No, not into Marilyn Monroe, but a Vietnamese writer. When I published regularly in both languages about 15 years ago, I finally concluded it was way too schizophrenic, if not suicidal. Never again, I thought as I reverted to English only.
Now, I’m doing it again, but it’s understandable, for I’m in Vietnam and swimming in the Vietnamese language. Any day now, I have a +200-page book of Vietnamese prose coming out, but these pieces are old. I’m working on a book of recent writing about Vietnam. So far, there are chapters about Saigon, Vung Tau, Nghe An, Dien Bien Phu and Lao Cai. Although all these pieces have been published in English, they’ll be much more resonant in Vietnamese, to a Vietnamese audience.
Did I say “resonant”? I’ve missed my calling as a Jewish comedian. With fewer than 100 paid subscribers on SubStack, I can hardly resonate less! In English, that is.
In Albania, I discovered Musine Kokalari. Though educated in Italy and fluent in Italian, Kokalari returned to Albania to become a pioneering writer in her own language. Further, her political activism, that is, her love for Albania, landed her in prison and ruined her life. Even now, there are fewer than 10 million Albanians worldwide, with many outside Albania no longer fluent in their language. Despite all that, Kokalari chose to write for her tiny audience, for she was at home in Albania.
1998 saw the appearance of the first anthology of Vietnamese-American writing, Watermark. With two stories and three poems, I had the most pages. There were so few of us. To my surprise, a new edition will be published. Asked to provide an updated bio, I wrote:
Born in Saigon in 1963, Linh Dinh lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but has returned to Vietnam. He’s the author of six collections of poems, two of stories, a novel about Vietnam, Love Like Hate, and a book of nonfiction, Postcards from the End of America. Dinh has edited two anthologies of new writing from Vietnam. His political and travel writing is on SubStack. His latest books are in Vietnamese, Thơ nước trong and Tích ngàn thu sau bữa cơm ma, both published in Saigon in private editions to evade censorship. He’s canceled in the US.
So there you have it, I can publish books in Vietnam. I have an audience here.
This morning, I read about Sri Lankans escaping their economic disaster by planes or even boats, illegally.
When I mentioned these newest boat people to my egg sandwich man, he recounted seeing all these corpses washed up in Vung Tau around 1981. There were so many corpses, people didn’t dare to wade into the ocean. Fishermen snagged corpses with their nets. Hearing about a shipwreck, relatives from Saigon would descend on Vung Tau, hoping to recover corpses of loved ones. People howled and screamed on the beach.
There are many stories to be told here, stories even Vietnamese don’t know about. I will tell them, primarily, if not exclusively, in Vietnamese. I don’t have time to do everything. I’m getting old.
Last week, the painter/poet Trịnh Cung came to Vung Tau, so a handful of us hung out with the old man. He treated us to a seafood lunch by the ocean. We had a great time needling Trịnh Cung.
Though he has devoted most of his energy to oil painting, Trịnh Cung is best known for a short poem put to music by the legendary Trịnh Công Sơn. As destitute Saigon artists, they were best friends. Though this poem/song is used by Vietnamese-French director Trần Anh Hùng in his À la verticale de l'été, Trịnh Cung was never asked for permission nor paid. It’s not cool at all.
“France today is no longer the France of Apollinaire!” Trịnh Cung thundered over a mess of crab shell. Of course, he’s right, and the US is no longer a sane or civilized country.
After several years in Orange County, Trịnh Cung is moving back to Saigon. He had no social life in the US. Even Vietnamese-Americans had no time for him. A solitary confinement nation, the US isolates everyone. Though much relieved and grateful for any half night stand, Americans can’t wait to get the fuck away from whom they just fucked. It’s the same with their foreign policies.
It’s fitting they have a degenerate creep as president, and one with a worldclass monster for a son, but what do you expect from a regime of mass murderers, unctious liars and pedophiles? Don’t forget to register to vote, so you can jerk that lever, then go home and jerk off.
Each time I suggested a solution, I was shouted down by angry whites, because it’s their ballgame, they screamed, so fine. It’s 11-1 in the bottom of the ninth, so last chance, y’all. The three whiffers coming up have averages of .133, .028 and .044. Don’t let me ruin your rally!
