Driving one day in May, I happened to chance upon Nam Lê’s interview on National Public Radio. His Australian British accent, and natural gift of gab pulled me into the discussion and in that space of 10 minutes, I already decided how talented and versatile the writer was.

At once the fortuitous aural encounter made me fall in love with '"The Boat"' (before reading it) and thus impressed with the author’s candid revelation, I considered the volume a must- read. Several weeks and 272 pages later, having read the reviews, having met Lê at his book reading in San Jose and pondering all seven stories, I set out to find out more about this young man of 29.

By now, Lê probably knows the impact he has on his readers. Yet, the passion he has for his craft during the four years that he’s spent writing putting his heart and soul into his stories perhaps is more paramount than worrying about the fringe benefits of adulation, about how the readers may swoon for him.

That his words are as naturally eloquent in real life as they are on the pages is of no surprise to me. For I believe what makes '"The Boat"' so interesting and compelling, aside from the diversity of characters, panoramic settings and the universality of the human condition, is how the author sees, understands and forges these elements into lifelike situations, exuding a sense of genuineness and conviction throughout his work. Lê has truly invested in the plots and the characters, and in the process inhabits their souls and breathes life into their persona.

In the last dozen years or so, there has been a good crop of mostly young and some not-so-young Vietnamese American writers who have burst onto the American literary scene. They either created a name for themselves with their debut novel or were already successful in their own right in other endeavors, to wit: Nguy?n Quí  Ð?c with '"Where the Ashes Are"' (memoir,1994); Lan Cao with '"Monkey Bridge"' (1997); Andrew X. Ph?m with '"Catfish and Mandala"' (2000), and '"The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars"' (2008); Duong Van Mai Elliot, '"The Sacred Willow"' (2000); Linh  Ðình, '"Fake House"' (2000) a collection of short stories; Monique Truong (also a corporate lawyer-turned writer), '"The Book of Salt"' (2003); Dao Strom, '"Grass Roof Tin Roof"' (2003); lê th? di?m thúy (who prefers her name written in small letters), '"The Gangster We Are All Looking For"' (2003); Kiên Nguy?n, '"The Unwanted"' (2001), '"The Tapestries"' (2003), and '"Le Colonial"' (2004); Quang X. Ph?m, '"A Sense of Duty"' (2005); Uyên Nicole  Ðuong (judge, attorney and law professor who has not given up writing or singing) '"Daughters of the River Huong"' (2005); Andrew Lâm, '"Perfume Dreams"' (a collection of essays and shorts, 2005); Aimee Phan, '"We Should Never Meet"' (2005); Julie K.L.  Ðàm with '"Some Like It Haute"' (2006); and Bích Minh Nguy?n, '"Stealing Buddha’s Dinner"' (a memoir, 2007).

Having met and read about half of these writers’ works, I believe Lê’s '"The Boat"' is one of the most eloquent and well-rounded among them. His perspicacity, sensitivity and an eye toward the complex development of characters put him far a field among his contemporaries. His diverse character studies, along with his rich and varied landscape, have earned him a mature standing among more established writers.

In contrast with the beginning of the Vietnam diaspora, (after 1975) when young Vietnamese were shoed into the sciences, medicine and engineering, their later counterparts whose circumstances and sensitivity were crying out for a better channel of expression and thus a path less traveled have taken a complete departure from what life’s traditional necessity may dictate (what their parents may want for them).

Lê shared some of his thoughts with Nguoi Viet 2:

NV2: Do you feel that overseas Vietnamese writers now are more confident to become the mainstream, yearning to do what satisfies them and beginning to tackle other subject matters other than what is expected of them?

Lê: Books are always built, in large part, from other books, and for me the influence of the language in which I read outweighs the influence of any innate Vietnamese subject matter. That said, my book trades somewhat on Vietnamese subject matter (as do, I note, all the books written in English by the aforementioned writers with Vietnamese roots). The question of where such subject matters sits in relation to the mainstream is a complicated one: think of the emergence of the Jewish generation who brought Jewish subject matter into the literary mainstream (or, more recently, the similar incidence in South Asian writing). The mainstream is a mediating prism that moves according to its own set of circumstances; its anathema, to a writer, to think about it while writing. Ultimately, I reckon writers should always and only do what satisfies them in their writing; to me, it’s the nexus between this and any individual interrogation of identity that goes to the heart of why we write in the first place and it’s this that’s probably unanswerable.

NV2: Do you consider yourself a writer who has both feet planted firmly in Vietnamese and Anglo cultures, or do you feel more comfortable with one’s sooner than the other?

Lê: There’s no question I’m more comfortable with Western society and Western culture; after all, it’s what I’ve known my whole life. The major Eastern experience I had — that of my family life — was, of course, complected by its taking place in Australia. Not surprisingly, though, the older I’ve gotten the more fascinated I’ve become with those aspects of my heritage I grew up mostly ignorant of. This fascination runs far and deep and I’m sure it will continue to find its way into my work.

NV2: In your case, when you set out to write, how much of the need to prove that you can transcend this self was in the front burner? That you should not be pigeonholed into writing '"ethnic lit,"' writing what you know?

Lê: Ideally, I don’t like writing to prove anything: the motivation takes up too much oxygen that’s always needed elsewhere. The aesthetic and rhetorical onus in fiction is already so heavy (and hard to handle) that any non-intrinsic burden of proof is likely to bog down the whole thing. In this case, I find the dictum to '"write what you know"' very interesting, since, for me, the moment I think a character is completely '"known"' (whether by author, reader or even other characters) is the moment that that character becomes false or flat to me. The idea of '"self"' is by nature one that’s in flux, that’s open to persuasion, that’s never fully set all of us have many '"selves"' so it’s wrong to pigeonhole anyone on the basis of a single ascribed self (such as an ethnic one). To me, to write what you know is to continually try and necessarily fail to come to terms with all the things you don’t know.

