NEWS • EXCERPTS • INTERVIEWS
CURBSTONE
INK .
Spring '05
A Conversation with
Jon An dersen
by Amelia South
YOU MUST
you must have a hope
that will let you stomp and sing
at any cold dawn.
You must not wait
to love the student who loves you
and would like to kill you.
You must read the story again
and again to the child
who receives you with a bovine
stare.
You must get up
every day to punch in
not dreaming on transcendence,
not desiring new heroes or gods,
not looking the other way,
but looking for the other way
and ready to talk to everyone on
the line.
You must not wait
for official approval
nor general consensus
to rage. You must
come again to kneel
in shiny, rock-strewn soil
not to pray, but to plant.
Yes, even now
as ice caps melt and black top
goes soft in the sun
you must prepare for the harvest.
—Jon Andersen
From Stomp and Sing
ISBN 1-931896-15-1 / $ 12.95
AS: Are you excited about publishing
your first book? How does it feel?
JA: I am thrilled to have my first full-
length collection being published, and
I am so honored that it will be a
Curbstone book—a press that has been
inspirational and influential in my
development as a writer. The process of
putting Stomp and Sing together was a
wonderful learning experience. A stack
of poems doesn't make a book. I saw
how poems can resonate so very
differently depending on where they sit
in relation to other poems. Many new
poems demanded to be written and
many old poems demanded to be
rewritten in order to make the whole. I
really wanted the collection to have
some range in terms of technique and
content. It was both difficult and fun
to make the whole thing cohere, and to
make sure that I wasn't just hitting the
same note all the time. I was fortunate
to have the help of talented and wise
readers—especially Curbstone editor
Sandy Taylor and the members of my
writers' group.
AS: You work as an English teacher at
E.O. Smith High School. Are you ever
inspired to write by things that happen
at your school, or with your students?
JA: I am inspired by my students,
period—not just as a writer, but as a
person. They always have something to
teach me, too. Many of the poems in
the third section of the book deal with
teaching and school. It's important to
remember that the students, and even
An Interview with
Wayne Karlin on the
Occasion of the
Publication of War
Movies
by Randy Fertel
RANDY: In the early 80s, the poet and
Vietnam War veteran Basil Paquet
handed me your "Search and Destroy"
from Free Fire Zone , the anthology of
short fiction that you helped edit, and
said, "Here is the best story to come out
of the war. " I'm sure you'll agree it has
plenty of rivals now, lots of great stuff
from O'Brien and Heinemann and so
many others. But that story has held up
pretty well, don't you think? How does
it anticipate things you have been
doing in your fiction ever since? I'm
thinking first about your literary
methods.
WAYNE: That story is one of the first I
ever wrote, just months after I got back
from Viet Nam. I suppose the way it
anticipates the directions of much of
my subsequent work is that it grew
from a way of seeing the world that I
think most writers cultivate, that is,
observing and keeping moments that
somehow seem significant, whether in
a journal or in some niche in the mind,
and then re-creating them, or the truth
of them (which can be different than
the fact of them) in the writing. By
significant I mean images or moments
that can stand for a whole or a pattern,
that are resonant. In the case of that
story, which was largely based on
fact—truth as well as what O'Brien
calls "story-truth"—I was part of a
group of Marines that hunted down
(Cont. on pg. 4)
(cont. on pg. 3)
2
From the Publishers' Desk
Newsletter Editor: Jantje Tielken
Contributing Editors: Curbstone staff
Curbstone Press is an incorporated,
501(c)(3)nonprofit arts and education
organization, founded in 1975.
Curbstone Staff:
Co-Directors: Judith Ayer Doyle
& Alexander Taylor
Promotion & e-Communication:
Robert M. Smith II
Publicity & Marketing:
Jantje Tielken
Current Interns: Kathryn Cabana, Melissa
Jacobson, Amelia South
Community Volunteers: Doug Anderson,
Emily Belanger, Janet Dauphin, Anna Kelly,
Lourdes Montalvo, Dagmar Noll, Juan
Pérez, Maria Proser, Matthew Proser, Eliana
Rojas.
Board of Directors:
Lisa Adams, Judith Doyle, George Gibson,
Felicity Harley, John Hudson, Demetria
Martínez, Victoria Nimirowski, David
Parker, Lisa Sánchez González, Blanca
Silvestrini, Suzanne Staubach, Alexander
Taylor, Paul Von Drasek, Charles A.
Wachtel.
Editorial Advisory Board:
Rachel Belash, Jane Blanshard, Jim
Coleman, Robert Con Davis-Undiano,
Anthony Deaton, Scott DeShong, Martín
Espada, Joe Esser, Jaíme Gómez, Gaston
Hernández, Nick Hill, Chris King, Demetria
Martínez, Marcia McGowan, Matías
Miñambres, Paul Pines, Maria Proser,
Matthew Proser, Compton Rees, Barbara
Rosen, Jim Russell, Lisa Sánchez González.