This week, I discovered the half Vietnamese rapper, Tyga. Have a listen, or, rather, look:
Vietnam didn’t produce him, so please keep this transcendent, all-American, Jew pumped talent! He’s all yours!
OK, now I go back to my Vietnamese manuscript. I’ll keep posting in English until I no longer feel like it, and when I’m gone, just know I’ve relocated to a much saner and much more grounded address. Though much ravaged by Communism, that is, by Jewish thinking, Vietnam is still Vietnam.
Don’t you wish you could say the same about your imploding shack?
"Brother, it is our ballgame. Those of us who've lived here for generations have nowhere to go. VN will take back a dissolute Viet Kieu after 43 years, and if you're happy there, then may God bless you. Many Americans don't even know where they came from. A reasonable definition of an American may well be someone with no other homeland.
"So we will stand and fight here.
"Please don't be too angry with those who rejected the counsel of a tourist, even a long-term and well-meaning one."
Typical. Those who can only dish out cheap digs anonymously and without paying any price for his "resistance" won't fight anyone.
Linh, I think you are wise to draw yourself closer to Vietnam. We are tribal, even those of us who don't really have a tribe.
It is good to be part of a culture where you can feel at home. As much as I have enjoyed traveling, belonging somewhere is healthier for most people.
I am jealous. I have lived out of the US for more than a decade. I will never be considered (fill in the blank) only American. Unfortunately I hate the empire, don't feel kinship with the vast majority of Americans and didn't particularly like living there. I always felt like an outsider.
Hi, Linh. In Italy, you could have converted to Catholicism and been a missionary in Southeast Asia. I became a communist because I hated the American bombing in Vietnam.... Now, in Italy, those who were communists are for Ukraine! Communists loved their ideas, not the peoples. Catholics, waiting for the impostor "Francis" to pass to eternal life, are almost all silent...but better times will come.
Hello Linh, I read all that you write, rarely does anyone present the truth of the sullied world that we've inherited as poingnantly and honestly as you do. I will have to buy your book "Postcards" if it's still available?
I wish you all the best and also wish that my roots weren't so firmly planted in the prison that the West has become; our "leaders" are a remorseless gaggle of abject cretins beyond parody it seems.
"Though much relieved and grateful for any half night stand, Americans can’t wait to get the fuck away from whom they just fucked. It’s the same with their foreign policies."
Poignantly scathing. About time you turned your back on Babylon brother. I believe what I'm feeling is envy. To have roots to return to. How I wish.
Thank you, Linh, for the sane, sober, and objective if exasperated observations.
I was 8 in '68 (so I've got you beat by a couple of years) and I can remember the madness of the RFK and MLK assassinations (essentially a STOLEN ELECTION COUP, just as the JFK assassination was a coup) and subsequent Martin Luther King riots. We had moved to CA (the future Silicone Valley) from D.C. at the time, and I just couldn't understand how such a great city, Washington D.C. that we had visited in buses from suburbs as school children, with it's gleaming white capitol, beautiful buildings and monuments under bright blue skies, and recent history of winning WWII now had ghastly columns of smoke pouring out from ugly B&W news photos. I had a crush on my Black 2nd grade teacher... and one of the white kids handed me a homemade picture gallery of Blacks being beaten bloody (and/or killed? it's been a long time) clipped from news magazines of those riots and civil rights protests that turned my stomach. Oh - and the U.S. war against Vietnam was really heating up, and, as something of a "war nerd"/military brat I knew even then, at age 7, that the Vietnamese posed NO enemy threat to America on the scale of Germany or Japan in WWII.
So from '68 to '72 (and the Nixon impeachment that helped close out the Vietnam war) were some pretty tough, grim years that got a lot of Americans killed in that "FAKE NEWS" war designed to pump millions in to "defense" contractor contracts and BILLION$ in to their financial overlord masters (today's Blackrock, Vanguard, and all the usual GS, JPM, Lehman, IMF, WB criminal lizard ppl slush funds).
