The author of “The Book of Salt” just won the Guggenheim Fellowship, according to the foundation in a press release here and here.
Monique Truong, the Vietnamese New York-based writer, is among the 180 Fellows chosen from a group of some 3,000 applicants, says the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
“Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of achievement and exceptional promise. One of the hallmarks of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is the diversity of its Fellows. The ages of this year’s Fellows range from twenty-seven to seventy-three, and their Fellowship projects will carry them to all parts of the United States and Canada and around the globe,” according to the press release.
Truong is one of just 60 Fellows who are not affiliated with an academic institution. Sixty-five different colleges and universities are otherwise represented. Among other well-known names is Kimiko Hahn, a Distinguished Professor of English at Queens College, CUNY and an oft-cited poet whose works are widely taught.
Since its establishment in 1925 the Foundation has granted over $281 million in Fellowships to more than 16,900 individuals. “Time and again, the Foundation’s choice of Fellows has proved prescient: thousands of celebrated alumni and scores of Nobel, Pulitzer, and other prizewinners grace its rolls.”
Congrats to Monique Truong! I love the book of Salt very much.
Congrats to her. Good to see a successful Vietnamese in NYC.
Not many Vietnamese in NYC (relatively speaking). Vietnamese are outnumbered by Chinese in NYC by at least 20:1.
Congratulation and best wishes on many more successes.
Wow, a Viet woman who is NOT a hooker. Congrats to this lady. She doesnt have to work in tanning salon or massage parlour to feed her kids. Good for her. She 1 in a million in Little Saigon. Good for her.
Hey “Don’t Give Money. . .” take it easy you dumb prick.
Can we remove this guy’s comment? This guy is an idiot. Get rid of this moron.
This book has a fictional character whose life is strikingly similar to the life of young Ho Chi Minh, the late infamous puppet for China and the communist party. As a result, this book has not been recognized in Little Saigon.
Oh no, she must be a commie. Is that right SAYS? freaking low life dump ass. See a successful one and you hat them with a commie related comment.
Monique Truong is beautiful and talented. Currently based in New York City, like world-class pianist Quynh Nguyen, she is another great Vietnamese with impressive credentials – Yale, Columbia, lawyer, writer.
She got the idea for the novel, The Book of Salt, from a chapter called “Servants in France” by Toklas who wrote about two Indochinese cooks at the summer house in Paris, and established facts about Ho Chi Minh by the historian Stanley Karnow.
The fictional character, Binh, is the last of FOUR boys in a family. He is GAY and forced out of home by his abusive father (not by the Interfaith Council). The outcast Binh worked as a mess boy on a French ocean liner in Vietnam and later found himself in Paris. Over there, he responded to an ad in the paper and was hired as a live-in cook for the famous American lesbian couple Stein and Toklas. Yes, Ho did appear in the novel as a very thin man (due to over-masturbation) whom Binh met on a bridge over the Seine.
On the other hand, Ho at the time called himself Nguyen Van Ba – “Ba” being the Vietnamese term for “THIRD child”. He is NOT gay and a “renowned” professor of octopussy. He signed on as a galley boy aboard a French freighter bound for Europe. He found a job as an assistant pastry cook in the kitchen of the elegant Carlton Hotel in London (NOT a cook in Paris). Later he arrived in France and adopted a militant new name, Nguyen Ai Quoc, or “Nguyen the Patriot”. He remained in Paris for few years and earned money as a painter of fake Chinese souvenirs, a photographer’s assistant, but never a cook. Actually, Ho was the thin man that the fictional cook met on the bridge. The term “a man on the bridge” is a metaphor that the author cleverly used for a man between democracy and socialism. When President Woodrow Wilson arrived at Versailles for the conference that formally ended World War I, Ho drafted an appeal to Wilson to request constitutional government, democratic freedoms and other reforms for Vietnam. Ho never saw Wilson, but his gesture attracted the attention of French Socialists (like Leon Blum) who are critics of colonialism and they invited him to join them. However, a majority of Socialists, enthused by the Russian Revolution, had broken away to form the Communist party. Figuring that the Soviet had the potential global power to liberate Vietnam, Ho joined the Communists and the rest is history.
As long as the young viets stay out of that sh1t hole little saigon where all the criminals and scam artist reside, they will have better chance to become successful.
So , so out there in left field, Soke. Defensive already!
Guess Soke needs to retake history and learn who has the aka Nguyen Ai Quoc, and that communism is a social structure in which classes are abolished.
It’s not about commies but how a person, such as Ho Chi Minh, who was responsible for an era of destruction, started out his mission as a lower classman (servant, aka Nguyen Quoc Ai).
Similarly, reading about Hitler is not a crime. However, the reader should know that Hitler was responsible for an extremely devastating historic event, the Holocaust, in order to fully grasp the intent of the book.
Little Saigon’s Vietnamese-Americans do not celebrate Ho Chi Minh and that’s a fact that cannot be disputed. They do not forget communism just as the Jewish people do not forget the Holocaust.
Books and history are both intriguing. It’s just a matter who’s interested and who’s not. Views and opinions are relative.
Little Saigon IS NOT the center of the Vietnamese world. Who cares if Little Saigon recognizes this book or not. As Vietnamese we should be proud that one of ours has achieved something great.
Why do Viets speak such horrible French? I never heard any Vietnamese speak even decent college level french. Horrible accent. There isn’t any Viet that speaks french, so quit saying any of them speak French, ok?
Fuck Little Saigon. Little Saigon can’t tell me what to think.
Fantastic report,You gain knowledge of something new every day.