Editors for Voices From Vietnam Series:
Wayne Karlin, Ho Anh Thai, Le Minh Khue
Editors for Poets from Vietnam Series:
Nguyen Ba Chung, Kevin Bowen
Business and Editorial Office:
321 Jackson St., Willimantic, CT 06226
(860) 423-5110 fax: (860) 423-9242
e-mail: info@curbstone.org
http://www.curbstone.org
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Toll-Free Ordering (800) 283-3572
MISSION AT THE HELM:
Curbstone Press, a 501(c)(3) arts and education organization, was founded in
1975 in Willimantic, Connecticut. Throughout its history, the Press's Board and
Co-Directors have nurtured Curbstone's focus on creative literature that invites
readers to examine social issues, encourages a deeper understanding between
cultures, and reflects a commitment to promoting human rights. Curbstone's
mission weaves together two interdependent programs: 1) publishing creative
literature that illuminates the issues of our time, and 2) bringing writers into U.S.
communities to promote literacy, knowledge about many cultures, respect for
human rights, and appreciation of good literature, among people of all ages.
Curbstone INK.
We find it hard to believe that thirty years have gone by since Curbstone was founded.
But it's true. On Sunday, September 25th, Curbstone's 30th Anniversary Benefit will
be held at Eastern Connecticut State University from noon to five with some very
special honored guests. We hope those of you in our area, or who can be in our area,
will join us for this event. You'll be hearing more about it soon.
In spite of the ongoing recession, Curbstone published 10 books in 2004, five of
them debut books, thus continuing our tradition of helping to launch new writers.
One of these debut books—Curbstone's 2004 Miguel Mármol Prize Winner—Mary
Helen Lagasse's The Fifth Sun , was also recently awarded the Rudolfo and Patricia
Anaya Premio Aztlán Literary Award at the University of New Mexico.
Curbstone continued its work in the public schools and cultural centers, and
ran a summer reading series in the Julia de Burgos Park in Willimantic. Our middle
and high school students and teachers are as excited as ever about meeting and
discussing poetry and fiction with such nationally known authors as Naomi Ayala,
devorah major, and Marnie Mueller. The Spanish-dominant students are especially
thrilled to be able to discuss an author's work in their native language.
In this newsletter, you will find information about our spring books. We also
have some exciting books coming out in the fall and winter, including a novel in
verse by Ana Castillo, a collection of new and selected poetry by Luis J. Rodríguez, a
stunning debut novel by James Janko, and a novel by the noted Mexican author,
Margo Glantz.
All in all, 2004 was a difficult year economically since the recession reduced both
book sales and donations. Many economists observe the present year with a great
deal of uncertainty, and we cannot count on increased sales to maintain full
momentum, so your donations are more important than ever to us in producing
books and programs that promote literacy, intercultural understanding and human
rights. To contribute to books and programs that make a difference, please consider
donating now any amount appropriate to your budget.
With many thanks for your continued readership and support,
Judith A. Doyle & Alexander Taylor,
Co-Directors Curbstone Press
3
Wayne Karlin (continued)
and brutally killed a rat and its babies: we called the rats
"gooks. " When I got home and tried to write about the war,
certain images stayed in my mind. The frustration and fear
that led to that moment seemed to me to be allegorical, to
stand for some truth about the war itself; in recreating it, I
tried to do what Conrad suggested writers should do—above
all, to make readers see. There was a sense I—and many
others— had coming back from the war that our experience
of it was far removed from the more or less comfortable
perception of it most of the country seemed to have. We were
angry about that. We wanted to say, "Don't turn away; look at
what's been done to us; look what we've done in your name, in
your place, with the blessing of your willful ignorance. "
Though we would have said it much more shortly and
succinctly.
RANDY: I'm also thinking thematically. "Search and Destroy"
anticipates the atrocity theme, men who cross a moral line they
shouldn't have. Much in your work, fiction and nonfiction
both, seems to be about men who do things they regret doing
even as they do it, no?
WAYNE: I mentioned Conrad above, and you and I have
spoken before about how his writing, and the concept of
dualism, has been an influence on my writing. One of my
favorite stories is "The Secret Sharer, " in which a young sea
captain, comforting himself on the rationality and order of his
chosen profession, is confronted by a fugitive who could be his
double—same background, physique, age, profession, etc.—
and who has murdered someone in a fit of rage. Instead of
arresting the man, the captain hides him away: he cannot
admit his similarity to the murderer; he refuses to see him as
the mirror he is. This always has struck me not only as a truism
about human nature (which everybody pretty much is aware
of), but as a particular truism about America that the Viet Nam
war clarified: we see ourselves as basically incapable of evil;
our intentions are always pure and even if we profit in the long
run from our policies, our motivations still must be altruistic.
