1. Can you tell us what prompted your interest in the arts?
I started painting and drawing at a very young age; I must’ve been 5 or 6. In elementary school I was very good at the visual arts--seeing perspective was easy for me; drawing was easy; and I had good eye and hand coordination. With regard to language during this time, the Vietnamese language was in my mind, but in school, everything was in English, and that was very confusing. I didn’t talk much the first few years—the school psychologist believed I was autistic!
2. Generally, newly-arrived immigrants to the United States, including those from Vietnam, do not want their children to focus on Fine Arts. What were your parents reactions to your decision of selecting Fine Arts as a career?
My parents were very concerned for my future—they were sure I would starve. They suggested more practical avenues such as medicine, dentistry, pharmacology. Everyone in my family, parents, brothers, sister, are or were medical doctors, so it was quite an aberration for someone to be an artist in the family.
3. You came to the United States when you were five years old, so one could say you grew up in America. How has being a Vietnamese-American affected or influenced your creative work?
Being Vietnamese-American has been a source of both friction and inspiration. It has allowed me to question ways of being, ways of living, ways of thinking--almost as if I’d slipped into a chasm that I could only escape by questioning almost everything. I am also led by a desire to create beauty which explains my involvement in the visual arts and writing. Vietnam has been an important subject in my poetry, exploring my origins, the people and ways of living. Being American has perhaps given me the freedom to choose the paths I have taken and to express myself within those paths.
4. Besides being a writer, a poet and a visual artist, you also have worked as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in San Francisco and Portland. Would you share with us how you came to that position and your experiences as a teacher in a language different from your native born language.
Yes, I taught ESL off and on for a few years. I also taught poetry, English composition and business writing at the University of Arizona. Well, you could say I grew up in English rather than in Vietnamese. Because I never went to school in Vietnam, having left when I was five, I grew up on Shakespeare, Thoreau, Whitman and Dickinson, the bread and staple of American / English thinking and literature. Though I spoke and continue to speak Vietnamese at home, my formal training has been in English, and so my expertise lies there. My experiences? It was work, hard work teaching. My students were surprised at first to have an Asian-looking instructor, and then they liked to test me. After a while they realized that I am fluent in English and began to trust me.
5. Song of the Cicadas is your first book of poems. Please tell us a bit about it. (See Sand, Flies, & Fish and Ravine)
Song of the Cicadas, my first book of poems published by the University of Massachusetts Press, is mostly about my experiences in Vietnam, when I was there in 1995-96. The book is in four parts: three of the four parts deal specifically with Vietnam, its cities and villages, Saigon, Hanoi, Hue, Vinh Long, Ha Tien. In one part the poems deal with San Francisco and Mexico. I lived in San Francisco from four to five years in the 90’s and travelled throughout Mexico for 2 months in 1995 and lived in Texas, once part of Mexico, for over 15 years. I feel very close to Latino culture because I learned how to read and write in Spanish in elementary school when living in El Paso, much earlier than when I learned to read and write Vietnamese.
I named the book Song of the Cicadas because I grew up listening to the sound of cicadas, in Vietnam, as well as in Texas. Cicadas, in Vietnamese, con ve sau, are insects that live in the ground between 7-13 years, depending on the species of cicada, and come up to the air, sing and mate for about thirty minutes, then die. The whole book grew from memories of living here in the United States and there in Vietnam.
The structure and style of my poems are derived from particular personal experiences—I usually don’t have a plan for the structure of any poem. I let the poem take over, let the spirit of the poem have its say; I try not to interfere with what the poem wants to say or do. I have noticed that what comes to the page is language broken up according to emotional experience in a very organic way.
As for style, that is has to do with one’s personality, what one is attracted to, and the whole effect comes off as one’s style.
6. What is your exposure to traditional Vietnamese poetry? Please comment on the differences between traditional Vietnamese poetry structures and yours?
I read Truyen Kieu and works by various other Vietnamese writers of that period. I would say that the structures of traditional Vietnamese poetry have little to do with the structures of my poems. Traditional Vietnamese poetry has certain end-rhyming and syllabic schemes that I don’t employ. But who knows, perhaps subconsciously I employ more Vietnamese poetic schemes than I know—please read it and tell me!
