An Ethnic Story
Self-proclaimed short story month , post number 30. “ [T] hat’s why I respect your writing, Nam. […] You could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead , you choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans—and New York painters with hemorrhoids.” That’s a line from Nam Le’s short story “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” first published by Zoetrope and available on their website, here . I read it in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 volume. The quote captures words said by a friend of the narrator (the narrator is also called Nam, and we are probably supposed to think of him as the author himself). So wait: Nam Le wrote about Colombian assassins? Indeed, he did so in a story called “Cartagena,” and please humor me by reading the first few paragraphs of it, available online here . I’ll come back to them in a minute. It seemed strange to see a Vietnamese man raised in Australia and ...