The Story about Cropped Black Hair and Trousers

Do Hoang Dieu
Writer

The Japan Foundation's Kaiko Takeshi Memorial Asian Writers Lecture Series, funded by donations from the family of the late Japanese writer Kaiko Takeshi, has invited literary figures from Asian countries every year since 1990 and introduced to many Japanese people Asian literatures that otherwise might remain unnoticed. The program's selected lecturer in 2008, Vietnamese author Do Hoang Dieu, contributed this essay in which she discusses her thoughts on gender and literature in Vietnam today.

Over twenty years ago, I had a best friend who had a younger sister. A year after I came to know her that girl turned a half male, and now she has become an entirely man. It is a long story. When she was around ten, she was a lovely girl full of dreams for her future, with long silky black hair and wearing a pretty pink skirt. One day, her parents forced her to cut her hair short, and by so doing shattered all her dreams and aspirations. The parents were following advice from a fortune teller, who told them the girl would not live long unless she wore her hair short like a boy. But the girl lost more than just her long hair; she lost herself. She tore up her colorful feminine clothes one after another with her own hands, broke the arm of a doll she used to love, and started wearing her brother's clothes. Her voice became hoarse. The warm, gentle demeanor disappeared and was replaced by rough, aggressive behavior. Convicted of assault and drug offenses, she was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2010 and has been locked up in jail since. She had served time on three separate occasions before, all on similar charges.

People say she is homosexual. They look down on her, call her names. One time, in tears, she asked me, "If I told you that I am what I am today because of the hair and the trousers, would you believe me?" This was shortly after my book Incubus was released and I had become an instant subject of bashing on the Internet and in "public security" newspapers. I not only believed her, I also related to her emotional story and deeply engraved her words in my heart. There is no question that what had destroyed the femininity in her and spawned a grudge and violence in its place was the coercive treatment she had received. These incidents are not unique to my friend's sister or to my book; the high-handed approach is a norm that permeates the entire Vietnamese society.

Now let us go back to Incubus. What would the public reaction have been like had the book written by a senior male writer? Or if the author's name on the cover were an American name like Wendy or a Chinese name like Mae Loy, instead of Do Hoang Dieu, and if the book were listed as foreign literature, what then? Then we would not have seen this huge public outrage or the relentless attack on me that has lasted for five whole years. Unfortunately, I was a young woman of age 27, born in a traditional farming village in Vietnam and educated at prominent institutions in Hanoi. My background implied that I should be the kind of woman who dressed in ao dai and wooden sandals with thick soles, one who took delight in writing Luc Bat poems praising my husband or Ho Chi Minh. But here is the real me: I wear short skirts; I am open about my sexual desires; I have authored a novel about a woman who is raped by her husband's ghost; and I have argued in my writings that Vietnam's glorious past is now burdening our modern society and that China is a horrible monster hovering over Vietnam. In short, I wrote some things that are considered unacceptable by Vietnamese standards. They are deemed unacceptable because I am a Vietnamese woman, a member of an ethnic group that adheres to Confucian ethics, and a citizen of a communist state.

Let me prove my point by using an example of domestic and foreign literature about Nguyen Trai. Nguyen Trai, a man of great wisdom and culture, is one of the most revered historical figures in Vietnam. If the Vietnamese were to pick one person to worship, it would be Nguyen Trai over any contemporary figure. Over a decade ago, the translated version of a historical novel featuring Nguyen Trai written by French woman writer Yveline Feray was published in Vietnam. Set in 15th century Vietnam, the book, Dix Mille Printemps (Ten Thousand Springs)--Van Xuan, in the Vietnamese version--portrays the esteemed scholar as someone who had an extravagant sex life. The book is packed with page after page of steamy scenes in candid detail, enough to make any reader blush. Not only that, Feray also portrays the other characters in the kingdom to have indulged in excessive promiscuity. Despite being a historical novel, the book is not dry but rather a lively read, with its many explicit details. The Vietnamese media spared no words in complimenting Feray for her superb knowledge of Vietnamese history and the exceptional job she did on the great Nguyen Trai.

