 Oh good morning beautiful people of San Francisco Bay Area. Welcome to our library, we're so happy you joined us on this Saturday morning to be here and feel free to come in closer. There are books for sale outside, the bathrooms are outside to your right, kind of behind the stairs. There's book sales and after today's event we're going to ask you to go ahead and directly go into Cret Lobby for mingling. We have a Shakespeare event coming up at 2. Go have lunch, come back, attend the event, so actors will be getting ready so we will need to clear out. I think that's all the housekeeping. We do have a lot of events coming up on the back table is flyers for any of our upcoming events and coming up we have poetry month, climate action month, and then we're going to be heading into Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander month so so many amazing programs and we celebrate all the time, all year long and we love that you are back here in person and joining us. The San Francisco Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded and ancestral homeland of the Ramutushaloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as uninvited guests we pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramutush community and with that I'd love to shout out the Seguritay Land Trust which is an all-women-led organization out of the Bay East Bay and they are doing a lot of work in land rights, land-back movement and they will actually be appearing with us virtual library in April so we've been trying to get them on the stage for a long time so it's gonna they're very busy so please don't miss out on that look for it and today we are so excited to have a partnership with Divan the diasporic Vietnamese artist network and this is our second event of the season we have I want to say four more events coming up that is on the calendar so keep a lookout if you don't get our email please sign up if you have a card you probably get your email and it's in your spam box somewhere we send out reminders our next event will be with Divan will be at medicine for nightmares on April 14th so we like to do a lot of outside events and partner at bookstores best bookstore in the mission right now check them out I would love to introduce Isabel Pellew who is a professor in Asian American studies at San Francisco State and the co-director of Divan she is the author of this is all I choose to tell history and hybridity in Vietnamese American literature and the co-editor of the award-winning troubling borders and anthology of art and literature by Southeast Asian women in the diaspora welcome Isabel hello one yeah yeah okay well thank you for being here on Saturday morning you know I just don't come very often to the library on Saturday mornings I really commend you for doing that so yeah so my name is Isabel Tui Pellew right and I want to thanks also Anissa Malady at the San Francisco Public Library for cosplaying this event and for allowing us to hold this exciting program here the specials correct auditorium and also a staff Sheryl Tran who's selling book outside I want to thank Lynn Papin who's going to be here for flying all the way from Paris to be here with us today to discuss her English language debut the girl before her published by Ink and Blood I just want to give you a little bit of the story behind the translation of this book you know with Ivan we used to do a lot of public events to uplift and make visible the voice of desperate Vietnamese writers right in a context where sometimes you know it's feel like you still need this right now but during the pandemic you know we say oh what are we going to do we cannot do public events so we thought oh because right now you know in the US population is 60% white and 40% people of colors in California people of color as a majorities and yet the 90% of the publishing industry is white and if we look at literary price sometimes you would think that you know everybody's doing well but but actually things with you know out of 220 books best seller for fiction by New York time in 2020 only 20 books were published by people of color so we felt like oh maybe we can knock at some doors and work for publishing industries to see if we can provide some opportunities for desperate Vietnamese writers and we did this and one of our partner is Kaya Press a small press in Los Angeles and with them we received some funding with Steven Cuting we're grateful to him and we decided to do translation it's very difficult to translate books from other countries into English so open door for this to facilitate you know like understanding across borders because Vietnamese was scattered in different part of the world it felt is very good for the community to to speak to each other and for those work to be trans you know to be translated and we also work with TTUP Texas Tech University Press so by the end of this year after two years of hard work and one of our editors you know part of the editorial team actually is here professor Carl Brito we work with Muen Nguyen Trong and Vien Tan Nguyen and Quay Mai and Ben Trance to help select those books and by the end of this year we'll have eight books published so it really makes a difference you know for us to to work together all right so so this is the first book that we translated right it's it's in French is a low lezodifi and now we translate it to the girl before her because transition you know it's very difficult and we'll talk about this but I'm going to stop now and we'll have a start in in France Lynn Papin is extremely famous you know she's telling me like she you know she had a hundred thousand copies and she's on TV and magazine everywhere everybody knows her so I'm really happy to introduce her to you today so so she's born in Hanoi Lynn Papin moved to France at the age of 10 and she's the author of five critically acclaimed novel Le Veille published