Lê Thi Diem Thúy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lê Thi Diem Thúy (pronounced LAY TEE YIM TWEE; all words uncapitalized) is an award-winning poet, novelist, and performer. She was born in South Vietnam in 1972, during the heart of war. In 1978, she moved to Southern California with her father among the many immigrants called "boat people." Two of Lê's older siblings drowned (separately) early in her life.
Le went to Montgomery High, and then San Diego High. At which in 1990 she became the first San Digoe High student to win the award of National Council of Teachers of English Achievement.
In 1993, while a student at Hampshire College, Lê traveled to Paris to research French colonial postcards from the early 1900's - images of Vietnamese people taken by French photographers. Some of the images she collected would later appear in her performance work.
Lê was cited by the New York Times as one of its "Writers On The Verge," shortly before her novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, was published by Knopf (2001) to glowing reviews. Her work has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Harper's Magazine, and The Very Inside anthology, and among her awards are Fellowships from the Radcliffe and Guggenheim foundations.
In 1998 she returned to Vietnam for the first time in 20 years.
Her powerful solo performance work includes Red Fiery Summer and The Bodies Between Us, which have been performed throughout the United States (at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Vineyard Theater, among others), as well as in Europe. While the former piece reflected many stories later included in The Gangster..., lê is currently basing her next novel on the latter.
- I go about things in an oblique way. It's like a sidelong glance. This doesn't mean I don't like the sharp stab of directness—only that what I like more are all the moments, leading up to that moment of directness or that expression of rage . . . how long rage was silenced before it exploded and at what cost.
- --Lê Thi Diem Thúy, to Disinformation