Years later, in 2009, Nguen Thuy Ai wrote a collection of short stories titled Tột Đỉnh Tình Yêu (The Pinnacle of Love). The author is a Vietnamese female writer currently residing in Vietnam. The book was immediately taken off the shelves and banned from sale on the grounds that its "obscene portrayal of the historical figures' love life distorts history and insults Nguyen Trai." I have perused the two works and found that Ai spared only a few lines to desscribing Nguyen Trai's lovemaking scenes, a negligible amount compared to the thousands of pages by Feray.

There is another example. Five young female poets from Ho Chi Minh City known for their postmodern writing style formed a group named Nhóm Ngựa Trời (Pegasus) and released a book of poetry titled Dự Án Phi Thời Tiết (The Weather Forecast without the Weather). The cover shows the image of a lingam, artistically camouflaged, and the poets themselves. The book was banned the moment it was published, reportedly because it used vulgar language, contained explicit sexual content, and the cover was offensive to readers. Meanwhile, the work of Austrian female writer Elfriede Jelinek, Tin oi la tinh (Women as Lovers), which was published around the same time with a cover reminiscent of a trashy movie ad, was greeted with not a single word of protest from the media. Alas, Vietnamese women aspiring to be writers are doomed to suffer such injustice!

The authorities inflict punishment on out-of-favor writers by withholding publishing permits for their subsequent works and preventing the re-publishing of books once taken off the shelf. But what do actual readers make of this? As might be expected, readers react in several different ways. Renowned music producer Zhang Bin warned me half jokingly that Incubus divided Vietnamese men into two camps: communists and republicans. In a society still influenced by the hierarchical class structure of the past, it is perhaps only natural that class-based biases endure and continue to shape the people's attitudes and perceptions.

Let me first talk about the people who appreciated and supported Incubus. In Vietnam, these people are considered democratic, progressive, and at the forefront of society. Whether they are young, middle-aged, or old, or whether or not they are communists, most are intellectuals. These people embrace the dictum "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me" coined by Karl Marx, the father of Communism. To them, making love is a cultural act, not an obscene one. They are the first to acknowledge that sex is an essential theme in literature, and they appreciate the difficulty of expressing it in literary works. When Incubus came out and caused a public scandal, Nguyen Huy Thiep, one of the few Vietnamese literary geniuses and most noted for his short stories, made the following remark in a media interview: "Sex is the most challenging of themes to write about. It takes the talent and the ability of a first-class writer to express it skillfully. Not everyone has the capability to articulate the issues of history, culture, or politics using sex as a metaphor." Moreover, Alessandro Baricco, the contemporary Italian writer known for Silk, a novel based in 18th century Japan that has been translated into many languages, has stated: "Writing about sex in a literary work is never easy. If your novel warrants it, you just write it. It's as simple as that." Any reader with sufficient insight, respect for the author, and perseverance to read into the author's intentions and the meanings that lie behind the words portraying the intimate scenes would be able to appreciate why writing about sex is such a struggle.

Next, I will discuss the readers who scorn and revile Incubus. Those who disapprove of Incubus and other works containing sexual themes are by no means a minority in Vietnam. There are as many people in this category as there are in the other group--the supporters. The opposition is found in all classes and ages. Utterly indoctrinated in Eastern philosophy and Confucian traditions, they are incarcerated body and soul. Sex must be a part of their lives, yet they refuse to admit it or to discuss it. The Eastern notion that perceives sex as obscene and filthy runs deep in their veins. It is a forbidden topic even between a man and his wife, let alone for a writer to discuss in a book for millions to read! They worry that if the public laid their hands on such dirty books, it might provoke a social upheaval and wipe out all forms of ethics and morality. So no, these opponents maintain, such books cannot be condoned, but should be done away with using whatever means necessary.

If we look back on history, perhaps Eastern philosophy is not the only factor that deserves the blame here. Look at Vietnam's antique art works. There are ceramics decorated with reliefs depicting the natural union of man and woman. If you visit My Son, a former religious center of the ancient kingdom of Champa, you are certain to find a number of images of the lingam on the ruins. Speaking of the East, Japan is an island nation with East Asian culture, and the Japanese have firmly held onto their cultural traditions, more so than anywhere else on this planet. Japanese art intrinsically revolves around harmony between man and nature. It is beautiful, pure, and serene in every respect. And in Japanese art, sex is regarded as one of the elements that shape the sacred harmony between Yin and Yang. Take a look at Tako to ama (Octopus and Shell Diver), a woodcut print by Katsushika Hokusai. The pleasurable encounter between a young woman and octopi, although rendered in a light-hearted style, leaves a strong impression on the viewer. Seeing the print, an enlightened viewer would immediately grasp the implications behind the visual image.