The refusal to see that one's self—or one's country—contains
the potential to do great harm—is a form of denial that is very
dangerous because until and unless that potential is
acknowledged and described, it can't be controlled or
modified. So in looking back at my work, I see the need to look
at, define, name that potential as one of the obligations my
background in the war and whatever talent with words and
stories I've been blessed with, calls me to. What I hope, though,
is that my work is truly dualistic—that I don't just show the
potential for monstrous behavior, but also the possibility of
resisting it, changing it. As Phil Caputo said, in his afterward
of A Rumor of War, "It is the role of the battle singers to keep
the tribe human by providing it with models of virtuous
behavior—heroes
who reflected the
tribe's loftiest
aspirations—and
with examples of
impious behavior
that reflected its
worst failings. "
RANDY: That's a
great quote. So, you
share with Caputo
this impulse to
portray both the
worst and the best
in us. But where he
began his career
with a combat memoir, you've shown some resistance to direct
portrayal of your combat experience. We saw some in Rumors
and Stones, and now more in War Movies . Why the lag?
WAYNE: For one thing, I felt that other writers had depicted
the combat experience itself thoroughly and well; I wasn't that
interested in adding to that body, nor did I feel on some levels
that I had the right to do so. My combat experience was
limited, compared to that of infantrymen like Caputo,
O'Brien, Heinemann. I mean that in the sense also that I didn't
feel able through a strict recounting of my personal experience
to tell the stories that would illuminate some truths about the
war…and those aspects of the human condition that brought
us to it, and that were tested by it. Beyond that, I was more
interested from the beginning in exploring the aftermath of
war, and, in particular, in using fiction to enter into the
consciousness of those we had left out of our narrative—the
Vietnamese. Their stories were largely excluded from the great
body of literature that was coming out of the war, just as their
story was excluded from our view of the war itself—an absence
that was indeed one of the causes of that conflict. War—in
particular the war my consciousness was born from—is the
ultimate failure of imagination, the ultimate failure to be able
to see the world as others see it (which is the real meaning of
dehumanization). It seems that the most destructive forms of
human conflict, between individuals, as well as between
nations, groups, and so on, usually stems from that same
failure of empathy, and it is only through fiction that we can
ever attempt to see the world as others see it. By the way, I
mentioned that I tried to write through the viewpoints of
Vietnamese characters because we started talking about the
war, but as you know I've been interested in trying to tell
stories through other excluded voices as well, in other books—
a Palestinian and an Israeli consciousness in The Extras, the
(cont. on pg. 4)
4
poems are fictional, as are many of the other characters who
appear in the book. But to borrow a phrase from Tim O'Brien,
they are, I hope, "emotionally true. " For example, I wrote the
poem "Soldier" in part to help me deal with the complex
feelings, including fear, I had about former students joining the
military. This year, that fear was realized when a wonderful
young man named Robert Hoyt died in Iraq. The fictional
student "Michael" in that poem is certainly not Rob or any other
student I've had, and yet, in a way, Michael is all of these young
men.
AS: How have the events in your life impacted your writing
career?
JA: I'm not sure about "career, " but there have been many factors
in my life that have shaped my writing. First, I owe a lot to my
parents. In word and deed they
taught my brother and me the value
of being critical thinkers and doers,
to be antiracist and open. Indirectly,
they also shaped my world view early
on because they worked so hard and
still struggled to make ends meet for
so many years that I realized that
something wasn't quite true about
the classic Horatio Alger American
Dream. In fact, coming of age in The Decade of Greed, I began
to feel that almost the reverse of the dream was true—that the
honesty, intelligence, and real "family values" of my parents were
impediments to financial success, or even to security. So, the
concept of justice and the complexity of "ordinary" lives
naturally informs what I end up writing. I was also enchanted
by the landscape of my childhood—we lived in an old
farmhouse where my mother's father had grown up, and the
woods and orchards surrounding the place sang to me, as did
the farmland and wilderness of some of the jobs I had during
my early 20s. Another big influential time in my life was my
education at UConn, where I had great teachers like James
Scully and Joan Joffe Hall, who were also great writers. The most
significant influcences now are my wife and family, and
teaching. I'm actually returning to the classroom this year after
being an at-home, full-time father for two years. My wife, who
also teaches English at E.O. Smith High, was home for two years,
first on sabbatical and then on child rearing leave while I taught,
and then she went back to work while I stayed home. Now we're
both back full time, and actually, believe it or not, share a
classroom. My stepson thinks we should film this and turn it
into a reality TV show called "Double Shift. " We have been very
fortunate, and I wish every father and mother could have the
experience of being at home with their kids for an extended
period of time—especially in those early years.
Jon Andersen interview (continued)
Wayne Karlin (continued)
Wesorts in The Wished-for Country, and more.