It's not THAT bad here in America....yet... but, yes, the absolute DEGRADATION and DEGENERATION of American culture and in-your-face stolen elections means the Red Terror purges, death camp gulags, and mass "depopulation" food seizure (sabotage) famines can only right around the corner.
Oh, wait... the "covid vaccine" economic sabotage lockdowns... and the medical mass murder hospital protocols, and the deadly jew jabs, HAVE ALREADY KILLED a million Americans...
they're just more silent and hidden than the draftees who died fighting in Vietnam.
Hi Linh, from one of your subscribers, who learned of you when you wrote on TUR. I know that many miss you there. But I understand your reasons for leaving. Too many stupid racist commenters have infested that site.
I fail to understand why thousands of people, not just from Mexico and Central America, continue to overrun our southern border, flocking to this neocon-infested war-loving dying country, which is now pushing the planet to thermonuclear war. If nuclear war is somehow averted, I predict, after a few years of loneliness, depression, and alienation they will realize their mistake and return to their native lands, as you have done Linh. Just yesterday a psychotic alienated 22-year-old man entered the roof of a building and fired randomly at strangers during a 4th of July parade, killing 6 and wounding many others. And several cops fired 60 bullets into a fleeing unarmed black man. Such is life in the dis-United States.
If I were Vietnamese I'd do the same thing. Pleasant people, and more or less (the less being Cholon Chinese) one people. Vung Tau is a pleasant place. Look forward to hearing from you periodically.
Linh, your life trajectory seems to be definitely on the rise, yet I sense an undertone of disappointment (and/or anger?) in your narrative. That feeling is not at all hard for me to understand, but I hope you can complete the "transition" to the point that you are able to let go of it and maximize the good that I'm sure you'll find in your new setting.
I can't say you were wrong in casting off your lines from this continent. We are probably doomed. Just the other day I read of two polls. The first was a poll asking respondents if they thought the US was heading in the right or the wrong direction, and 80% of Democrats (!) said "wrong". But a different poll on "Joe Biden" approval ratings show that 85% of Democrats approve of the job he's doing. This sounds schizophrenic. Although I personally agree with Tom Luongo that the people in the crowd currently "governing" our executive branch are vandals deliberately taking down our system, I think our slide into the abyss in one way or another has been a long time in the making, regardless.
Here's hoping you don't give up on your English-only fans too soon!
that "rapper" represents what jew owned america has become...a cesspool of degenerate morons...thought you would enjoy this song by bluegrass musician Billy Strings singing about the fall of america...oh and good luck....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD7K0x0UusE
I tried to buy one of your books on Amazon but no go. Can I buy one from you? That way, when and if you stop writing in English, I can still read your words. Love and light from the jewjabbed multitudes of commiefornia.
I've been reading the excellent Jew-wise blog "BLUE MOON OF SHANGHAI" by Larry Romanoff.
I was once surprised when I came across evidence of an extensive electric tram system in Portland, long disused and plowed under the pavement. The following article is about the murder of electric transportation by Rockefeller, GM and Firestone.
"Suburbs are an invention created and existing only in the US and Canada, designed entirely to keep workplaces, shopping and residences not only physically segregated but sufficiently scattered that even good public transport becomes ineffective or useless, thereby forcing hundreds of millions of people to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on private transportation solely for the benefit of the car makers and oil companies. This American-style city planning, the creation of suburbs, was one of the meanest anti-social schemes ever devised by American capitalism" https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/the-american-love-affair-with-the-automobile-the-unspoken-history-of-the-electric-car-december-09-2019/
Another is about China's high speed rail marvel, built up from nothing to the biggest and most advanced in the world since the beginning of the 21st century, and the neglect of America's dilapidated infrastructure.
"Chinese engineers have said it is well within the limits of today’s technology to build a high-speed rail line between China and North America, the line passing through Siberia, with a tunnel under the 55-mile Bering strait separating Russia from Alaska, then down the West Coast of Canada and the US. It would then be possible to take a fast train from San Diego to Paris and London. However, politics will make such a development impossible" https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2022/05/en-larry-romanoff-chinas-high-speed.html
It's easy to look down on Americans and our dysfunctional culture, but the deck has always been stacked against us. We're a crushed and demoralized people by design.