Incidentally, what would happen if a contemporary Vietnamese novel--short or long--depicted this kind of activity? Nothing short of a disaster, I assure you. The type of readers we are now discussing would not even bother to hide their disdain. They would castigate the book and accuse it of lacking any hint of humanism, of eroding human decency, and so on. The Japanese writer Murakami Haruki's work Norwegian Wood is a novel filled with sexual activity involving young people. It is rendered beautifully, like a pristine forest where the bright sunshine and deep darkness mingle together. But if the book had been the work of a Vietnamese writer, and published in Vietnam, it might have been banned on the grounds that it would corrupt the young people's moral values. Be that as it may, I am not trying to make a case that Eastern philosophy alone is responsible for all the regressive ways of thinking that exist in Vietnam today.

The intolerant attitude of this segment of readers can in fact be attributed to not one but multiple sources. It is a combination of everything from Eastern beliefs to the rigid, one-size-fits-all education practices that persist even in modern-day Vietnam, to the people's conservative attitude and fear of change, and to the current social atmosphere characterized by the people's reluctance to speak their mind for fear of invisible forces. The anti-Incubus protesters assert that filthy junk (like Incubus) should not be mixed with authentic literature. If these people want to pressure me into chopping off my hair, they are welcome to do as they please. I am more than willing to toss a pink skirt of mine into the trash can anytime. If writers were easily intimidated, literature, which professes to represent the great will, would not stand a chance of survival.

The rest of the readers, who do not fall into either of the categories I have mentioned above, are people who are, for the most part, hesitant about voicing their opinion. There are many readers who enjoy Incubus but do not say so publicly. They choose to remain silent so as to keep their peace. Most women would never admit openly that they enjoy making love to their husbands, because it is considered disgraceful for them to discuss such matters. They are afraid of tarnishing their names. These are the cautious lot who, when they come across a kissing scene on television, cover their faces with their hands but watch the whole thing through the gaps between their fingers.

There is another group of people in this same category: those who lack a firm position on any issue and are as changeable as a weathercock. They say one thing to someone and say the precise opposite to another. Even now, to my dismay, I often have a hard time discerning who is speaking his/her honest mind and who is being deceptive. Let us look at the case of Vi Thuy Linh, an outstanding contemporary female poet who is also a member of the Vietnamese Writers' Association. Her poetry is filled with the scent of sensuality. When she made her debut, her poems were greeted with a storm of criticism. One time, I was at a café and happened to overhear the conversation of customers sitting at the next table: someone was speaking passionately about how wonderful Linh's poems were. Excited, I turned to find out who this person was, and when I did I felt as if I were struck by lightening. To my shock, it was one of the journalists who had been severely condemning Linh's works. Shortly after Incubus was published, I visited Ho Chi Minh City on a business trip involving some legal work. There, the local literary community and readers chased me around like a hunter after prey. The book's supporters came to me to share their approval, and the critics to take a look at the wretched criminal. What I found out later was that some of the people who pasted smiles on their faces and posed for a photo with me that day were the very critics who had lambasted my book in their articles.

Among the so-called readers are a good number of people who have not actually read the book. They have learned the plot by reading media critiques or listening to their friends talk about the book. They eagerly critique the work they haven't even read in front of others as if they have gone over it dozens of times. But this lot is not all that harmful, and in fact I sometimes pity them.

The next group of readers I am about to discuss forms an unusual segment of the population. They are people who have been instructed to read certain books and to express particular views and comments about them. This type of reader is likely to exist only in Vietnam, China and North Korea. They obey the ruling party's or the authority's orders, and say only what has been permitted by them. The sad thing is, among these repressed readers are quite a few people blessed with both intelligence and humanity.

