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In The Mynah Bird's Own Words
by Barbara Tran
The Ann Arbor News
Monday, September 30, 2003
Local Poet's Collection Traces Family's Roots From Vietnam To America
by Anne Martino
"I see bewilderment that I have been allowed to fly free in their home. Where is his cage, I know they wonder. Who has let him out? I long now for my wife to join me, to feel her body curl into mine, the way certain words in Vietnamese charm my tone and settle deep in my chest."
from "Fire," in In the Mynah Bird's Own Words
In 1965 Barbara Tran's father came from Vietnam to New York City, bringing two children. He worked as a translator, and two years later his wife followed with four more children. Tran writes about her family's experiences in Vietnam and America in her new collection, In the Mynah Bird's Own Words (Tupelo Press, 32 pages, $9.95)
This collection of 12 poems, published earlier this year, won Tupelo Press' Chapbook Competition. One judge, Robert Wrigley, called it a "lyrically delicious collection that comes very close to have the sweep of a novel."
"The book, in a roundabout way, does trace my family history," says Tran, who was born in New York City in 1968. "That's my link to this story. Already, I lost the language - don't speak Vietnamese, but at least I understand it - and my nieces and nephews don't even understand it. The book is an image, if not an exact picture, of what my family went through."
The poems in this remarkable little book are fresh and alive, with titles such as "Love and Rice," which begins, "He jumped off the water buffalo, and I knew we'd be married." Some poems are lined, while others are in a prose style. The entire collection can be reading one sitting.
Tran was raised in Queens, NY and graduated from New York University and Columbia University. In 1998, she and her husband, Robert Gazzale, moved here so he could pursue a doctorate in economics at U-M.
Tran has worked with the national Asian American Writers' Workshop, co-edited Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose and received several fellowships and a Pushcart Prize, among other career accomplishments.
When she recently returned to New York for a reading, it was a true homecoming. "There were about 60 people - standing room only. We sold out all the books," she says.
Tran's new work can be found in the summer 2003 issue of MANOA, Two Rivers: New Vietnamese Writing from America and Viet Nam (University of Hawaii Press) and in the July 2003 issue of The Women's Review of Books.