in 2016 Tony in 2018 lezodifi that we're translating 2019 and we know of the reader's price of live the posh it will occur on less or see on 2021 and in v possible to 2020 and she lives and right in Paris and the girl before her is the first book yeah translated in English so you know and one thing that this amazed me about Lynn why she's published a book every year and a half and she started when she was 20 so please welcome Lynn Papa how many of you can understand French a little bit all right okay so Lynn Bonjour wait and I'm happened to be French Vietnamese so it's really a pleasure and to be mixed race too so it's really a pleasure to welcome you Lynn so we maybe we'll start with asking you to maybe read in French meaning the beginning of your book okay so thank you for being here I will try to speak English my best but since I'm French of course my English is not perfect so I will read the beginning of the book in French so lezodifi is a book about three generations of women so my grandmother my mother and me and the character of the little girl in the beginning of the book goes back to Vietnam in order to retrace and to find like to go back to the roots I was I was part of the editorial teams you know with cars and then we you know radio we had you know we had all those books to read and we read and you know radio book he had such you know he really got us you know the originality of your voice poetics of your voice the musicality of it I don't know if you hear it right in French it's very beautiful but when we translated it it was difficult we had to hire two different translators and I got involved he was it was big and one thing has different resonance different associations different connotations so for example thank you the word war right you know you you you speak in French the word war is gear and and you know I was I didn't realize until we work on your book that that word in French as almost a romantic connotation is very common to use it in you have in songs you have it in everyday language you know when people don't get along it's talk about the war between us you know it's it's it's very there's intimacy to the body with you know and and everyday life almost right in culture the word war you know in English you know it's cold this distance you think of it in historical books or or political discourse and and you don't you know it's much more distant relationship to the self and then you were born after the war right so for you war has different you know meanings and and in the text you you you compare you know what happened in you when you left Vietnam and what happened afterward you know you really miss Vietnam to such a degree that you had you know mental health issue you know with such a strong nostalgia and you compare you know what happened inside to war and then when when we read it in English it was a little bit of a reaction because people don't do that here so maybe can you explain to us you know a little bit more you know about this usage of war and maybe you know what you're intent and using it well I think the the book was really about what you like receive from other generations so I divided the text in three parts so it's like three wars and when I started to write the book I I wondered why the little girl I was had suffered so much from wars she did not live you know so there is like a transmission and research in ket of like what my parents like my mother because it's about my mom has lived and my grandmother and so we call it la mémoire transgenerational which means what you receive like almost at the end you know like what your parents live and what you carry when you you're born maybe you carry this the memory of this so this is why I there is a metaphor between the the wars my ancestors lived and the war we maybe carry within us but of course in French we can we can say la guerre it's maybe a word that is more intimate than war in English and also for the translation in French the book was called les eaux des filles which means the bones of the girls because it was a book about mother grandmother and so about birth and there was a play on word because in in French when you say les eaux you also hear les eaux which mean what the water and so when like woman give birth we say woman el perd les eaux which mean they like the what the water the baby grows in and so it was really a book about how you come to the world like the the water you are in in the womb of the mother and then the bones people left behind when they die so it's really about how you come into the world and how you leave the world so it was it's it's quite a metaphoric book but of course with the translation in English it's very complicated to to translate all these metaphors yes no thank you there was a world a world that we really ponder and discuss and even fight over right on the translation was yeah so so for you what I hear is about historical trauma you know like how you know war or the outcome of war the damage of war is past one is passed on from one generation to the next and somehow is in your born is inside you and you know how you make sense of it without memory and and and that term is so-called trauma you know resonate in the US you know so yeah yeah so thank you for for explaining it really makes it makes sense well just wanted to know right like why why why did you write this novel or this auto fictions or people call it creative non fictions right what it why is it meaningful to you and what your relationship now to it I mean you wrote it when you know you were 22 published in 23 now you 27 it's not too far but you know how what's the relationship to it to you now I before this book this is my third novel so I published I published two two no two fictional novel before because I always like to write and imagine stories so and read books of course so it has always been something important for me but