Just before the pandemic, one of my aunts and my mother were talking at my kitchen counter about one of my photos in a magazine. My aunt hid my eyes with her hand while my mother said quite naturally, “If only you had the big eyes of your sons, you would be prettier.” “And my aunt added:” You should have listened to us for the surgery when you were younger. Now it is too late. There are too many photos of you posted. ”
I have always known this operation specifically dedicated to preventing eyelids like mine from retracting like garage doors: two simple incisions that become two scars, which forces the eyelids to open upwards, in the West. About ten years ago, a friend of my mother’s even offered me her latest finds imported from Korea: two thin strips of “sticky paper” to temporarily achieve the same result. Another of my aunts used a toothpick to draw a line on her eyelids every morning throughout her teenage years, hoping those traces would become permanent scars.
Before those “big” eyes, there were the teeth.
The ancient practice of the Vietnamese bourgeoisie to blacken their teeth became a savage practice when France began to plant coffee and rubber trees in Vietnam. From then on, the singers ceased to glorify these pearls of jet and the poets, to celebrate this black lacquer so powerful that no other color or any decay could leave imprints on it.
Hard to believe, but just before the arrival of Butter and Waltz, white teeth were considered repulsive, as they were reminiscent of those of the dead and represented those of vampires.
After the teeth, there was the tongue.
My uncle Chung started writing in Vietnamese when he was 18 even though he had completed his education in Vietnam. In order to speed up learning, students were prohibited from speaking a language other than French at school, even during recess. My grandparents had not chosen a French name for my uncle. So, according to the inspiration of the moment, his teachers give him a different name at each start of the school year: Charles, Antoine, Henri … His studies in these highly prized boarding schools certainly contributed to his very early daring to form a political party, made up of young people who wanted to represent the citizens trapped between two lines of fire in a country at war. At the same time, these stays immersed in the depths of French culture made him hate fish sauce, the main ingredient and the very essence of Vietnamese cuisine. Fortunately, his greed allowed him to still like some dishes, the less assertive, the less strong on the tongue.
After language, there was writing.
Vietnamese was written with characters like Chinese. It was a language drawn before being Romanized. In 1651, the Jesuit Alexander of Rhodes noted in the Latin alphabet the sound of Vietnamese words to make it the first dictionary. In 1918, the character images were officially replaced with the letters “a, b, c”. Previously, we could see the “legs” in the character “person”, the drops of water in “river”, the “ventricles” in “heart” … Despite the disappearance of these images, some persist: “tear” is composed of two words: nước (water) + mắt (eyes); “Patriotism”: yêu (to love) + đất (earth) + nước (water).
After writing, there was the name.
For a long time, I envied French women to be able to bear their husbands’ name. When I was younger, I had voluntarily amputated my name to reduce it to Kim LY, because a micro-slowdown in the pronunciation of these two sounds could lead to believe that I had a common name: Kim (ber) Ly. Between Vietnamese, I continued to be Thúy. The “Thành” of my last name has been completely discarded. However, he means “to become”. It took the publication of my first book, ru, so that I dare to expose my first name “Thúy” in addition to leaving the acute accent. To my amazement, this accent is preserved wherever my name is mentioned. People are proud to tell me how they went about finding this “ú”. Why insist? Because without the accent, the word “thuy” does not exist in Vietnamese.
My offspring will have a hard time finding me, as “Thúy” is often listed as a last name. But I believe that this name accompanied by my smiling eyes in the form of two hyphens will give them more clues to know my identity than if my name was Kimberly Larose or Kim St-Laurent.
Thanks to all the delicate attentions given to my acute accent over the past decade, I now dare to sign this text as follows:
Friendships,
LÝ THÀNH Kim Thúy