Discussion | Voices of Resiliences: Female Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora
06:30 pm – 08 pm, Thurs 08 May 2025
Goethe-Institut Hà Nội
58 Phố Nguyễn Thái Học, Quận Ba Đình, Hà Nội
Language: Vietnamese, English
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From the organizer:
For Vietnamese women writers in the European diaspora, the act of writing opens up notions of intersection and introspection. In their works, we encounter struggles of identity—efforts to transcend the binaries of tradition and modernity, of expectations and aspirations, and of rigid definitions of womanhood. To read their literature is thus to discover the unique paradoxes of diasporic womanhood: the tension between familial expectations, motherhood, and private personal yearnings. And in their stories, we also find both the ever-longing to belong in lands they call “home”, the quiet dialogues through which they claim space in a literary world that often neglects both Asian and feminine voices.
Immersing ourselves in these writers’ worlds is like stepping into an intimate journey. Amidst their struggles—between preserving cultural roots and forging individual identity, between countless named and unnamed challenges—we’re invited to reflect anew on the meaning of literature and storytelling, and on the power of narratives. Can writing serve as a vessel for preserving the stories and perspectives of a community with its distinct particularities? Or does its potential extend even further? We warmly invite all literature lovers to join us in this exploration.
About speakers:
Vanessa Vũ
Vanessa Vu is a journalist and author at ZEIT. In 2024, she published her debut book, «Komm dahin, wo es still ist» (Rowohlt), an epistolary exchange with her Syrian husband Ahmad Katlesh on refuge, migration, and identity. Born in Germany in 1991 to Vietnamese parents, Vu spent her childhood in an asylum shelter in Pfarrkirchen—an experience that deeply influences her work.
Since 2017, she has been an editor at ZEIT ONLINE, focusing on migration, human rights, and social justice through reports and essays. She hosts the monthly series «Klassenzimmer» at Berlin’s Schaubühne theatre, addressing poverty and classism. From 2018–2023, she co-hosted the Vietnamese-German podcast «Rice and Shine».
Her accolades include the Theodor-Wolff-Preis, Helmut-Schmidt-Preis, and Lessing-Preis für Kritik.
Cecile Pin
Cecile Pin grew up in Paris and New York City. She moved to London at eighteen to study Philosophy at University College London, followed by an MA at King’s College London. She previously worked in publishing. Her debut novel Wandering Souls was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for fiction, the Prix Femina Etranger, and shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
Khuê Phạm (she/her) is an award-winning Vietnamese-German journalist and writer. A graduate of the London School of Economics, she worked as a producer for NPR’s Berlin bureau before becoming an editor at the weekly Die Zeit. She also contributed op-eds to the Guardian and USA Today. In 2012, she co-wrote “We new Germans”, a non-fiction book about second-generation immigrants in Germany. Her debut novel “Brothers and Ghosts” was published in English translation in Australia, Britain and the US. She is also a performer in “Kim”, the stage adaptation of her novel, which has been touring in Germany and Taiwan. Khuê is currently writing her second novel and has recently received a grant by the German Literary Foundation to support her work. A founding member of the PEN Berlin writer`s association, she is a also a juror for the International Literature Prize, an award for global literature translated into German.
Anna Moï
Anna Moï, born Trần Thiên Nga in 1955 in Saigon to a “Nord 54” family (Northern Vietnamese who migrated South in 1954), grew up across Saigon, Buôn Ma Thuột, and Hội An. In the 1970s, after earning her baccalaureate at Lycée Français Marie Curie, she moved to Paris to study History at Université Paris-Nanterre before pivoting to fashion, training at École de la Chambre Syndicale. She became a designer and opened her own Paris boutique under the name Anna Moï – later adopting it as her pen name.
She wrote her first poems at 16 (published in US magazines), then paused writing for over 20 years. Her debut narrative work appeared in 2001; as of 2024, she has published eight narratives and three novels.
Honored as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, her novel Le Venin du papillon (The Butterfly’s Venom), published in Vietnamese by Tre Publishing (January 2025), won the 2017 Prix Littérature-monde.
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