I have haven't told about like myself and my story it was more fictional and my two first novels were like well received and I had dinner with a friend and I showed him a picture of me when I was 16 years old and it was a moment in my life when I was sick so I was like very skinny and when I showed him this picture my friend told me well since you are a writer you I think you really need to write about this girl this little girl of his of 16 years old and and he told me this is like this is the story you need to write and so I answered well I always thought that I would write about it but maybe more like when I'm 35 when I'm like a woman and I'm like confident about myself and he told me this is so weird to want to write about something but but like you think you will do it in 15 years so why don't you do it now and then I began to write but just like a therapeutic thing for me I didn't really want to publish it it was more okay I'm going to try to write about this girl and this illness which was anorexia anorexia this is why also it is called Lizodifi so the bones referred to the war and of them like the skinny people during the war because they had like a ration ticket and but also anorexia and the girls in the hospital with me because I I went to hospital for one year so there is also all this trajectory and so I began to write about this girl of 16 years old and I like it was a natural thing to talk about my mother and and Vietnam and all and so this was the beginning of of the writing and and then when I had done with the book I gave it to my publisher and I told him I don't know if it's something I I don't know if it's a real book and if so if it's something I want to publish I don't know if it's like maybe comment here on pudic how do you say in English on pudic when I think maybe it's too private and he read it and he said no this is like the book so so then then the adventure began sorry you had to go through that I mean I have you know we have a different generations right like it was really like a healing process for me and when people read it I think it's also a book that heals people even though they are not Vietnamese or even though they haven't lived them like going from a country to another but they still can assimilate to the feeling of the many feelings in the book even though they didn't have the same story but there are a lot of feelings like of being new somewhere or don't feel you belong to somewhere or the link with the mother so there is many port d'entrée to the book opening yes actually when I read it I mean he did that for me because when I was 16 I didn't want to live and I was super skinny there was no word for it but when I look at pictures like oh yeah no that was no good yeah so it was nice to have and he was not nostalgic of Vietnam because I was born in France but I knew I was did not belong I was you know it was clear I was not treated as French although that's all I knew so your your stories and validated some of the part of myself that had women hidden so thank you for that you know talking about you know with different generations right you could be you know the age of my my my son right or even younger you know here in the US you know I mean when things I was reflecting on it is like in 1975 actually Maxine Honkingston wrote this book The Woman Warriors you know it's very you know extremely well-established book here but the way because she struggled with identities as the Asian-American woman she really traced through her book you know the mother the woman lineage right to the book and then through this she was able to to find strength for narrator or for herself to navigate what is meant to be Asian-American woman you know here right because it was a lot of denial or you know non-accepted or not seeing as equal so for you right it's like 50 almost 50 years later you know here in France you know mixed erasions and then it seems to also trace the stories of your mother of your grandmother of your nannies of your aunties so I just wondering you know is it for the same reason did they help you to do this exploration to find strengths in relation to your identity as a mixed race woman or as a woman well I think it's really a book about woman because it's not like the that the angle is really a woman and what has like the transmission and I think because when I grew up in Vietnam I was in kind of a world with a woman because my grandmother was here my mother my aunt I had a nanny and there there was a kind of feminine world and then when we came in France it was more masculine maybe it was the country of my father and my relationship with my mother really changed when we came in in France because I think there was this feeling of she had this feeling of like not belonging and it's them the book is really written with the point of view of a child looking up to like her mother trying to fit in and I think it's quite complicated also for a child to to see that her mother does not belong and so when I was in Vietnam like everybody was pointing at me like oh she's not from here she's a stranger she's French and there was a I think it was they were very like it was something good to be French out there and in in France everybody was also pointing at me like oh she's not from here she's Vietnamese so you know you always feel you don't belong wherever you are but in France the connotation was not so good so even as a child when my mom came like to pick me up at school and I was 10 and she and she's like all the mom all the mother were here and she began to speak to me in Vietnamese and I was like no no no no no I speak French like I didn't want to be different and so I felt there was maybe a kind of racism you know it was not so easy at that time for my mom to be in Vietnamese in France and so all that is also complicated for a child so the book was really like going towards her and and like