Yep. I'm happy that you found back your roots, Mr. Linh. But what about those who do not have a country to return to? What can one say to an Italian, a French or an American who sees his former country transformed into a multicultural COVID-LGBTQ prison with no jobs and no food? I wish I knew any solution. Perhaps moving to the countryside and seceding, I see few options besides that.
P. S. Georgia Guide Stones bombed (and suddenly demolished to remove all evidence), BJ resigning and former Japan Prime Minister shot. What's going on all of a sudden?
This is a weird question for you Linh, but I am wondering if you know about any of the orphanages in Vung Tau, and whether they are legitimately trying to rescue children from the street, or if they are a racket of some kind. My mother-in-law just died, and I am searching for a charity that mourners can donate to. My MiL was born in Cho Lon, but I picked Vung Tau because it seems to be overlooked by most of the tourists. You seem to have a high sensitivity or awareness of, for lack of better words, bullshit and/or grift. The one I am interested in is located at 26 Ngô Quyền,
Dear Linh, You are a lifeline for me of a life where one could travel, wander, observe. I decided to subscribe to substack so you could have 101 subscribers and get a nice meal once in awhile? I am rooted like a tree here, as Richie Havens put it long ago, with a sick husband and an ongoing fear of bringing Covid home to him and killing him, founded or not in fact, as I am responsible for refusing the vaccines. One great advantage of Australia is that the doctors are not allowed to hector to you about getting a vaccine although everyone else does! I will appreciate whatever scraps you throw to your English speaking audience. I first started appreciating your writing when I found pieces you had written from South Africa, my home quite a while ago when apartheid was in full swing when I was 21 and married to a Jew I had met in Vancouver. I still have great affection for the warm, humorous, gracious people I met in Cape Town, mostly Jewish and not at all Bourlas and Soros look a likes. But the facts are undeniable, some of the worst people around these days are of Jewish backgrounds. I still laugh when people tell me seriously that Zelensky cannot be surrounded by because he is of Jewish ancestry. Does that also prevent his corruption I wonder? Anyway keep on truckin', your writing is second to none and I wish I could understand Vietnamese as I love a particular delicacy of expression I in their arts and crafts and music.
I'm Transitioning
Hi everyone,
An anonymous comment at my blog:
"Brother, it is our ballgame. Those of us who've lived here for generations have nowhere to go. VN will take back a dissolute Viet Kieu after 43 years, and if you're happy there, then may God bless you. Many Americans don't even know where they came from. A reasonable definition of an American may well be someone with no other homeland.
"So we will stand and fight here.
"Please don't be too angry with those who rejected the counsel of a tourist, even a long-term and well-meaning one."
Typical. Those who can only dish out cheap digs anonymously and without paying any price for his "resistance" won't fight anyone.
Linh
Linh, I think you are wise to draw yourself closer to Vietnam. We are tribal, even those of us who don't really have a tribe.
It is good to be part of a culture where you can feel at home. As much as I have enjoyed traveling, belonging somewhere is healthier for most people.
I am jealous. I have lived out of the US for more than a decade. I will never be considered (fill in the blank) only American. Unfortunately I hate the empire, don't feel kinship with the vast majority of Americans and didn't particularly like living there. I always felt like an outsider.
Oh well, there are worst things in life.
Hi, Linh. In Italy, you could have converted to Catholicism and been a missionary in Southeast Asia. I became a communist because I hated the American bombing in Vietnam.... Now, in Italy, those who were communists are for Ukraine! Communists loved their ideas, not the peoples. Catholics, waiting for the impostor "Francis" to pass to eternal life, are almost all silent...but better times will come.
Hello Linh, I read all that you write, rarely does anyone present the truth of the sullied world that we've inherited as poingnantly and honestly as you do. I will have to buy your book "Postcards" if it's still available?
I wish you all the best and also wish that my roots weren't so firmly planted in the prison that the West has become; our "leaders" are a remorseless gaggle of abject cretins beyond parody it seems.
Take care.
Richard.
"Though much relieved and grateful for any half night stand, Americans can’t wait to get the fuck away from whom they just fucked. It’s the same with their foreign policies."
