For next class, we will have a guest teacher, Maria Caroliina Vaz de Almeida, who has kindly prepared these questions for you:
1. In a 2021 article, Hai-Dang Phan mentions the centrality of An-My Lê’s photography to his poetry, remarking that it has allowed him to “reckon with my own thoughts and feelings toward war and conflict, dislocation and exile–and above all toward our shared experience of leaving Vietnam as refugees and growing up in the United States.” Succinctly, An My-Lê’s photography can be interpreted in light of thetransposition of time and space from the Vietnam War into the American landscape through the civil reenactments of the war. Either:
a) Select and comment on one of An-My Lê’s photographs from the collection Small Wars (1999-2002), which you can find here: Small Wars — An-My Lê.
b) Discuss Hai-Dang Phan’s poem “Small Wars” in comparison with An-My Lê’s photograph entitled Rescue (for example, the significance of usingdifferent artistic mediums, the continual process of reenactments, the use of rhetorical devices like Ekphrasis, or others).You can find Phan’s article here, if you would like to read it: Speak, Reenactment | Hai-Dang Phan.
2. Hai-Dang Phan’s work also engages with the turmoil of adopting and writing in the language rooted in the cause of the exodus, seeking to connect geographical dismembering with linguistic disruption. “My Father’s Norton Introduction to Literature, Third Edition (1981)” incorporates and quotes directly from multiple sources of the American and English literary tradition. Either:
a) Identify one of the poems, short stories, or plays referenced in the poem and discuss its significance within the context of Phan’s poem.
b) Comment on the poem’s dialogue with the American and English literary tradition, namely, how the linguistic and literary hybridization further challenges the boundaries of national literature.
phtos by An-My Lê
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