NV2: With all those difficult and complex character development and their psyches believably conquered in "The Boat," do you not feel resoundingly vindicated at least, on behalf of your contemporary Vietnamese writers whose collective angst and insecurity may have been thrust upon you to answer?

Lê: I can only speak for myself and only in part for my own work. I tried my best to make each of these stories self-contained, self-standing. I wanted them each to answer to their own specific concerns and exigencies, and in part this meant trying to establish a specific authority in each story to convince readers to keep reading to maintain their suspension of disbelief. In my quest for authority in each of these stories, it was difficult enough to overcome my own angst and insecurity let alone anyone else’s! In the end I try not to think of my writing as being on anyone’s behalf but my own, as being representative of anything but my own passions and preoccupations.

NV2: Did you not feel that in one fell swoop (with '"The Boat"') that you have, once and for all, put all the preconceived notions to rest? That is, you are not threatened by the Vi?t Nam liability if there is such a thing which may detract a talented writer like you from having mass appeal?

Lê: I guess one of the enterprises of '"The Boat"' is to move away from a mode where Vi?t Nam is either liability or advantage; as you suggest, that’s a simplistic mode unequal to dealing with concerns that are patently not simple. Whether the book succeeds on this front is up to readers not me to judge. I will say, though, that I didn’t write it with mass appeal in mind. As with most writers, I’m sure, a thoughtful readership is much more important to me than a wide one.

NV2: Instead you open and close your book with two Vietnamese stories, and in the middle — your center you paint an Australian setting with '"Halflead Bay,"' a novella-length story. It’s where you’ve grown up, becoming comfortable and familiar with the high school characters and its attendant familial surrounding and background and the final denouement, cathartic or non cathartic as it may turn out. In between, you have dwelled deeply into separate and wide divergent subjects.

In '"Cartagena,"' you told a story of a young teenage for-hire assassin, and '"Meeting Elisa,"' the pathetic and true-to-life albeit cruel story of a renown, aging and dysfunctional New York painter, who prepares to meet his estranged daughter of 18 years for the first time. In '"Hiroshima,"' a Japanese girl and her stream of consciousness and sympathetic ethos, retold in the cadence of Japanese speech, a snapshot encapsulated by a blinding magnesium white flash, reminding the readers of the last day of Hiroshima before the bomb; '"Tehran Calling,"' another complex story about the protagonist’s self search and her exploration of an alien world that both repulses and attracts her.

You seem to have great understanding of these ethnic-specific cultures. You said that you have not been to some of these places but have you not actually lived or befriended with some of these characters as well?

Lê: One of the paradoxes of characterization is that though we may be fundamentally mysterious to ourselves and to each other fiction is built on frameworks of human recognition and interpersonal connection. We leave ourselves in order to immerse ourselves in foreign con-sciousnesses in order to find ourselves in them and them in us. Yes, I’ve lived and befriended my characters: all characters are pastiches, in some way, of all the people that I, as writer, have known or read or dreamed about and I trust that these characters can then be actualized by all those people who populate the minds and hearts of my readers.

NV2: Do you believe that a writer carrying the gene of his progeny’s burdened past is intrinsically more sensitive, and thus more than anyone have the capacity to retell the universal human desperation (suffering) more convincingly? How does this relate to our own circumstances? That he neither has to hide from his roots, where he might have been defined, limited or shackled by it nor should he dread that he may not be able to plumb the depth of despair of his culture?

Lê: In some ways I believe a writer is himself written, is held more in thrall to his unwritten words than his words to him. A burdened past can add weight to these unwritten words. You know that idea that suffering can be a person’s gift? For a writer, inherited suffering be it familial or historical can be exactly that: an awesome and terrible gift. Once received, it can’t be returned all a writer can do is try to leaven it through communication.

NV2: And if I may be so preposterous, in your title story, '"The Boat,"' did you at some point not feel that you might have not done enough justice in retelling the wrenching escape ordeal?

Lê: The ordeal of refugees fleeing Vi?t Nam after the war like many ordeals during times of conflict and privation and atrocity can never be properly rendered in words. No amount of telling can ever do it justice. But this doesn’t mean we should stop trying. The truth carries little justice and less comfort but it’s all we have: once the survivors are gone, only the telling survives.

NV2: I know you are from the southern coastal town of R?ch Giá where many boat people fled Vi?t Nam, and you and your family may have departed from there as well. But somehow as a reader, I found '"The Boat"' somewhat disjointed. Was it difficult to tell this story, where the abyss of despair may reach certain slices of life closer to you, where truth maybe stranger/crueler than fiction?

Lê: '"The Boat"' was as much imagined as any of the other stories in the collection; I left Vi?t Nam with my family when I was less than 1 year old and of course remember nothing of it. Was it more difficult to tell this story because it was closer to home? Beyond the inherent difficulty of the subject matter no, I don’t think it was. Still, I think it may have had a different emotional effect on me during its composition. Being a boat person myself, I felt a sharper need to bear witness in this story than in the others. That meant my stepping outside of the story and judging it on something other than its own terms. I wonder whether some similar process may have played out for you, whether you found the story disjointed less because the subject was closer to me as a writer but because it was closer to you as a reader.