seeing what what she was her life her so it was really like how do you say recreate a link with the woman of my family and thank you well maybe you know transition you know to maybe can we ask you to read the beginning of the book a little bit I will try to read but my English is not perfect so sorry if I in Vietnam there are places where people bury their loved ones for a period of three years in cascades appropriate to their size then once that period has elapsed and the flesh has dissipated whatever is left is transferred to a smaller box some trees are thus made up of small boxes of bones the first casket is a transient public thing a temporary resting place for bodies in motion used to house a different body every three years its only purpose is to sift out bones the second smaller box is permanent and entirely one's own it contains nothing but bones it's as if the flesh changeable as it has been throughout life sometimes fresh plump and smooth sometimes wrinkled sickly and blemished sometimes soft and then sometimes rough or sagging sometimes card no longer mattered once our flesh disappears taking with it our earthly sentiments and our muddy emotions all that's left our bones those essential things we feel in our bones ultimately all of us end up like this and there's a certain comfort to it it's comforting because it's so mundane whatever injustices, upheavals and dangers we might have suffered in life sorry whatever joys, laughs, fears, loves, hatred, resentments, passions, whatever accidents, journeys, crisis or illnesses no matter how life has bent and twisted each of us our bones remain our human bones what we were and what we had tried our utmost to become it's only now that I understand just how deeply we must love how sincerely we must forgive all the way down to those final bones thank you oh the translation is good when you read it yes so the title you know the girl before her you know some thinking of the writers before you you know in an Asian-American context some American context, some Francisco context you know how to read it and and to think it through you know in 1993 we have this writer here Colfa Mien Ng wrote a book called Bone about her growing up she's a Chinese-American growing up in Chinatowns here and you know for her the image of bone is associated with scarcity you know eating the bone of the pigeons rice is poor by secrets of bones in the closet resentment you know born to chew rice something embedded in the language right that the word born has different dissonant associations here when we try to translate you know your books you know in English you know the bone of the girls didn't sound good it sound crass right so it's okay we cannot do this but when I hear you you read you know I think born in a French context as different yeah it's just it reminds me of you know about you know some about death it reminds me of also maybe like Albert Camus has this idea of the philosophy of the absurd you know you just not you know human so you know it's not that important and grand things of things nature you know when human are gone nature take over right and also maybe a little bit of comic you know in Buddhism right as you go from one generation to another so I just want to ask you you know for you this image of bone you know what you know why start this book with this image and it's so strong because it comes through the whole book right and then it was in a title what you meant by it yeah why I think it's what I told before it's really a book about what you leave behind and since the beginning of the writing of this book was like the illness and it's like I think a moment in my life where I I so death you know and it's something you like it's so there is a lot of questions after that so what what is the meaning of life how do I come into this world what do I want to do here and I really began to write when when I was 16 years old because I think it's the moment I I told myself well if you have to be here in this world what do you want to do and what I wanted to write so the book is really about like death but and birth but not in a in a sad way you know not in a how do you say in a scary way because I think also in our society in France and maybe here also we have a link with death that is like so scary and so like put in hospital some trees that these are like scary places but in Vietnam there is maybe more how do you say there is maybe like maybe it's it's not that scary you know because people in their house have hotel like they they used to speak to the dead and there is something maybe like more soft with death and so the book begins with that image because it's a way of like having a conversation about this you know but not a scary one just it's I mean we know it anyway we're all I'm sorry we're all going today so better know it and and you know like having a nice philosophy with it yes yes yes so it's really I mean you know you were born in Vietnam you you left you know you spoke Vietnamese English and French right when you were there and came here when you were 10 right so you you're you're you're culturally you Vietnamese and French right yeah not things links to bone well you know you speak about mental health serious mental health you know being in the hospital for a whole year right that's 16 17 right you know this is something that in Asian American literature people you know I say you know it's really or Asian American communities is more need to speak about it because often it's kept silence it's taboo to you know don't talk about you don't go to therapist because you know I think people you're crazy you know so but it's a very serious issues that need to be talked so it's wonderful that I mean although it's brave in order you speak directly to it it's it's taboo to in in France and there are a lot of people suffering from it in different forms I mean it's not only like going to