Anyway, I didn't write the two memoirs until life itself
presented me with some situations that in themselves seemed
instrumentalities for examining the nature of whatever it was
I was trying to get to in my work—going to Poland, meeting
the Vietnamese writers, going to work on a war movie in Viet
Nam. But you'll notice that in both I still use fiction in those
works when it's necessary to get at some real truths.
RANDY: So on the one hand you are looking for your niche,
something that has not been done yet—combat narrative
had been "done"—and on the other you are looking for
opportunities to put on paper your particular truths, the
truths you draw out of your experience. Am I getting that
right? And your particular niche seems at bottom to be giving
voice to the voiceless, whether it is, in "Search and Destroy, "
the inarticulate soldiers fighting off a rat infestation with a
vehemence they don't understand, or Kiet, the teenage
runaway Viet Kieu, in Prisoners ?
WAYNE: It's not just that I was looking for a niche because
something hasn't been done yet, but because the fact that it
hasn't, or at least is not part of most mainstream narratives,
seems to reflect exactly the wounds in the world that need
attention drawn to them. You were the first one to draw my
attention to Joseph Campbell's description of the "Journey
of the Hero" archetype: the hero leaves a place of seeming
safety that needs renewal, descends into dark realms peopled
by demons where he/she receives a wound; the wound
becomes a source of wisdom, a boon that can be brought
back to the community to help provide what was missing or
lacking in that community. That description fits what
Caputo said about the battle-singer—it seems to me a
description that defines what the writer should be, should
strive to be. I mean, at bottom I write because I think it's
something I do well—I enjoy it; I'm compelled to do it—and
I've written about the Viet Nam-American War because my
life handed me that subject. But I've always been haunted by
the fact that whatever success I have in that writing—from
the euphoria of creation to the more prosaic joys of whatever
money and reputation come to me—is built on a vast pile of
corpses. Real bodies. Real lives. The thing is, I'm as vain as
anyone; I want all that stuff. The only thing that keeps me
from being a vulture, then, is to understand and act on my
responsibility to the dead, to be as true as I can in my art, and
to always remain conscious of my art's purpose, to find new
ways of getting people to pay attention. It is the kind of duty
to writing Primo Levi called "an atrocious privilege. "
RANDY: What you say sends me to the story about the man,
James Childers, whom you describe in War Movies as dying
(cont. on pg. 8)
5
Recommended from Other Presses
What the Critics are Saying
Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker (Knopf) • Owen
Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read. Chasing the Revolutions of
Nicolaus Copernicus (Walker & Company) • Larry Heinemann,
Black Virgin Mountain. A Return to Vietnam (Doubleday) •
Maggie Jaffe and Esther Rodriquez (editors), Roque Dalton.
Redux (Cedar Hill Books) • Catherine Leroy (editor), Under
Fire: Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam (Random
House) • M.G. Lord, Astro Turf. The Private Life of Rocket
Science (Walker & Company) • Dennis Maloney (ed.), With
Eyes and Soul. Images of Cuba. Poems by Nancy Morejón (White
Pine Press) • Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness (Harcourt)
• Mariana Romo-Carmona, Living at Night (Spinsters Ink) •
Joan Seliger Sidney, Body of Diminishing Motion (CavanKerry
Press) • Amy Stolls, Palms to the Ground (Farrar Straus Giroux)
• Richard Wilbur, Collected Poems 1943-2004 (Harcourt).
Of Forgotten Times by Marisela Rizik
"The narrative is well developed, with vivid and memorable
characters, on an island rich in religious and mythic traditions
that are skillfully captured. The novel is further enriched by
the excellent portrayal of the social, cultural, and political life
of the Caribbean. Isabel Brown's translation is excellent. "
— MultiCultural Review
THE FIFTH SUN by Mary Helen Lagasse
"Lagasse's writing is vibrant with a mélange of New Orleans
and Mexican zest.... The Fifth Sun illuminates in piquant,
visceral terms, the struggle of humankind to achieve spiritual
growth amid stultifying conditions"— Los Angeles Times
"Lagasse not only tells an epic story of courage and the
ongoing struggle to achieve spiritual wholeness, she has the
epic storyteller's sense of pace and understands the conflict
between the human will and the fates. "
— New Orleans Times-Picayune
HORSE THIEF AND OTHER STORIES by Anna Balint
"The most vividly drawn characters are the succession of
Native American women living around Seattle, who face a
combination of alcoholism, bad luck, and poor choices that
make for a heart-wrenching read. "— Library Journal
"Many of the 13 stories are raw excerpts of heart-wrenching
situations...families on the brink of meltdown, families that
are easily written off as hopeless, yet a resonating hope and
understanding prevails. "— Seattle Times
THE TRAIL WE LEAVE by Rubén Palma
"Palma's recognition of the immigration trail between South
America and Scandinavia makes The Trail We Leave a
significant contribution to the literature of exile. "— Rain Taxi
"Palma catches sensations that will hit home with anyone who
ever made a move they thought would be temporary, only to
find it harbored the shape of their life. It is a real treat to have
this book available in English. "— Seattle Times
THE CEMETERY OF CHUA VILLAGE AND OTHER STORIES by Doan Le
"Doan Le's gorgeous stories, socially astute and suffused with
a warm humanity, are great news from Vietnan...Ending the
story 'the Venus of Chua Village, ' Doan Le states her goal, and
the goal of every writer—'to record forever the truth that
beauty such as this passed through our world. ' In the exquisite
stories of The Cemetery of Chua Village , she's done nothing
less. "— St. Petersburg Times
Lagasse Awarded Premio Aztlán
On Thursday, March 24, 2005, Mary Helen Lagasse received
the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Premio Aztlán Award for her
novel, The Fifth Sun , at the Zimmerman Library, University of
New Mexico, Albuquerque. The Premio Atzlán is a national
literary prize established to encourage and reward emerging
Chicana and Chicano authors. The prize includes an award of
$1000. After the award ceremony, Mary Helen gave a public
lecture, "Breaking Barrio Images: A voice from the Deep
South. " Kudos to Patricia and Rudolfo Anaya, who give back
so generously to the community.