Poignantly scathing. About time you turned your back on Babylon brother. I believe what I'm feeling is envy. To have roots to return to. How I wish.
Thank you, Linh, for the sane, sober, and objective if exasperated observations.
I was 8 in '68 (so I've got you beat by a couple of years) and I can remember the madness of the RFK and MLK assassinations (essentially a STOLEN ELECTION COUP, just as the JFK assassination was a coup) and subsequent Martin Luther King riots. We had moved to CA (the future Silicone Valley) from D.C. at the time, and I just couldn't understand how such a great city, Washington D.C. that we had visited in buses from suburbs as school children, with it's gleaming white capitol, beautiful buildings and monuments under bright blue skies, and recent history of winning WWII now had ghastly columns of smoke pouring out from ugly B&W news photos. I had a crush on my Black 2nd grade teacher... and one of the white kids handed me a homemade picture gallery of Blacks being beaten bloody (and/or killed? it's been a long time) clipped from news magazines of those riots and civil rights protests that turned my stomach. Oh - and the U.S. war against Vietnam was really heating up, and, as something of a "war nerd"/military brat I knew even then, at age 7, that the Vietnamese posed NO enemy threat to America on the scale of Germany or Japan in WWII.
So from '68 to '72 (and the Nixon impeachment that helped close out the Vietnam war) were some pretty tough, grim years that got a lot of Americans killed in that "FAKE NEWS" war designed to pump millions in to "defense" contractor contracts and BILLION$ in to their financial overlord masters (today's Blackrock, Vanguard, and all the usual GS, JPM, Lehman, IMF, WB criminal lizard ppl slush funds).
It's not THAT bad here in America....yet... but, yes, the absolute DEGRADATION and DEGENERATION of American culture and in-your-face stolen elections means the Red Terror purges, death camp gulags, and mass "depopulation" food seizure (sabotage) famines can only right around the corner.
Oh, wait... the "covid vaccine" economic sabotage lockdowns... and the medical mass murder hospital protocols, and the deadly jew jabs, HAVE ALREADY KILLED a million Americans...
they're just more silent and hidden than the draftees who died fighting in Vietnam.
So I guess it IS already as bad as '68...
Hi Linh, from one of your subscribers, who learned of you when you wrote on TUR. I know that many miss you there. But I understand your reasons for leaving. Too many stupid racist commenters have infested that site.
I fail to understand why thousands of people, not just from Mexico and Central America, continue to overrun our southern border, flocking to this neocon-infested war-loving dying country, which is now pushing the planet to thermonuclear war. If nuclear war is somehow averted, I predict, after a few years of loneliness, depression, and alienation they will realize their mistake and return to their native lands, as you have done Linh. Just yesterday a psychotic alienated 22-year-old man entered the roof of a building and fired randomly at strangers during a 4th of July parade, killing 6 and wounding many others. And several cops fired 60 bullets into a fleeing unarmed black man. Such is life in the dis-United States.
If I were Vietnamese I'd do the same thing. Pleasant people, and more or less (the less being Cholon Chinese) one people. Vung Tau is a pleasant place. Look forward to hearing from you periodically.
Linh, your life trajectory seems to be definitely on the rise, yet I sense an undertone of disappointment (and/or anger?) in your narrative. That feeling is not at all hard for me to understand, but I hope you can complete the "transition" to the point that you are able to let go of it and maximize the good that I'm sure you'll find in your new setting.
I can't say you were wrong in casting off your lines from this continent. We are probably doomed. Just the other day I read of two polls. The first was a poll asking respondents if they thought the US was heading in the right or the wrong direction, and 80% of Democrats (!) said "wrong". But a different poll on "Joe Biden" approval ratings show that 85% of Democrats approve of the job he's doing. This sounds schizophrenic. Although I personally agree with Tom Luongo that the people in the crowd currently "governing" our executive branch are vandals deliberately taking down our system, I think our slide into the abyss in one way or another has been a long time in the making, regardless.