hospital but it can have people can struggle with this in everyday life and nobody talks about it and I think the book had been like had well had been welcome in in France also with this issue because a lot of people could like were happy that they could read about it and they can for like people suffering of it or parents of like children suffering of it and they couldn't have access to what their child was struggling with and so the book also helped to like engage a conversation and so yes I think taboo is not a good thing because it it doesn't help you were able to discuss this with your parents after this book was written in a way you couldn't so it was healing for you to remember process it and then also to have communications with your mom right and your dad yes so another you know a lot of people asking you about you know this because it's really you know like bomb in your face I mean you know talk about your war metaphor right is really in your face about that but is there is another recurring stream that me that I saw in this book that maybe feed into this river of you know nostalgia and depressions and not wanting to live which refers to to to to the accidents that you you're first so maybe before we talk about maybe I'll ask you to read a passage from it and maybe we can discuss it because I saw it a little bit is less visible but throughout the text so I want to talk about this since everybody asking you about isn't and lyrics yeah and so this is an excerpt of the chapter called third war and it's the little girl talking everyone keeps talking about a past that isn't yours that you don't understand so it's when she arrives in France everybody else knows all about Marcel Marceau Lucie Obrac Julien Grac even Jacques Chirac and French politics this isn't a child's disconnect it's a cultural disconnect you're 12 and trapped in the gray tangled sunless maze of a France in crisis a mess that isn't your own you've lost your mothers in your country and no one has bothered to ask how you feel about any of it it all happened so quickly and there you are completely alone in the middle of it the young girl stop smiling she is sitting on her bench as the Paris snow falls ice encroaches over the slats she's waiting for her world to come back there's a good chance it never will something about being here makes her feel like she's being dragged back to that moment when the decision to keep her or not was being made she escaped then but now here she was again yes yes decision to keep her not was being made so I think you referring to this idea of you know your mother well you know I mean her father was studying Vietnam history in Vietnam fell in love with your mom they both fell in love you know and then she can she got married she became pregnant she went to France that the baby came back to Vietnam and then boom another pregnancy and she was young and you know and already they went all the way there and then the hospital that was in you know maybe 95 right it's right after the embargo with Vietnam and in embargo right it's like you know when you know it's you know when the US is in the war with the country lose you know not only business cannot do business with that country but all the friends of the US are not allowed to do business with countries and then you know it's a lot of I mean there's a lot of reason for that poverty but he was one of the reason and and then you know the hospital maybe didn't feel safe to have an abortions for your mother and then don't she had you right you are born in in in that context so it's just and then because I see it dropped in you know this illusion of accidents of not being wanted maybe in different context but at this original context by a mother maybe young or not ready to have a baby you know you know as women understand that I was just wondering you know if you know because as what I sense when I read this is that maybe see if I'm wrong right but that maybe you feel that whether you are wanted or not in the womb seep in the bones of the baby and then the young adult and then adult and then somehow impact your your your relationship to life or death so I don't am I dreaming this or are you you know is it something you consciously try to say or believe even I I mean it's it was part of them like I don't I I don't know if research is the good word word in English but I mean the research I made about how I came into this world so I wanted the book is about like the general context which was Vietnam war and the village in which my mother and my grandmother grew up so it like like in the ocean and then with the American so it's like the the general context that is why I spoke also about the context in France with like Jack Shira can like you know that the history of the world and then the small history of people living during this time and so it's like the small lives of people and and so I asked my I mean I was a child I received love and everything was was fine but I always felt that I was a bit different than my brother and so I I asked my mom like a lot of questions about the village the war and also about my birth and and she answered me and I was quite glad to hear all this because I think it's just the truth and sometimes I think we need to know how we came into this world and I do think that we feel we feel what happened when we were little so this is really a book about like what we receive from the like you said trauma but it's just what we receive from the world and from the like the big world in the small world we were born in yes actually remind me you know last week we had a reading with Nguyen Quy Mai she wrote a book about emirations and you know the child when the whole premise of the book at the end is about that about you know like I mean it's different context but the idea of telling the truth and a lot of women's enemies women you know with the emirations children