In response, her stories aim to change the disadvantaged groups’ perspectives and allow them to discover their self-worth.

  Nguyễn Thị Châu Giang is nationally and internationally known as an oil painter. Born in 1975 in Hà Nội, she moved to Hồ Chí Minh City with her family when she was eight years old. She graduated from the Hồ Chí Minh University of Fine Arts, and her paintings have been exhibited in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Prior to 2001, she was a prolific writer and contributed short stories to numerous magazines and newspapers in Việt Nam, and some of her stories have been translated into English and French. Since 2001, she has devoted her time entirely to painting. Her story “Late Moon” was written while she was a sophomore in college, and has been made into a short film. Nguyễn said that she, an introvert, finds it difficult to share her emotions vocally with others. Thus, she wrote fiction to express her innermost feelings. In both her fiction and painting, she is interested in the human psychological conflicts that trouble today’s society, especially the experience of women across generations. “Late Moon” and most of her art exhibitions honor the Vietnamese women around her. Regardless of their backgrounds, personalities, physical appearances, accomplishments, or failures, they are beautiful flowers that emit sweet fragrances.

  Born in 1984 in the coastal city Phan Rang, Nguyễn Thị Kim Hòa grew up in a family of grape farmers. She graduated from the College of Foreign Trade and is currently working as a “village teacher,” teaching elementary and middle school English to students at her home. She started writing in 2019, and her first story was published in the popular student magazine Áo Trắng. Nguyễn’s audience is primarily women and children. Her writing for children is praised for its themes of innocence and imagination, while her adult fiction expresses sophisticated and fierce perspectives. She was awarded two First Prizes in two prestigious national literary contests. Her short story “The Straw Prince,” awarded First Prize in a 2013–2015 contest hosted by the Embassy of Denmark and Junior Press, has been translated into English. “The Smoke Cloud” is one of three award-winning stories set in her hometown, Phan Rang. The story chronicles a woman drifting through the nation’s war-torn years. Presently, the author is exploring the fates of women in history, while continuing to create works involving children.

  One of the most celebrated and prolific authors in Việt Nam, Nguyễn Ngọc Tư was born in 1976 in Cà Mau, Việt Nam’s southernmost province. Possessing a uniquely passionate writing style, Nguyễn describes her southern region with a mellow but fierce voice. She pays attention to the turbulent and miserable lives of people whose hearts are filled with love for their homeland. Her collection of short stories The Endless Field has been highly lauded, winning several awards before being made into a film. Nguyễn publishes prodigiously, and her works have been translated into Korean, English, Swedish, and German. In the United States, her story “The End of a Season of Beauty” is anthologized in Love after War (Curbstone 2003), and “Birds in Formation” in Other Moons (Columbia UP, 2020). In “The Island,” she imagines the solitary, windy Trống (or Emptiness) Island where a blind man named Sáng (which ironically translates to “Light”) lives a challenged life. Even without vision to observe storms or sunshine, he can see what seethes beneath the still surface of ocean and sky, and all sailors thus rely on his magical intuition. Yet, Sáng can never decipher the tempest in his soul as he meets “Gift”—a prostitute sent to him as a reward for his weather forecast, which had saved a person’s life.

  Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai was born in 1973 in northern Việt Nam and moved to the Mekong Delta at the age of six. She completed her undergraduate studies in Australia and later earned a PhD in creative writing at Lancaster University. She is the author of the best-selling English-language novel The Mountains Sing, recipient of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship for a work of exceptional quality and for its contribution to peace and reconciliation. The novel received the Bookbrowse Best Debut Award of 2020 and was named a best book of 2020 by more than ten media establishments, including NPR Book Concierge. Most recently, her second English novel, Dust Child, came out in 2023. Her eight books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in Vietnamese have received some of the top literary awards of Việt Nam. “Spring Buds” is the first short story she ever wrote.

  Niê Thanh Mai was born in 1980 in the Central Highlands province of Đắk Lắk. She belongs to the Êđê ethnic minority, and her culture and homeland feature prominently in her works. “The Bitter Honey” was published in the Arts and Letters Newspaper in 2020, and it became popular when posted on the Sài Gòn Literature website. Niê’s writing focuses on the resilience and bravery of Êđê women in spite of significant cultural and economic hardships. She has published three collections of short stories: A Stream of the Woods, Going to the Other Side of the Mountain, and Tomorrow Is Shining. The English translation of her short story “In the White Rain” is included in Wild Mustard (Curbstone, 2017).

