#vietnamese-diaspora

#vietnamese-diaspora

Independent bakeries have boomed since the onset of the pandemic and this year they continued to proliferate around bakers' hyperspecific visions, as my colleague Bettina Makalintal has noted. The most compelling examples we scouted around the country this year - part of our regional research for Eater's Best New Restaurants in America in 2025 list, dropping next week - draw influences from personal histories and cultural foodways to create reflective interpretations of traditional and nontraditional pastries.

In Tender Revolutions/Yellow Songs, personal post-war and diasporic herstories are revisited by means of the Vietnamese creation myth, a multi-part origin story told at the outset by Dao, and further narrated by her two poet-collaborators Barbara Tran and Hoa Nguyen, fellow members of She Who Has No Master(s). Co-founded by Dao, this collective of Vietnamese womxn and nonbinary writers of the Vietnamese diaspora "engage in collaborative, polyvocal, and hybrid-poetic works to enact a politics of connection across diasporic boundaries."

It was conceived on a hilltop in Marin County. I was taking a hike with Dave Eggers, who became a friend after we worked on a screenplay together.

The Cleaving gathers a multitude of voices of Vietnamese diasporic authors, revealing the complex legacies of colonialism, militarism, and familial histories intertwined with their literary achievements.