say they concealed the truth in order to protect the child but then the child always feel there is something and it's better to tell the truth and it's a very good message to send to you know for the older generation to to to really take it to heart that actually you think you protect the child but actually you don't and it's better to tell the truth you know this is yeah because I think spends that with my mother as well anyway thank you oh so we perfect with time so I would like to well thank you very much and then maybe open floor for questions any questions for Lynn it's a good question I on the the French cover it's a picture of my mother and my grandmother so like the it was quite striking because it was all over in libraries and TV shows in France and it was her actually it was not me you know it was her picture and she when I when I wrote the book and when it went went out I I thought maybe or she will like like it and it will create a real bond between us or she will not like it at all and it will be really bad and she took it as like steps towards her so she was very proud all the more as I think she did not had really her voice you know like to speak in in France and there was all the thing I told before about like not speaking really well the language and feeling maybe a little bit of racism and being always like having less place room than my father and so I think she was really proud of the book and really proud of being on the cover of it and so it was like a real reconciliation between us you know it was and it really created something also I think for her to see what was inside me you know because when also when you raise your children you don't have the perspective perspective of your child because you think like you were here before and he's born you raise him or her so you think you know but but it's not the same story so I think it was really it was a good thing for us to I'm French Vietnamese too but I've lived in the US for nearly 40 years now but I was raised came to France I when I was 12 so long time ago during the war so that's the difference between us you don't talk about your father so conversely if your mom feels good about this book doesn't he feel like he didn't raise you enough in his side of your culture and protect you when you came to his country well this is a this indeed when the book came out he was like but why don't you talk about me in the book like in the book I'm just the guy sitting in his office that I don't like it but you know when you write book you don't write like the whole truth you are obliged to have an angle and here the title is the girl before her so it's really like the maternal linear like the age so the like when I began to write I was really focused on the woman in my family and I and I didn't want to write about my father so you can I didn't write also about my brother and I think it was also a way to protect him because I feel like when you are a writer and if you write about your family it's like you you hold them in hostage you know it's not I don't I think it's a feeling that can be weird for them and so I always try to be correct and you know to respect that but the book was really about the maternal lineage so it's like of course there is not much about my father I was I was but the book was like because I was so much French and I did all my study in French and I learned French history in class and French philosophy and French everything French and also I read in French and I think in French and I write in French so I did not feel the need to search this French lineage because I had so much French already so the book was really about what I lack and it was the Vietnamese lineage and the woman because I feel really close to my dad and I was raised in a like like a boy you know like really so I wanted to search about the woman again thank you for being here in the US so two questions first is if I missed this I apologize did you defer or spoke to your mom about passages did you check in with her or along the process of your writing or did she see your book after its completion and then the second question is just basic if you have it in three languages in one book do you have it in Vietnamese French and English I mean the translation or compiled into one just I'm just wondering no no no and the first question I asked a lot of questions to my mother at the beginning of the writing so I went to her place and I asked her a lot about her childhood because before I began to write this book I had no idea she she grew up in a village during the war I mean she never told me about it and I also never asked my grandfather so I went I took a plane to Vietnam and I went there and I told my grandfather I want to go to the village and I want to see the village so we took a car we went there and I was happy to do it because I think without the book I wouldn't maybe have the curiosity to go there and to ask so much questions and you know like my grandmother passed away before I began to ask questions and to write and so I was also glad to do it before my grandfather goes away because they have like so much history they live like incredible things and we and if we don't ask them I don't they don't tell it so yes yes sorry I forgot to include this in the question were there any sections that you had to admit because or not include because your family grandparents your mother asked that you exclude them from the book no not really I mean my Vietnamese family is really open to to tell everything it's more maybe the family of my father the French family is maybe more scared and like a lot of taboo and you know so maybe that's the reason why I never wrote about them but the Vietnamese my Vietnamese family is great and they like to to do to tell things and my mom is also like okay with the telling the truth and so hi thank you it's very interesting interview maybe you cover this