Tuan Phan: The Trouble with Memory
Understanding Oneself and Understanding the World Around You
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In this episode of the Talking Writing podcast, TW Managing Editor Neva Talladen interviews Tuan Phan. Tuan is the author of Remembering Water: A Memoir of Departure and Return, a memoir about his childhood departure from and eventual return to Vietnam.
Tuan Phan, now a literature teacher and writer living in Saigon, reflects on the city and how much it’s changed from the place he remembers from childhood.
His book, Remembering Water: A Memoir of Departure and Return, details his family’s escape, his experiences of returning, the family members with whom he’s reconnected, and the people he’s met and conversed with on his return. It won the 2018 Panther Creek Nonfiction Book Award and was published by Hidden River Press.
When 8-year-old Tuan escaped Vietnam on a boat with his family, his parents told him he was just taking a different route to visit his grandfather in the Mekong Delta. Twenty-one years after the departure, he returned to a country that was very much altered. Remembering Water is a memoir of that departure as well as his family’s subsequent returns. The book alternates between Tuấn’s childhood memories, his year spent in refugee camps, and his reflections on his current life in Saigon.
Tuan was able to write this memoir after he decided to take a year off to focus on his craft. After being rejected by countless literary agents, he decided to enter Remembering Water into various literary competitions and won the Panther Creek Book Award in nonfiction.
Tuan states that his book is about location, place, home, and identity. The memoir touches on the fact that many people who were exiled from Vietnam return to their hometowns only to find that it has changed drastically. And while the change is modern and convenient, it is not the home they remember. So many Vietnamese people do not return to Vietnam and instead opt to stay where they lived out their exile, including in the United States.
Within this interview, Tuan states that writing is his way of understanding himself and understanding the world around him. By writing Remembering Water, he can solidify his version of events as well as his family’s stories as the people who lived them. The title has a double meaning in Vietnamese: It means “remembering water,” literally, as well as “remembering one’s country.”
Check out this week’s episode, “Tuan Phan: The Trouble with Memory” to hear more about how he wrote his memoir and his thoughts on the writing process.
Check out our Bookshop page to purchase Remembering Water: A Memoir of Departure and Return by Tuan Phan.
Check out “From Saigon to Bataan to Ohio,” an essay by Tuan Phan and the winner of the 2018 Talking Writing Prize for Personal Essay.