  Phạm Thị Ngọc Liên, born in 1952 in Hà Nội, has published four books of poetry and four short-story collections. She has won many literary prizes; her stories and articles often appear in anthologies of contemporary Vietnamese literature, literary magazines, and newspapers in Việt Nam. The female protagonists in her short-story collection Mysterious Women are often unfortunate individuals with failed marriages. They love their men zealously and make sacrifices so that their husbands can be happy. The women, however, are not meek and submissive. Rather, they are dominant and often jealous. Their male lovers take advantage of their dedication to make them suffer emotionally. Pham believes that, in any dysfunctional relationship or marriage, women bear more severe consequences, and women tend to prioritize their family’s happiness above everything else.

  Phạm Thị Phong Điệp published her first story when she was only twelve years old and won her first literary award at age fifteen. Born in 1976 in Nam Định, she began writing when still in grade school, but her family discouraged her from writing, because they imagined a harrowing journey ahead. Yet, she demonstrated her talent and justified her choice via numerous accolades. She has published across various genres, including novels, short stories, and essays. Phạm has earned several prestigious literary awards, such as the Second Prize (without a First Prize awarded) in a 1996–1997 literary contest for the story “Ghost Cat,” which has been translated into English and anthologized in Wild Mustard (Curbstone, 2017), and “Mother and Son” was named the best short story about postwar women in a literary contest organized by Journal of Military Literature in 2015. She has an unrivaled writing style that is terse, original, and pithy, but also rich with suppressed emotions. She is considered a feminist writer as exemplified by her acclaimed novels Blogger and Station of Memories.

  Tịnh Bảo is a young, emerging author. She was born in 1983, in Kiên Giang, southern Việt Nam, and works as a full-time writer and a scriptwriter in Hồ Chí Minh City. She started her writing career rather late although her mother, an elementary school teacher, introduced her to literature at a very young age. Her fiction frequently depicts individuals trapped in unfortunate situations, surrounded by social prejudices, and vices, but it tends to have optimistic endings with attempts at healing broken relationships or bridging the gaps between social classes. “Under the Blooming Silk Cotton Tree” won Fourth Prize in the 2019 fiction contest “The Other Half of the World” in Việt Nam.

  Tống Ngọc Hân is best known for her fiction focusing on ethnic minority communities living in northwest Việt Nam. She was born in 1976 in the northern province of Phú Thọ, where she runs a small business today. Việt Nam has fifty-four ethnic groups, but the majority of the stories in this anthology are written by Việt (Kinh) people, a group that accounts for 87 percent of the total population. Việt Nam’s ethnic minority groups typically reside in remote mountainous areas, and each has its own unique culture, customs, traditions, and spiritual practices. Tống’s expertise lies in her close observations of the ethnic groups’ daily lives and vernacular language, and her writing records their cultural practices and histories. Women belonging to these ethnic groups are far less privileged than their Kinh counterparts, and they are often victims of antiquated customs that deprive them of their freedoms, voices, and agency. Tống writes about them with the hope that these ethnic women will be able to pursue their happiness free of imposed constraints. In her fiction, she frequently depicts how the underprivileged minority women are often illiterate and get married at a very young age. Many are victims of domestic violence, broken marriages, human trafficking, and poverty. Her story “Raindrops on His Shoulders” exposes the outdated cultural practices of the Dao and Hmong ethnic groups, and it emphasizes the need of education to foster progressive thinking and economic development.

  Trầm Hương is the pseudonym of Bùi Thị Thuỷ. Born in 1963 and growing up in Bến Tre, she worked in the Southern Women Museum for thirty years and is currently working at the Việt Nam Writers’ Association in Hồ Chí Minh City. A poet, novelist, and screenwriter, she is a prolific and resilient writer. She entered the literary world only after working as an agricultural engineer. Her first story, which depicts the contradictory lives of women before and after the American War, has won a top award for short fiction. Some of her widely read works are The Unlit Town, The Woman in Violet Autumn, The Beauty of Tây Đô, Mother, The Fairy Tales for My Kids, and The Sleepless Night in Sài Gòn. Her works often embrace women who suffer misfortunes and disconsolate lives while enduring brutalities during war and in peace, but who still thrive thanks to their strengths and virtues. A few short stories she wrote have been translated into French and Japanese. The Vietnamese original of “The Haunted Garden” was printed in the collection of short stories titled The Private Dreams in 1998.