in the book I'm just curious because you mentioned how when you go when you moved to France that you were perceived as Vietnamese and so you felt this negative conception of that your identity maybe but from the outside you don't look that Vietnamese so I don't know if you explore what you are explained what your experiences are that were negative because you don't look I don't look Vietnamese no I do I don't know but maybe like in maybe in summer when I am 10 people talk in Spanish to me they say like so maybe but no as a as a child I don't look totally French I mean but now is more maybe it's more accepted now but like 15 years ago you know in and when we arrived we didn't arrive in Paris we arrived in first the first years in in tour in a small town and there were not like much stranger they were all really French and so I think yes it was quite complicated at that time and also them to arrive from a country that was so like warm and hot and people live in the streets in Vietnam so as a child I was used to like always hear a lot of you know agitation and sound and like them the motorbikes and it was really a universe and I'm quite sensitive I think of the the universe so it was like being you know a fish in the water and then being dropped out on earth and like it's it's not it I was I think a really perturbated about this change and it was cold and in Vietnam there were no like everybody is you know walking in the street and in France it's like really yeah really cold and also the the food the clothes the so it's all this I think that was quite difficult to fit in in a new culture my name is being I am I was University classmate of some other and I would like to tell to everybody that mother a plane was very very beautiful and she was excellent student during five years at this University and it was sad that and I think maybe the reader cannot find very traditional girl lady in this book is it true because do you you said that you try to go to go to the places to know about more about the mother that you meet some mother friends in Hanoi or to talk with them and we are I think we are very we was very unique generation women in Vietnam that we were sent to Soviet Union to study and our favorite songs favorite books all Soviet Union books so I hope to read in I didn't read the book before I came here I asked the mother how do you think about the book she said she said you will read it you you read and you will know but I'm very curious about the book because I I want to read my friends to read myself and to see myself in the eyes and today I invite my daughter came here to see we I'm very excited to see our children how they who are they so thank you for presentation the book I would like to know what woman in the book thank you thank you Lynn would you talk a little bit about your past with language since French is your second language maybe it's your first written language I'm not sure but finding the confidence in that path and getting to be able to write it I always have I've been in a French school in Vietnam so French is like the only language I I read it and write and and think but my first I mean my first language was Vietnamese but when I was very very small with my mom and my nanny and my grandmother but French has has been the language I I know better but I think I have been really like influence and strike strike by by having different language better because I think when you like when you lack words like I do now you can not express everything you want so this has all also been effect on my relationship with my mother for example because I hadn't so much words in Vietnamese so I couldn't express everything I wanted and I couldn't even think about a lot of things so this is maybe why I am also a writer because language has so much effect on our thoughts on how we like feel in the world I think maybe like when you have more words you can understand more things you know and this is why I think books are so different as when you watch a movie because when you watch a movie you watch images when you read books you have words and then you keep this words with you and you think with words and you like and interact with other people with words and so words are really a bridge I don't know if you can say that but a bridge to life you know so like the more you read and the more you have words and image and the more your relationship with the world is like nourishing and big and you know so I think I really had this feeling when I was a child with like English French being raised with three different languages I knew that I had different relationship with the world when I was thinking in a language or another and maybe because like in English I have only like some words and not that much and it's maybe more like positive words when I think in English I feel like more fun and light and what I think in French really goes deep you know so this is yes the language is really important for me but I don't know if I answered your question correctly okay so in this journey about discovering your mother and being Vietnamese what was it that you discovered about being Vietnamese that is impactful to your life right now I have a relationship that evolves with Vietnam because when I grew up I was born there and I grew up there until I was 10 so for a long time it was childhood for me it was like the paradise like lost paradise and and when I came back there I wanted to come back to my childhood and I realized that you never go back into your childhood like it's something you can you cannot go back in time it's like when you you know you grew up in a house and you imagine this house is like so big and so nice and and you come back like 20 years later it's very small and and so I had this relationship with Vietnam and whenever I went back to Hanoi I always wanted to go back to like the Hanoi of my childhood and well I never could