Curbstone Board Member Demetria Martínez, Mary Helen
Lagasse, and Rudolfo Anaya at the Premio Aztlán Award
Ceremony, NM, March 24, 2005.
6
Curbstone Author Events
Rubén Palma, Luis Cotto, and Co-Directors Alexander Taylor
and Judith Doyle at La Paloma Sabanera Coffeehouse and
Bookstore Hartford, CT, November 2004.
E. Ethelbert Miller in discussion with a student at
Windham High School, Willimantic, CT, March 2005.
Photo: Gabrielle Zane.
Anna Balint with the Thread City Poets Writers' Group in
Willimantic, CT, April 2005
In its community outreach programs, Curbstone provides writers' workshops to schools and a wide range of community
sites, and donates over 2,000 books a year to these programs in an effort to increase literacy and encourage discussion of
other cultures and the social climates the literature presents. In 2004, Curbstone authors participated in 193 live events
nationwide and engaged in 16 TV or radio appearances in venues in Houston, New York City, New Orleans, and Seattle, not
counting rebroadcasts, which happen frequently. In our home area, authors appear consistently on WILI, WHUS, and
Charter Cable TV.
Naomi Ayala at a reading at the
Provisions Library, Washington, D.C,
September 2004.
Jon Andersen after the book launch of Stomp and Sing at the
Windham Arts Center & Gallery, Willimantic, CT, April 2005.
Photo: Janet Dauphin
7
Curbstone's Living Literature program brought Mary Helen
Lagasse to Windham High School for a three-day visit in early
February. Lagasse attended several classes in a number of
disciplines, reading from her work, discussing her research,
and providing creative writing workshops. In discussing her
current work-in-progress, Lagasse offered U.S. History
students an insight into the Irish immigrant experience in New
Orleans in the latter part of the nineteenth century. History
teacher James Clark commented, "Ms. Lagasse's visit
contributed to my objectives for my classes by presenting
valuable historical information and source materials not
found in the standard United States history textbooks. " Karen
Lapuk, who teaches bilingual/ESL students, observed that her
young female students related to Lagasse as a Latina, a woman,
and a writer. Her personal story, related in Spanish,
empowered the young students to tell their own stories
through writing in English. Lagasse also read from The Fifth
Sun in some classes, explaining a wide range of literary
elements that writers employ in creating a work of fiction.
Mary Helen Lagasse's visit set the stage for several upcoming
author visits that will enrich the educational experience of
local students.
—Tom Barry, Chairman English Department,
Windham High School, Willimantic, CT
Lagasse's High School Visit
Please visit our website regularly for our Bargain of the
Month, Events, and other News:
http://www.curbstone.org
We're sorry to report that there was no winner for the 2006
Mármol Prize. We did find, however, several manuscripts,
although not quite ready, that were extremely interesting, and
we will be working with the authors on revision with an eye to
publication later.
The Mármol Prize is awarded for an original, unpublished first
book of fiction in English by a Latina/o writer that reflects a
respect for intercultural understanding and fosters an
appreciation for human rights and civil liberties. Deadline for
submission for the 2007 prize is December 15, 2005. The
winner receives $1,000 advance against royalties and
publication by Curbstone Press. The manuscript may be either
a novel or a collection of short stories. One entry per person.
Entry fee: $15.00. Manuscripts must be typed, double spaced,
and include contact information on the title page and a brief
letter with a short biography, certifying that the manuscript is
available for publication. For complete guidelines, send a self-
addressed, stamped envelope to Mármol Prize, Curbstone
Press, 321 Jackson Street, Willimantic, CT 06226, or go to
www.curbstone.org .
