Talk: Queer stories need wings … and a microphone!
09:30 am, Sat 18 May 2024
Deutsches Haus
33 Le Duan, District 1, HCMC
Registration link
From Goethe Institut:
“We must make space for the subaltern voices, for the suppressed narratives,” declared R.F. Kuang, a prominent young writer of the Gen Z generation. The stories of people of color, of migrants, of small nations, of women, and of the LGBTQIA+ community have long been marginalized, with few opportunities to speak up, to integrate into the mainstream. Efforts to bring sidelined voices into the literary canon, to be read, and to be discussed, are therefore immensely valuable and essential.
On the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia, the Goethe-Institut HCMC invites you to the literary discussion with German-French writer Jayrôme C. Robinet, whose literature bears the mark of gender transition experiences, Vietnamese poet cat nguyen, who rejects the binary gender system, and Vietnamese researcher Thi Nguyễn, whose personal insights and studies into social and cultural constructs related to gender are profound, titled “Queer Stories Need Wings and… a Microphone” – taken from the very title of Robinet’s M.A thesis.
This discussion hopes to provide readers with the opportunity to engage with the literary works and research of these speakers, to understand better how literature can contribute to the ongoing struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights.
Moderator:
Quyen Nguyen (*1984) is a Doctor of English literature and an independent researcher and critic. She is an English-Vietnamese translator. Her published translated works include What We Talk When We Talk Love by Raymond Carver (co-translator), Atonement by Ian McEwan, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. She is also the co-founder of a non-profit literary website Zzz Review in Vietnam.
Speakers:
Jayrôme Robinet (*1977), born in France, is a writer, translator and spoken word performer. His German-language debut was published in 2015 and premiered as a one-person play at the Maxim Gorki Theater. Most recently, Mein Weg von einer weißen Frau zu einem jungen Mann mit Migrationshintergrund (Hanser Berlin) was published. Robinet is a PhD candidate in oral literature at the Berlin University of the Arts and participated in the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2023 at the invitation of Mithu Sanyal. He holds an M.A. in Biographical and Creative Writing from the Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin and is a certified writing teacher. He is head of the PEN Berlin office.
cát nguyên (they/them pronouns, *1996) is a queer, non-binary storyteller & a living manifestation of the american war in vietnam. they are an experimental poet, performance artist & diasporic dreamer born & raised in the u.s.a. after cát nguyên watched leaves gold & crisp in paris & berlin for several years, they began discovering old roots & planting new ones in việt nam. in 2023, cát nguyên published their debut zine, returning to where i’ve never been & co-founded chữ cháy, a space to re-imagine & experiment with poetry as well as support local & diasporic vietnamese writers to connect with each other and nurture their writing through programs.
Nguyễn Lâm Thảo Thi (*1996) is a writer, translator, and researcher based in Vietnam. Their current research traces the historical trajectories of typing acts in Vietnam and how the Vietnamese language habituated to the edges of bodies and infrastructures. Their writings and translations have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Saigoneer, diaCRITICS (the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network), Asian American Writers’ Workshop, among other venues.
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