Friday from the Archives: ““I was Pearl and my last name was Harbor”: Monique Thuy-Dong Truong’s “Kelly” and Ethnic Southern Memory” by Nahem Yousaf and Sharon Monteith in NCLR 2004
North Carolina needs more writing by all of the ethnic groups who live here, from Asian to African to South American and everywhere in between. NCLR would love to publish works by and about these diverse populations. Whether it’s from memoir and other creative nonfiction or poetry or the short story or a novel, exploring the story of place helps others understand the immigrant experience.
Of course, in the South, there’s an additional dilemma. As Yousaf and Monteith write, “The author poses a question to herself that challenges Southern writing by new immigrants: “How to write about the Southern United States when you are not White or Black?” (47).” Monique Truong was one of the first Asian-American writers to elucidate the immigrant from Vietnam experience here in North Carolina in her short story “Kelly.” Yousaf and Monteith go on:
“The tension the protagonist and her creator express between the will to escape the South and the need to return to the region for self-definition is hardly new in Southern literature, but its Asian American contextualization allows readers the opportunity to view a Southern literary trope through a different lens. … It is Faulkner that informs the ideological texture of Truong’s story, but in ways that begin to open up late twentieth-century ethnic configurations….”
Writing and reading, as we often say, go hand in hand. We process experiences through both actions. North Carolina’s population continues to expand and diversify; welcoming the newcomers will enable new stories not of trauma, but of belonging.
Read the rest of the literary critique on Gale Cengage. Add the 2004 issue to your collection today!