Previous winners of the prize are:
Lorraine López, Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (2002)
Carla Trujillo, What Night Brings (2003)
Mary Helen Lagasse, The Fifth Sun (2004)
Sylvia Tor ti, The Scorpion's Tail (2005)
As noted in this and previous newsletters, all the Miguel
Mármol Prize winners have garnered other national awards
and been reviewed widely in the national media.
We hope you will help us spread the word about this
publishing opportunity.
No Mármol Prize Winner
2005 winner of the
Mármol Prize, The
Scorpion's Tail by
Sylvia Torti. ISBN
1-931896-17-8, $15.00,
260PP.
Available in June 2005
8
in your place when your door-gunner duties happened to get
switched. It also brings to mind the moving passage in one of
your Out-takes when a character, clearly a surrogate for you,
returns from a helicopter mission extracting the wounded and
dead and sees, you write, "two things that he carries with him
the rest of his life. " One is fellow Marines gawking at and
photographing the dead bodies and the other is the sight of 50
dead bodies "their faces all covered with the same poncho he
wears, and all of them are wearing his boots. "
WAYNE: That connection clarifies something for me—the
dichotomy of those two images. One is the way people separate
themselves from themselves: taking a photograph of the dead
is like an act of magic, of control: it's saying this is not me; I've
conquered this. The other image is, of course, the opposite; it's
the understanding that this could be me; this is me. It's what
the writing should do.
RANDY: Well, I don't know if this is the same issue, but what I
was going to ask next might be related to what you just said.
I'm interested that you call these stories from the war "outtakes"
which you define in an epigraph as "a scene not included
in the shown version. " So, as I first pointed out, you've avoided
these personal "combat" stories for a long time; they have been
left on the cutting-room floor until now. Now they are being
more openly woven into your life narrative, they are more
openly part of you. I don't mean that you have denied them in
the past. I know that they have fueled your writing. But in the
past it seems you have always looked for things, events,
characters to act as surrogates, stand-ins. And of course as
"out-takes" they are in a way photographic. They seem to
partake of both sides of your opposition, "acts of magic, of
control" but also gestures of ownership: "This is me. "
WAYNE: What I call "out-takes" in the book are all seeded in
the nonfiction narrative; what I do in them is take characters
from the film we were making (who themselves are surrogates
for me and other real people) and place them into situations
suggested by my memories, as awakened by the film, or by the
stories I hear from the Vietnamese. I look at the out-takes then
as metafiction; they are attempts to comment on, or
demonstrate how memory gets filtered through need and
imagination to become story, and how that blurs with reality
to make art. There's a kind of internal coda in the book to
"explain" them: me as "John but Not-John, " or the passage: It
is as if I am experiencing everything through a series of lenses
whose edges overlap and blur what they frame into each other:
my memories of the real war, a sensory memory of walking
through some scrub jungle on patrol near Ky Ha, the vivid
landscape here peopled by these G.I. 's and Vietnamese in front
of my eyes now, the memories of films I've seen, the images
my own mind stirred into being from my reading, from my
writing. It's a country I've been in before when I'm trying to
write a book and the characters begin becoming real and I feel
myself becoming a character in their story; it's the way—and
here the circle loops around, touches its ends together—I felt
in the war itself.
RANDY: Well, in this and much else it is certainly the most
postmodern of your books to date ( The Wished-for Country—
another astonishing achievement—being a close second). But
let me turn from the merely literary concerns to the topical.
For in my experience this book is painful to read in the midst
of this war in Iraq. As I read it, the out-takes—which represent
not only what you have avoided but also what we have refused
to see—help us understand how we could fall once again into
"a war based on lies, self-deception, and a willed ignorance of
the history, culture and politics of the region that we'd entered. "
Déjà vu all over again. Everyone seems to be wondering how
Iraq is like Vietnam and I think some of the answers are in this
book. Was Iraq much on your mind as your wrote War Movies ?
WAYNE: Very painfully so. There are of course significant
differences between the two wars. As a NVA veteran said to me,
"Saddam Hussein is no Ho Chi Minh. " But at bottom here we
are in a war we went into on false assumptions and nearly
unilaterally; a war which is again sending kids home in coffins,
or maimed, or haunted; a war which is the cause of the deaths
of tens of thousands of civilians, the people we supposedly went
to protect. At bottom, War Movies is about the human damage
of war—its subtext then is the idea that there better be damned
good reasons for ever getting into that situation.
RANDY: So much of your work is about the realization that
among the worst, most abiding traumas of the Vietnam War is
the dehumanization of the enemy that boot-camp propaganda
and the body-count war of attrition demanded. Ask most
people today and you will hear that such dehumanization—or
call it more accurately, demonization—is necessary in war. And
yet until war became industrialized, warriors honored their
enemy: their own honor was gauged by the honor of those they
defeated or were defeated by. Rehumanizing the gooks and
slopes and commies—learning something of their 2000 years
of fighting off foreign oppressors—may be the best way to get
our own humanity back. And of course it is a lesson that is not
being applied in the present war that again seeks to win hearts
and minds whose history and heart is reduced to epithets like
raghead and sand-nigger.