Here's hoping you don't give up on your English-only fans too soon!
that "rapper" represents what jew owned america has become...a cesspool of degenerate morons...thought you would enjoy this song by bluegrass musician Billy Strings singing about the fall of america...oh and good luck....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD7K0x0UusE
I tried to buy one of your books on Amazon but no go. Can I buy one from you? That way, when and if you stop writing in English, I can still read your words. Love and light from the jewjabbed multitudes of commiefornia.
I've been reading the excellent Jew-wise blog "BLUE MOON OF SHANGHAI" by Larry Romanoff.
I was once surprised when I came across evidence of an extensive electric tram system in Portland, long disused and plowed under the pavement. The following article is about the murder of electric transportation by Rockefeller, GM and Firestone.
"Suburbs are an invention created and existing only in the US and Canada, designed entirely to keep workplaces, shopping and residences not only physically segregated but sufficiently scattered that even good public transport becomes ineffective or useless, thereby forcing hundreds of millions of people to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on private transportation solely for the benefit of the car makers and oil companies. This American-style city planning, the creation of suburbs, was one of the meanest anti-social schemes ever devised by American capitalism" https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/the-american-love-affair-with-the-automobile-the-unspoken-history-of-the-electric-car-december-09-2019/
Another is about China's high speed rail marvel, built up from nothing to the biggest and most advanced in the world since the beginning of the 21st century, and the neglect of America's dilapidated infrastructure.
"Chinese engineers have said it is well within the limits of today’s technology to build a high-speed rail line between China and North America, the line passing through Siberia, with a tunnel under the 55-mile Bering strait separating Russia from Alaska, then down the West Coast of Canada and the US. It would then be possible to take a fast train from San Diego to Paris and London. However, politics will make such a development impossible" https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2022/05/en-larry-romanoff-chinas-high-speed.html
It's easy to look down on Americans and our dysfunctional culture, but the deck has always been stacked against us. We're a crushed and demoralized people by design.
"Vietnam is still Vietnam."
Yep. I'm happy that you found back your roots, Mr. Linh. But what about those who do not have a country to return to? What can one say to an Italian, a French or an American who sees his former country transformed into a multicultural COVID-LGBTQ prison with no jobs and no food? I wish I knew any solution. Perhaps moving to the countryside and seceding, I see few options besides that.
P. S. Georgia Guide Stones bombed (and suddenly demolished to remove all evidence), BJ resigning and former Japan Prime Minister shot. What's going on all of a sudden?
oh and if you need some humor...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bItcoUb5xsw
This is a weird question for you Linh, but I am wondering if you know about any of the orphanages in Vung Tau, and whether they are legitimately trying to rescue children from the street, or if they are a racket of some kind. My mother-in-law just died, and I am searching for a charity that mourners can donate to. My MiL was born in Cho Lon, but I picked Vung Tau because it seems to be overlooked by most of the tourists. You seem to have a high sensitivity or awareness of, for lack of better words, bullshit and/or grift. The one I am interested in is located at 26 Ngô Quyền,
Phường Thắng Nhất, Vũng Tàu.
Dear Linh, You are a lifeline for me of a life where one could travel, wander, observe. I decided to subscribe to substack so you could have 101 subscribers and get a nice meal once in awhile? I am rooted like a tree here, as Richie Havens put it long ago, with a sick husband and an ongoing fear of bringing Covid home to him and killing him, founded or not in fact, as I am responsible for refusing the vaccines. One great advantage of Australia is that the doctors are not allowed to hector to you about getting a vaccine although everyone else does! I will appreciate whatever scraps you throw to your English speaking audience. I first started appreciating your writing when I found pieces you had written from South Africa, my home quite a while ago when apartheid was in full swing when I was 21 and married to a Jew I had met in Vancouver. I still have great affection for the warm, humorous, gracious people I met in Cape Town, mostly Jewish and not at all Bourlas and Soros look a likes. But the facts are undeniable, some of the worst people around these days are of Jewish backgrounds. I still laugh when people tell me seriously that Zelensky cannot be surrounded by because he is of Jewish ancestry. Does that also prevent his corruption I wonder? Anyway keep on truckin', your writing is second to none and I wish I could understand Vietnamese as I love a particular delicacy of expression I in their arts and crafts and music.
Great news.