This brings us to the question, what is the reason for all the misgivings by the Communist party and the Vietnamese government about literature with sexual content? Are they concerned that, if left unchecked, unconventional literature or culture would wind up undermining their hold on power? If that is the case, their fear is totally unfounded. Is it not true that the philosopher Plato argued art is nothing more than a representation of copies of reality? According to his theory, art is immaterial and elusive like the clouds in the sky, lighter than a spider's thread. It could never become a force strong enough to challenge the absolute power of the current regime, one of the most resilient authoritarian governments in the world. Vietnam in the past has had an ideological conflict that caused grave turmoil and misfortune. Drawing from this lesson, perhaps the authorities believe it is wiser to remove any potential signs of disturbance in the early stage rather than to turn a blind eye, however small they are and even if they are a false alarm.

In the case of Incubus, the government had a legitimate reason to be concerned. The book discusses politics, a taboo subject. All the other works that depict sensual scenes, however, use them purely for the purpose of character development, and it makes no sense to me that they were censured or that they encountered difficulties in publishing. Government officials offer explanations along the lines of, "These kinds of books degrade the good manners and customs of our people; they have a negative influence on our youths and violate public morality." This is nonsense. Any intelligent person would see straight through this rubbish and know it is an excuse to defend the government's display of its overreaching power. Just to be fair, I should mention that there are some books with sexual themes not worthy of being called literature, owing to the writers' lack of experience or skills. A real democracy, however, should not ban such writings, either, so long as they are not considered on an equal footing with genuine literature. The second-rate works would soon lose readership and inevitably disappear.

As I have illustrated, we cannot deny that sex is a difficult and risky theme for writers. But if it is vital to the work, the writer's job is to write it as best as he/she can. The Vietnamese readers' attitude toward literature with sexual contents generally varies from one work to another. What is indisputable, however, is that while both the authorities and the public readily accept this type of work by foreign authors, they are extremely intolerant when it comes to domestic writers. Next, I will illustrate how the Vietnamese are inclined to worship foreign countries.

In discussing this topic, we cannot overlook male supremacy and the issue of women's rights in Vietnamese society, including the Vietnamese literary world. A recently released statistics on the male/female ratio in Vietnam stunned many of us. There were 100 females to every 106.2 males in 2009. This gender imbalance is by no means insignificant. The skewed population, designed to maintain a patriarchal family structure and traditional social order, was achieved through attempts to defy natural law. For instance, wives who are unable to bear boys are divorced, or fetuses are aborted once they are determined to be girls. In worse cases, female babies are suffocated to death the moment they are born. Everyone--whether wives, husbands, grandparents, high-ranking government officials, people in lower classes, farmers, or intellectuals--is actively taking part in this endeavor to turn Vietnam into a country with an increasingly male population. Could they really be happy with what they have accomplished? Soon, every Vietnamese man might very well have to share his wife with another man! I am aware of the various inequalities abound in every nation around the world, be it a democracy or a communist state. But we are seeing many countries gradually regain balance as they develop. The United States, for instance, has abolished slavery, a cruel system it once practiced. The important thing is whether the people have the right to fight, the liberty to fight. On this matter, Vietnam is regressing. During the feudal era, the female population was larger than that of males, and each man married five to seven wives so as to enable most women to settle down with a man. Today, if a man wanted to get married he would have to share a wife with a few other men.

During the feudal era, Ho Xuan Huong, known as the Queen of Nom poetry, boldly defied the traditional role and status of women. In one of her exquisite double entendre poems, Huong depicted the sexual union of a couple as follows:

A boy pumps, then arcs his back.
The shapely girl shoves up her hips.
Four pink trousers flapping hard,
two pairs of legs side by side.

In contrast, Nguyen Du, a celebrated poet and Huong's male contemporary, used much more discreet language to describe the bathing scene of Kieu, the principal female character in his poem:

Her marble skin was so beautiful
Just the way the Creator had created

The audacious poem by Huong has long been read and cherished, and it survived through traditional society. But today, everything is moving backwards. As I mentioned earlier, all hell broke loose when Incubus was published, simply because the author--myself--was at the time a 27 year-old bachelorette. Had I been a 60-year-old man with five wives, the book would not have caused a controversy of this magnitude.