WAYNE: Yes, I agree, but I'd take a little exception with the
wording of your statement: I'd say instead that one of the worst
traumas of the Vietnam War is the dehumanization of the
Wayne Karlin (Continued)
9
Vietnamese —that is, not only the warrior who can be honored
by other, enemy warriors, per your description, but—given the
nature of the war, which was often fought against guerilla forces
in heavily populated areas—the dehumanization of the civilian
population as well and even more so. To me, that's one of the
most disturbing similarities between what's happening in Iraq
and what happened in Viet Nam: soldiers start to see the whole
population as enemy, and come to despise and demonize that
population—it's what Robert J. Lifton called "an atrocity-
producing situation. " Let's go back to my story "Search and
Destroy. " The Marines in that story are angry that their friends
are getting killed; they are scared and in danger, and they are
frustrated at not being able to get at the enemy—so they take it
out on the rats; they call the rats "gooks, " and basically reenact
what would be a war crime, an atrocity, if it were against
people—in their minds the rats are the surrogates for those
people, just as the civilian population became the surrogates
for the enemy that couldn't be found. The worst atrocities that
occurred in Viet Nam were against civilians. Anyway, it would
be nice if what you suggest, that is, learning something about
the history and humanity of people in the places we go to war,
was a prerequisite instead of a postwar cure for trauma. It might
even become preventative that way—and that's what I see not
only as a purpose for my own writing, but also of bringing the
stories of the Vietnamese writers, in translation, to an American
audience, as we're doing through the Curbstone series, and
bringing, as I've done with some of the Vietnamese writers,
American stories in translation that have been published in Viet
Nam. Their stories, and ours, allow us to connect at the most
basic levels of humanity. You can still kill someone you see as
being like yourself. But it makes it much harder—and that's as
it should be; that's maybe all we can hope for.
Randy Fertel has taught the literature of the Vietnam-American
War since 1980 at Harvard, LeMoyne College, Tulane and now
at the Graduate Faculty of the New School University in NYC.
He is currently finishing a family memoir, The Gorilla Man and
the Empress of Steak.
Karlin Interview
Excerpts from 6 Vietnamese Poets
Garden Fragrance
Last night a bomb exploded on the veranda
But sounds of birds sweeten the air this morning.
I hear the fragrant trees, look in the garden,
Find two silent clusters of ripe guavas.
Night Harvest
The white circles of conical hats have come out
Like the quiet skies of our childhood,
Like an egret's spreading wings in the night:
White circles evoking the open sky.
The golds of rice and cluster-bombs blend together.
Even delayed-fuse bombs bring no fear:
Our spirits have known many years of war.
Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest.
Each of us wears her own small moon
Glittering on a carpet of gold rice.
We are the harvesters of my village,
Twelve white hats bright in the long night.
We are not frightened by bullets and bombs in the air—
Only by dew wetting our lime-scented hair.
Lam Thi My Da.
Translated by Martha Collins and Thuy Dinh
A Forest March
From the tree back to the tree
From the forest back to the forest
With my wounded toe wrapped in a white bandage,
I walked on in the jungle.
From the distance the city lights watched at our backs.
The band of soldiers kept moving forward.
Old forest, what a place you are,
we would walk on and on forever,
and still never reach the end of you
Pham Tien Duat, excerpt from The Uninhabited Region
Translated by Nguyen Quang Thieu and Kevin Bowen
From: 6 Vietnamese Poets. Edited by Nguyen Ba Chung &
Kevin Bowen. ISBN: 1-880684-76-4 / $15.95 / 254PP
Curbstone occasionally (2-3 times a month) sends
information about current publications, events, and
readings via e-mail. If you wish to be added to this list,
change your e-mail address, or be removed from this list,
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the list to: cplist@curbstone.org. You may also write or
call Curbstone Press at 321 Jackson St., Willimantic, CT
06226. Phone: 860-423-5110.
10
Dive Into Summer Reading
My family has gone to the same beach house every summer
for 20 years. The children have grown up there boogie-boarding
and playing in the ocean. The adults, though, have a different
enjoyment. Books. We line up our beach chairs and dive into
our summer reading selections. We swim in these books.
Soaking up the warm air, talking about the books over lunch,
getting in a few more pages before sleep or sunburn overtakes
us. I'll never forget the first time my nephew, Dylan, put away
his boogie-board, pulled up a beach chair and pulled out a
book. He read for hours that first day. At the beach, in the
mountains, at home or at play, dive into summer reading.
Educators will certainly know children's author Mem Fox from
her many children's books as well as her groundbreaking book
on teaching, Radical Reflection: Passionate Opinions on
Teaching, Learning, and Living . Parents will be inspired by her
book Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will
Change Their Lives Forever. Fox encourages us to develop a deep
need for books in our lives. Here's what she has to say:
When we look at the sort of home that produces book
lovers, the first thing we notice—the most obvious, but
strangely the most often forgotten factor—is that such a home
has books in it. How can books become attractive if there aren't
many books around to flip through?