7. You are also a painter and have done many paintings. How would you classify them and please elaborate on your techniques as well as your painting style.

copyright 1994 by Mong-Lan
I couldn’t really begin to classify my paintings. That is probably the work of the art critic! But if I were describing my work to a friend, I would say that my work is somewhat abstract with figurative leanings. My website: www.monglan.com has about 10-15 paintings painted during a time which I was exploring natural forms in collision with technology’s harsh contours.
For instance the first painting, "The Forbidden Room," was done about ten years ago; it’s a very large painting about 6’ x 7’. There are trees in the background, two windows, in mid-air, and on the floor of the forest, a potted orchid plant. for the most part, the colors are pure, unmixed. I love to use colors in their original intensity.
I was exploring the landscape of the mind, what is unexpressed, what is forbidden; after violence or before violence; the imagination. The surreal nature of the imagination. I was trying to orchestrate the colors in such a way that they would sing. Colors resonate with meaning. It was Scriabin, a German composer, who when he heard a note, would see a color. I wanted the reverse with colors. Wassily Kandinsky said that blue is the equivalent of a cello playing. Red naturally is the color of blood, life itself, a very sexual, lively color.
There is a whole series of paintings I did after visiting the Everglades National Park in Florida, and these trees exist there predominanly. I was struck by the size of the trees, their fierceness, their stubborness, their beauty. Also the painting is about a return to nature, a return to respect of nature and trees, and the realization that without them, we will die.
8. Yet another of your fine art subjects is photography. Would you please tell readers how you were first introduced into this field.
I started by using my dad’s camera, a Pentax, bought in Vietnam. I was fascinated in technology, what the eye of the camera could record in an instant. As everyone else, I started playing with the camera. I tried to produce interesting forms in a given space of the camera frame.
9. In your photographic art, you sandwich multiple film images to produce the final exposed print. Please explain this technique for us.

copyright 2000 by Mong-Lan
It’s a complicated process: I sandwiched two negatives together and printed it in the color darkroom. One of the negatives I took using tungsten slide film, then cross-processed it as regular film, to get really strange cool colors. I used regular film with the other negative and processed it C-41. In the color darkroom, I sandwiched the two slides and printed it as one print, trying to keep the colors as saturated as possible.
10. Which medium, writing or the visual arts, gives you more enjoyment?
There is no way of answering that question, as if to answer that one child of yours is better than the others. One medium expresses what the other could never express. The immediacy of the visual image could not replace words, and the range and depth of what words could signify could not replace the visual image.
11. Are there other talents and skills that you would like to share with our readers?
Right now I am fascinated by Argentine tango and salsa. Dance not only expresses beauty through body movement but is a conversation between two people. the tango, for example, is a dialogue between two people, not through words, but through gesture and music. It also can be seen as a way of dealing with the violence of the city, a conversation about the violence of the city and society through the embrace of the tango. Argentine tango originated in the lower classes in Buenos Aires, amongst the Southern European immigrants, and they wanted to create a new dance that expressed their sorrow and longing.
12. What are you working on now? And what about the next year or so? What is in store for you, Mong-Lan?
I am working on several projects right now, working on my third book of poems and working on a book of writings / poems, to be accompanied by visual art, merging the two mediums. This coming year, I’ll also be giving poetry readings in Northern California, Southern California, Seattle, Washington, and the East Coast. I will post the information on my website, www.monglan.com.
13. Many of our readers are also participating in poetry, writing, music, painting and photography, along the path of your talents and interests. If you have to sum up your experiences as an artist, what would you say to them?
Enjoy doing what you do and try to lose yourself in your endeavors. In that way you get to the essence of the art.
Thank you very much, Mong Lan, for accepting this interview and sharing with us your thoughts. Wishing you the best in your future endeavor, and please keep in touch with Vietnam Journal.
My name is Anh Q. Vuong, and I would like to thank you for following this interview with the visual artist, poet and writer Mong Lan. We would like to receive your comments and questions for this column. Your questions and comments will be reviewed and responsed; so, please write to us by sending your email to .
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