“No object is in a constant relationship with pleasure,' wrote Barthes. 'For
the writer, however, it is the mother tongue.' But what if the mother tongue is
stunted? What if that tongue is not only the symbol of a void, but is itself a
void, what if the tongue is cut out? Can one take pleasure in loss without
losing oneself entirely? The Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me, the
one whose diction and syntax reach only the second-grade level.
As a girl, you watched, from a banana grove, your schoolhouse collapse
after an American napalm raid. At five, you never stepped into a classroom
again. Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all—but an orphan. Our
Vietnamese a time capsule, a mark of where your education ended, ashed.
Ma, to speak in our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese,
but entirely in war.”
―
Ocean Vuong,
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
