{"id":61495,"date":"2021-09-14T18:10:24","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T18:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=61495"},"modified":"2021-09-14T18:10:25","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T18:10:25","slug":"recalling-and-reimagining-vietnam-a-conversation-with-genaro-ky-ly-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=61495","title":{"rendered":"Recalling and Reimagining Vietnam: A Conversation with Genaro K\u1ef3 L\u00fd Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recalling and Reimagining Vietnam: A Conversation with Genaro K\u1ef3 L\u00fd Smith<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

World Literature Today<\/a>
\n2019-08-12<\/p>\n

Mary E. Adams<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English
\nUniversity of Louisiana, Monroe<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Genaro K\u1ef3 L\u00fd Smith<\/a> was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam<\/a>, and raised in California<\/a>. His first book, <\/em>The Land Baron\u2019s Sun: The Story of L\u00fd Loc and His Seven Wives<\/a>, won the 2015 Indie Book Award for best poetry collection. His other works include <\/em>The Land South of the Clouds<\/a> and <\/em>The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born<\/a>. He earned an MFA from McNeese State University and has taught creative writing at Louisiana Tech University since 1999.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mary E. Adams<\/strong>: Your first book, The Land Baron\u2019s Sun: The Story of L\u00fd Loc and His Seven Wives<\/em><\/a>, focuses on your grandfather\u2019s life, loves, and, ultimately, his years of hard labor in a reeducation camp<\/a>. Why did you need to tell his story?<\/p>\n

Genaro K\u1ef3 L\u00fd Smith<\/strong>: I learned by the age of thirty just how much of his life was kept from me, the hardships he had to go through. L\u00fd Loc was once rich, powerful, and all of that was gone after the fall of Saigon<\/a>. You\u2019re looking at a man who owned so much land, who had seven houses, seven wives, twenty-seven children, who was a major commander for the South Vietnamese army<\/a>. To have to write a letter to my mom in America<\/a> begging for money is a lowly place to be. All of the sudden, out of your twenty-seven children, you have one in America who works at a sweatshop<\/a> making dresses, blouses, and slacks for fifty cents per item stitched, and you\u2019re asking her for money in order to eat, in order to be clothed. That\u2019s the thing I had to deal with growing up, knowing he lived the rest of his life as a poor person…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recalling and Reimagining Vietnam: A Conversation with Genaro K\u1ef3 L\u00fd Smith World Literature Today 2019-08-12 Mary E. Adams, Associate Professor of English University of Louisiana, Monroe Genaro K\u1ef3 L\u00fd Smith was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and raised in California. His first book, The Land Baron\u2019s Sun: The Story of L\u00fd Loc and His Seven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,1245,13743,8],"tags":[26377,31884,1130,8900],"class_list":["post-61495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-biography","category-interviews","category-media-archive","tag-genaro-ky-ly-smith","tag-mary-e-adams","tag-vietnam","tag-world-literature-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61495"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61500,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61495\/revisions\/61500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}