Objectively speaking, there is no arguing that in recent years Vietnamese women are beginning to achieve a respectable social status through hard work and talent. Even so, there is something chilling about the way Vietnamese men look skeptically at the women and the way they harshly judge them. The gender bias is so deeply ingrained and entrenched in the men's psyche. Are Confucius' teachings to blame? Or is it a remnant of the old system? Could it be that Vietnamese women are truly inferior to the men? None of these are by themselves a sufficient explanation. There cannot be gender equality where there is no foundation of democracy. Progress cannot occur in a society that embraces an inflexible education system with overloaded curricula. Some have pointed out from a more comprehensive perspective that the ultimate source of the problem is ideology. My personal view is that Vietnam, a country of Vietnamese ideology, is just following the social order that puts men above women, the wealthy above the poor, the old above the young, and so on. The society as a whole is built on the idea that the big (or the strong) should prevail over the small (or the weak). There, that says it all. Here is proof: at soccer games, a popular sport in Vietnam, the Vietnamese invariably cheer for the winning team. On the other hand, Westerners typically root for the underdog because they believe in supporting the weak.

Let us go back to the issue of sex in literature. Sexual topics in literature are often discussed in connection with the battle for women's rights. The problem is that many Vietnamese writers still cling to the social order that positions men above women and the elderly above the young. In fact, numerous female writers have entered the literary world in recent years and are gaining increasing stature, but the majority of male writers are loath to accept their success. Such writers make snide comments about their female counterparts as if trying to sabotage their careers. To them, female empowerment is a silly, worthless cause, because in their eyes Vietnam is already a fair and equitable society. These same writers, meanwhile, recognize Ho Xuan Huong as a genius. They say her poetry is as sacred as it is worldly and that it has the power to cut deeply into the unfair feudal system. At the same time, these men say if a woman wants to write something she should do so in the kitchen, and she should write about something in or related to the kitchen. To them, women's rights do not exist beyond the confines of a kitchen. Their notion of women's rights becomes diluted and obscure in the bedroom, and completely disappears in the living room.

Although men are constantly hungry for sexual encounters, they have not the slightest intention of accepting a woman's writing about the kind of woman who appears in Incubus. Whereas the Chinese government burned copies of Zhou Weihui's novel, the Vietnamese authorities only criticized Incubus. Perhaps they deserve credit for being a little more progressive than our neighbor. What would have become of Thailand's well-known woman writer Kham Phaka if she were Vietnamese? She not only authored erotic novels but also posed nude for a men's magazine in the country ruled by a monarch. For Kham Phaka, making a statement by revealing her bare body was a natural extension of her claim that sex in literature is nothing to be frowned upon. Her action was a brave challenge to the old establishment. All the same, she was fortunate to have been born in Thailand and not Vietnam.

Someone once said that whether or not a reader considers sex as vulgar depends on that individual's views and perceptions. What about writers, then? I will write about sex if I feel it is necessary to communicate my message to the readers. Vietnam will hopefully change some day. I long for the day this country reconciles with its history. We writers will continue to write, waiting for that day to arrive, even if along the way some women have to cut their long hair and burn all their feminine clothes.

Translation from Vietnamese to Japanese: Kato Sakae

Do Hoang Dieu
Do Hoang Dieu was born in Than Hoa Province in North Vietnam in 1976 to a poor but intellectual family. Influenced by her father, a teacher and writer, she grew up reading 19th century French and Russian literature since she was young. Do started writing short stories at the age of nine. At eleven, she won second place in the International Letter-Writing Competition for Young People organized by the Universal Postal Union (UPU), and at fourteen became the youngest award recipient in the Youth Literature Creativity Contest organized by Tien Phong (Spearhead) newspaper. These achievements shaped her aspirations to become a writer, but Do gave up her dream to make a living. After graduating from Hanoi Law University in 1998, she completed the Attorney Training Course, Vietnam Judicial Academy in 2004 and became a legal consultant. In 2003, she published several short stories, including her best known work, Incubus, in literary magazine Hợp Lưu (Interflow) produced by a Vietnamese living in the U.S. These short stories were compiled into a single volume and published under the title Incubus in 2005. Her latest work, Rắn và Tôi (Snake and I) , has not been approved for publication in Vietnam.

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