Pulitzerprisvinneren Viet Thanh Nguyen var 4 år gammel da han forlot Vietnam i april 1975. I forbindelse med minnedagen 30. april for fallet av Saigon, har han skrevet ned noen refleksjoner om denne dagen. Jeg synes teksten er leseverdig.
Today is what many Vietnamese in the diaspora call “Black April.” For them it is the anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. I understand their feelings. I grew up in a Vietnamese community in San Jose, and I absorbed their memories and their unspoken trauma. My own family was marked by separation and division, by people and property left behind. And yet, I could never wholeheartedly endorse this sense of loss and grievance, could never bring myself to say “Black April” (not least of all because if we were to to speak of mourning, we should say “White April,” but that would not go over so well in a white America). Like my narrator in The Sympathizer, I see every issue from both sides, and so I see that for some Vietnamese people this is not a day of mourning but one of celebration. The Fall is for some the Liberation.
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