Another factor in developing a deep need for books is
having a wide variety of reading material throughout the
house-thrillers, classics, poetry, magazines, newspapers,
encyclopedias, kids' novels, nonfiction books and manuals,
specialist journals, and picture books. Some short books. Some
long books. Some easy books. Some difficult books. Want your
kids to read? It's easier than you think. The best way to get your
children to read is for them to see you revel in the reading
process yourself. I believe it's a fine thing to be seen to sniffle
over sad books in front of children and a fine thing to delay
washing the dog or other activities because a parent cannot put
a particular book down.
Last of all, books should be beautiful and intrinsically
rewarding for readers. These books create a need by satisfying a
need. If we didn't know chocolate was delicious we'd never
crave it—so it is with books.
Diving into and being thrilled with reading and writing is
the best way I know to make....Reading Magic!
—Jeff Sapp, Curriculum Specialist/Writer
From: Teaching Tolerance , June 2, 2004
Reprinted with permission of: Teaching Tolerance
c/o The Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Avenue,
Montgomery, AL 36104. Web site: http://www.tolerance.org
Curbstone Books Recommended for the Teen-age Reader by
The New York Public Library: Wild Animals on the Moon by
Naomi Ay ala, Green Fires by Marnie Mueller
New York Public Library's List for Gay and Lesbian Pride: What
Night Brings by Carla Trujillo
Curbstone also highly recommends for young adult readers:
Once Upon a Cuento , edited by Lyn Miller-Lachmann; Horse
Thief , short fiction by Anna Balint; Soy la Avon Lady and Other
Stories, by Lorraine López; and Wandering Star, by J. M. G. Le
Clézio.
For adult summer reading, we highly recommend War Movies:
Journeys to Viet Nam by Wayne Karlin, The Fifth Sun by Mary
Helen Lagasse, The Trail We Leave by Rubén Palma, and The
Scorpion's Tail by Sylvia Torti.
Please refer to the last issue of INK for a list of prize-winning
titles. You will find more information on the above books and
others on our web site www.curbstone.org. Happy summer
reading!
Recommended Curbstone Books
Bookselling was and is for me
a cultural and political
expression, an expression
of progressive change,
of challenge to oppressive
authority, of a search for a
community of values which can
act as an underpinning of a
better world. The true profit in
bookselling is the social profit;
the bottom line, the measure of
the impact of the bookshop on
the community.
A. David Schwartz
Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
11
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to respond to requests from other communities in need.
As nonprofit publishers compete in a marketplace now characterized by publishing conglomerates and mega-
bookstores, Curbstone must strengthen its efforts to develop works by new writers, translations of important
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Annual individual donations can provide the edge that will allow Curbstone to remain a vibrant resource for readers
and writers now and into the future.
How You Can Help
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NEW & RECENT TITLES
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$15.00pa / 1-931896-16-X / 224pp
MEMOIR/VIETNAM
$14.95pa / 1-931896-12-7 / 192pp
SHORT FICTION/VIETNAM
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Literature that illuminates the issues of our time
This seventh volume
in the "Voices from
Vietnam"
series
introduces U.S.
readers to another
major figure in
modern Vietnamese
letters. The ten
stories in Doan Le's
The Cemetery of Chua Village not only
explore contemporary Vietnamese
society, but also the eternal enigmas of the
human heart.
"Doan Le is a master of her craft. She has
a keen, uncluttered eye, an artist's deep
understanding of the human heart, and
the sure, mature storyteller's timbre in her
voice. These stories are, in a word,
tasty. "—Larry Heinemann
War Movies recounts
his return
to Vietnam as
scriptwriter and
actor in a Vietnamese
film. On
his journey,
Karlin lives in
two worlds—the
world of postwar Vietnam and the
world of film. As he works on the
movie and converses with his former
enemies, past and present, illusion
and reality, humor and sorrow blend.
"Karlin's consistent wisdom and
clarity in every work, and his sweep
of imagination and brilliant fictional
styles, confirm his position as one of
the finest American writers at work
now. "— The Bloomsbury Review
$14.95pa / 1-931896-13-5 / 148pp
POETRY/VIETNAM
For the first time in
English, readers can
enjoy a full volume
of Lam Thi My Da's
selected work, translated
by Martha
Collins and Thuy
Dinh. Many poems
in Green Rice explore
her experiences during the war, but her
range of themes is wide—including love,
motherhood, women's issues, and the
sometimes-difficult movement into
middle age. "A delightful aspect of My
Da's poetry...is the surprising way it
summons human feeling from the
ancient landscape, from river and field,
from fruit and fragrant tree, culling a
contemporary self from timeless
images. "—John Balaban