Hanoi Ink – Reviews Strange Roots Part 3
PART THREE: Anthology smackdown!
In Part 1 of a 3-part series, Hanoi Ink takes a look at the recently published anthology from the Hanoi Writer’s Collection.
Part 2 of Hanoi Ink’s 3-part series on expatriate literary anthologies in Hanoi looks back to an earlier anthology from 2003, and what the writers did next.
The final part of Hanoi Ink’s 3-part series on expatriate literary anthologies in Hanoi from 2003 and 2011.
Hanoi Ink is not really into pissing contests. But I did manage to introduce some of the protagonists of the two anthologies briefly at Hanoi Social Club. And I thought maybe a little side-by-side action might shed some light on the evolving experience of Hanoi expats and émigrés over time.
So how do they compare?
New media: Andy Engleson’s story in Strange Roots channels many of the new media and communication tools that keep us connected to each other as well as distant friends, family and colleagues elsewhere. By my count, Skype, Twitter and Facebook all make an appearance. Once A Book A Time of course takes us back to a Hanoi before any of these, before Hanoi Grapevine or the New Hanoian, when basically everything happening in Hanoi could fit on Elliot’s tiny font double-sided Mực weekly update. The sorely-missed DJ, metal rocker, journalist, martial artist and BMX bandit Dan K provides a nice period touch with “Chat (Not French for Cat)”, an excerpt from a random chat using some kind of now superseded AIM or IRC client, about whether Hanoi’s planned new night market would actually go ahead or be canned due to rumoured official fears that “punk kids would hang around and do drugs and stuff”.
Eclecticism: I’d have to give the nod to Once A Book A Time here, and not just on the strength of Dan K’s other entry, “Ogre”, which seems to be—among many, many other things—a story about a restaurant that chains its customers in cages and serves them food in red plastic dog bowls. Other stories in this collection reference getting lost on a motorbike trip out of Hanoi, a wide range of exotic foods and drinks (more on this below), expat loneliness, dealing with Vietnamese bureaucracy, a whimsical tale of the scent-collecting shoe shiners of the capital, and Connla’s own contribution on “The Karaoke Professors”. There is also wide-ranging and apparently well-informed if somewhat voyeuristic piece on “Sex and the Seaside” by Hugh which—in addition to conjuring up nostalgic thoughts of the old second beach at Cat Ba where back in the 1990s you could string hammocks and camp on the (long since hotel-occupied) beach—also covers such diverse topics as toilet training, concubinage (actually an increasing topic of conversation in Vietnam) and lesbian relationships after marriage.
