Home Event Listings Discussion | Footnotes to History: Unveiling Hidden Histories Through Diasporic Literature

Discussion | Footnotes to History: Unveiling Hidden Histories Through Diasporic Literature

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06:30 pm – 08:30 pm, Tues 06 May 2025
Level 2 – Deutsches Haus
33 Lê Duẩn, D.1, HCMC
Language: Vietnamese, English, and French (simultaneous interpretation provided)
Registration link

From the organizer:

“History is not only written in grand events—it breathes in the quiet, often unseen stories of ordinary lives.”

This panel examines the Vietnamese diaspora in Europe through its lesser-known narratives: the struggles, the resilience, and the ephemeral connections that conventional histories overlook.

Drawing from their experiences, panelists—acclaimed Vietnamese-European writers— will explore how these realities have informed their literary works. In what ways have migrations, identities, and notions of belonging been transmuted into their literary creativity? What historical truths emerge through these texts—and how does their resonance transcend geographical and temporal boundaries?

These narratives invite us to consider literature not merely as witness, but as active participant in the ongoing dialogue between memory and modernity.

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.

Cécile 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.

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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