Events › (Virtual/In-Person) The Colors of April : Vietnamese Authors Program

Join us for a special literary event in commemoration of the legacy of the Vietnam War.

San Jose Public Library presents the largest panel of Vietnamese authors in one event. You will meet in-person or virtually selected authors among the contributors of the newly published The Colors of April: Fiction of the Vietnam War's Legacy 50 Years On. Selected authors will read from their works, followed by a roundtable discussion afterward of all contributors. 

Featuring the following authors:

• Annhien Nguyen
• Nguyen Duc Tung
• Barbara Tran
• Anvi Hoang
• Elizabeth Tran
• Gin To
• Kevin Pham
• Tuan Phan

Program moderated by: Cab Tran & Quan Ha (editors), Kat Georges & Peter Carlaftes (publishers).

About The Book: (source: Three Rooms Press)

Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, literary voices of the Vietnamese American diaspora and authors currently living in postwar Vietnam speak to the experience of those who left and those who stayed in this anthology of new short fiction edited by Quan Manh Ha and Cab Tran.

For much of the twentieth century, Vietnam played an outsized role on the global stage, charting the destinies of superpowers and reshaping the world’s politics. Now fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War comes The Colors of April, an anthology of fiction that finally speaks to the Vietnamese experience: voices of both those who left and those who stayed, what was gained and lost in the half century since, and for the generations that followed—what it means to be Vietnamese. More than two dozen distinct literary voices are featured in this collection, including those of Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Lam, Barbara Tran, and Vi Khi Nao, among others. The stories are as diverse in style, tone, and subject matter as the ancestral lands of the Vietnamese people. From the rubble of the Ancient Citadel in Quảng Trị to the makeshift orphanages outside Sài Gòn, from Palo Alto to a tony Lincoln Park apartment in Chicago, the narratives straddle continents and generations, the political as well as the personal. But what they share is much greater than their differences. They speak to a common language, to a culture steeped in history and myth and storytelling that vividly captures the enduring spirit of the Vietnamese people.

“This will be the book I reach for when someone asks about the Vietnam War.“ —Eric Nguyen, author, Things We Lost to the Water

“A powerful collage that bears witness and wraps the reader in the multiple realities of the Vietnam War.” —Micah Fields, author, We Hold Our Breath; Marine Corps combat veteran

About The Moderator:
Cab Tran holds an MFA from University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Vagabond: Bulgaria’s English Monthly, Black Warrior Review, The Iconoclast, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction for Gotham Writers’ Workshop.

Free Admission. Click on Register Link to register.
NOTE: This program is in hybrid format. All registrants will receive a Zoom link to attend the event. All are welcome to attend in-person at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, 150 E. San Fernando St., San Jose, CA 95112, in the Digital Humanities Center (First Floor).

ADA Accommodation Requests.