Story and photographs by Brenda Paik Sunoo
A young Vietnamese girl flashed a smile as she ran up to me. “What you think of my country?” she asked while practicing her fresh, but wildly enthusiastic English. Over the course of my five years as a Korean American expatriate in Vietnam, this question is, perhaps, the most frequent one I’ve been asked.
What I often want to say is that today I have a very different image of Vietnam compared to the war images I saw on my TV screen in the 1960s and 1970s. I want to express that reconciliation is, indeed, occurring between the United States and Vietnam, not only on the economic and political fronts, but on a grassroots people-to-people level. In my case, a very special relationship emerged between two mothers who decades ago may have easily been considered enemies—but today consider each other sisters and co-authors of a collaborative book, Vietnam Moment.
My first encounter with any Vietnamese occurred in the 1970s. I participated in anti-war demonstrations in New York with other peace activists and Asian American community organizers. I met young Vietnamese student protestors who spoke out against the war—facing great risk and political consequences to themselves and to their families in Vietnam. Nearly 20 years would pass between the fall of Saigon in 1975 and my arrival in Hanoi in 2002. Through a mutual friend in Hanoi, I met Ton Thi Thu Nguyet, a lecturer in English from the Vietnam National University, who became my Vietnamese-language tutor and also my dear friend. We have traveled together to Korea and spent countless hours in each other’s kitchens sharing such specialties as Vietnamese bánh chung (sticky rice with green bean and pork) or Korean kimchi. Mostly, we giggled and shared the intimacies of women in our 50s and now, my beginning 60s.
When I asked her to collaborate with me on this book project, I wanted to explore whether the visual impressions of a foreigner, as captured by my camera’s lens, could resonate more deeply with her addition of traditional Vietnamese text: proverbs, poem or song lines, which are also translated into both English and Korean. I especially wanted the book to be a collaboration between two friends: one Vietnamese and one Korean American, given the history of relations between Vietnam and the United States. If we could match-make successfully, that would be a healing balm.
I hope that both youth and adults will experience the same compassion that we did, learning more about each other’s culture—one image at a time. One moment at a time.
Climb a mountain to know its height,
Raise a child to treasure one’s parents.
(Folk poem)
A Black H’Mong woman carrier her back on her back.
A loving couple can empty the Eastern sea.
(Proverb)
A couple rowing their boat as they gather water fern used to feed pigs.
Straw near the fire will soon burn.
(Proverb)
Young couple at the Vuon Bach Thao botanical gardens in Hanoi.
Clothes make the man,
When naked, all are the same.
(Folk poem)
A man enjoys himself at the beach in Nha Trang.
Selling one’s face to the earth,
One’s back to the sky.
(Proverb)
A farmer weeds the rice field with her sickle in Ha Tay province.
Where do you go in such a hurry?
(Folk poem)