because it changed and also the the city changed a lot and now when I go back it it always evolves I went back there a month ago and it was the first time I was like oh I go there as a woman for the first time and not as a child because when I go there I feel I usually feel like I'm 10 years old I'm like what are the things of my my childhood and it was the first time it was like okay what is it to be like a grown-up there and and so I think since it's it's the place where I was born I think it will always I will always have a conversation with this place maybe like maybe if I have children one day I would like to bring my my children there and it will be something new to you know I there are places like this I think they are always interrogate us. I have my hand up but I will say a couple of words I thank you so much for coming Leen and I'm so thrilled that the book is out and I just want I'm really happy that you read those two passages from the beginning of the novel because I think they they capture a lot of what drew me into the book and I think also Isabelle and you know for people who may not have caught all of the French that you were reading at the beginning it was a scene of traveling right getting on the plane being in the airport and the kind of meditation on that disorienting space of the airport but it's also bound up in that other early passage about the bodies and and the caskets and what's I think for me so striking about the beginning of the book is that in that airport scene you have one version of a body that is reduced to its essentials which is the biometric passport right so you have this document of French identity that is linked to you and no one else and then on the other hand you have the bodies that are that are initially in larger coffins and then after the body decomposes the bones are put into these smaller caskets but of course that whole process right is one that requires a community and requires a family and requires people to continue caring for the remains of that body after death right and you talked a little bit about the ways in which you know a kind of ongoing relationship to ancestors is quite characteristic of Vietnamese culture and I think you know in a very moving way that's what you're doing in this book as well right you're you're creating that sort of casket for an ongoing relationship to history and to the history of your mother and your grandmother right so so in a way the book itself is kind of a version of the the small casket containing these remains that continue to signify because you're carrying their story so I just wanted to say thank you again for the book it's really beautiful book thank you and yes this makes sense since the French title was Lizodifi so it's really you know a casket of bones but indeed the book is really about body and when just the excerpt after this of the airport when she lands she is in the taxi going to the airport to Annoy and I mean she I mean the character because it's more simple and then she turns back and in the the places behind in the taxi she sees three girls and it's the girl of 16 years old the girl of 10 years old and the girl of five years old and because I I think like in life we are like how do you say poopy russ you know the Russian puppet Russian dolls and we have like many versions of ourselves all in and we are like today a doll but we have all the little dolls inside ourselves too and so it's yes really about this hi thank you so much for coming today and for this talk and for writing your story and writing the story of the woman in your family earlier you spoke a little bit about the the universal appeal of the book for audiences you said that they they're there are various portentries which is true and I'm wondering what perhaps has been the response that you've noticed over the over the years since the book books publication in French readership and the different things that strike you about how French readers respond versus readers in the Asian community in France yeah well if I'm not sure I really understood the whole question but if I think there the the book was received in like very various ways because well what what I like when when readers tell me about the books is that they come to see me but they don't talk about me they don't talk about the book like they don't say oh I read the book and you leave that they talk about themselves so they come and they say oh I recognize myself because like this is my experience and sometimes they recognize themselves like in them like an expert for example when a reader told me this book was like so important to me because I really recognize myself because I moved to like a town like Normandy to Bretagne you know like to a small town in France to another small town in France so it's not like a big discrepancy like going from Vietnam to France like from Asia to Europe but still the I think them we are because we are all humans the feelings are the same so like they this book you know resonate with a lot of people for like many reasons that are not sorry my English is so bad but like it's not made it's not because they are Vietnamese always but sometimes because of the the illness or the feeling of not belonging so this is also what I liked about the reception is that it is so diverse and I mean as a writer this is important to me because I think when it's universal this is when we all join like literature for me is that is that some somebody tell its own story that is very specific but then it resonates with you because we are all humans so I think this is what like I like the most about the reception of this book okay thank you so much thank you everybody I loved words are the bridge that's beautiful thank you so much by the book it's aesthetically beautiful as well not just you know the words inside but it's really laid out gorgeously thank you so much thank you everybody