Nothing could have prepared me better for this novel than the cover itself. I was exceedingly pleased and surprised by how much the outside of GB Tran’s work suited its innards. The chaotic puzzle of his strained facial expression is the perfect emblem for the struggle of memory in particular as it pertains to identity. As a non-chronological story, Vietnamerica forced the reader to piece together family stories with present day actions in a kind of piecemeal way. History constructed itself in a nonlinear fashion. Sayings were littered throughout the entirety of the novel like little pieces of historical memory that interjected themselves into people’s daily lives. Statements like “our parents care for us as our teeth sharpen so we care for them as our teeth dull” and “they forget nothing and they learn nothing” provide us with profound images that set the tone for the entire novel. Through these simple phrases, we get the sense that our conception of the present is constructed by the past. As we stand ever in the flow of time moving forward, our own history and identity is constantly in flux.
Questions: 1) Why did you decide to tell the story in non-chronological order? 2) Why did you choose to make some dialogue cut off or opaque or incredibly muddled? 3) Why did you to alter the style of the imagery from scene to scene?
To me, Vietnamerica read like the quintessential graphic novel, at least from my experience with them in the class so far and in my past readings. The book seemed like a combination of the wartime story of Persopolis and the deep family soul-searching of Fun Home. I think that this combination worked very well though; GB Tran told a moving, personal, and fascinating story quite well using the graphic medium. I took note of the series of novel graphic techniques he used. For example, he would often illustrate a single panel, often at the end of the page, as an entire comics page itself with tiny panels inside of it. I loved this effect; it made the story feel as though it had another series of stories within it, adding to the depth and the idea that Tran's family's story is not the only one. For me, the major thing that the work lacked was cohesion. In Fun Home, a similar non-linear narrative is used to progress throughout the story (though Vietnamerica did have some form of linearity). However, the reader is tied in with repeating visual cues, such as the map of the narrator's father's life. In Vietnamerica, however, it was at times confusing remembering where in the story something was taking place or how it tied to everything else.
Questions: 1. Do you feel connected to Vietnamese culture? 2. Do you ever feel guilt about the hardships that your family faced and the relative comfort that you grew up with? 3. Why did you choose to depict certain character's voices as you did? (for example, your mother's voice is depicted in cursive.)
The way that GB Tran played around with panelling and speech bubbles was intriguing. Most of the time I really loved it, although at the beginning I found the combination of that and the boatload of unnamed characters introduced to be confusing. After I made myself a cheat sheet with all the grandparents' names on it, the confusion largely cleared up. The cohesion of the plot and repeated phrases at the end really helped tie it all together neatly, a trick which I greatly appreciated, and I felt that several of the page sequences (boarding the plane, when Uncle Vinh steps on the mine) were brilliantly designed and very impactful. The non-chronological sequence was difficult at times, but it helped to impart the confusion GB felt during his own journey to discover his family's past. The pacing was set by when and how he learned these stories, which I believe added to the feel of the novel. Overall, I very much enjoyed it.
1.) If you had the page count, would you have focused more on the sorts of lives you and your brothers and sisters went on to lead in America and/or the struggles you faced while growing up?
2.) Did you or your father ever contact Leonard again?
The thing that struck me most about this novel was Tran's fearlessness with using every aspect of the medium - the look of the book is defined by his willingness to use any graphic novel technique that would communicate his ideas. I particularly liked the family tree on the inside over, the distinct color scheme of every memory (the scene of Tri's life in Saigon is even drawn in an entirely different style from the rest of the book), and the repeated symbols (phrases, images, panel styles). These decisions helped organize and clarify the story, which was I thought was a little confusing but also very organic and true to the experience of learning your family's immigrant history. The final product is less a conventional story than a graphic simulation of Tran discovering his family.
Questions: 1. How did you go about writing dialogue? How much was transcribed from your parents/family members contemporaneously, reproduced from memory, or imagined in the characters' voices? 2. Where did you make the decision to color each scene differently (i.e. from the book's conception, during scripting, during drawing, during coloring)? 3. What do you think your most important decision was with the look of the book?
Wow, that was one damn unique graphic novel. It was entertaining, albeit the story structure was a bit too all over the place for me, especially with it going out of chronological order and that there were so many characters. I sometimes found it hard to keep track of who's who due to each character having several designs because of the great span of time this book covers. I really like the use of typesetting to distinguish between the different narrators in specific events. On a more personal note, I could relate to the entire story because my parents went through the same thing, and I can't grasp how they survived because I never in my life had to starve. This book made me appreciate more what my parents have done for me in giving me an opportunity to live in America.
Questions: 1. Why did you decide to write out of order? 2. How did you choose the art style for this book? Did you always know you were going to stick with this style?
Reading over everyone else's comments, it seems like a lot of us found the story structure and lack of chronology a bit confusing. Vietnamerica is definitely a graphic novel that merits re-reading (probably with a notebook handy to keep everyone straight). I really like the way GB Tran structures his pages, he breaks the grid pretty effectively, and uses parallelism to his advantage. I really like the page where he shows how his mother reacts to her children Americanizing (where we understand the origin of GB and his mother is laughed at for saying "co-walker" instead of "coworker"). It's really effective pacing to show these instances of her discomfort and show how her expression grows more resigned in the passing years. My dad is very close-mouthed about his childhood, but he grew up in Africa during apartheid, which definitely affected his experiences upon moving to America. I can draw a parallel between my curiosity about my father's childhood and GB Tran's fascination with his family history, so it was very satisfying to watch his process of unveiling his family's past.
Questions: 1. What other artists/ works did you draw inspiration from while drawing Vietnamerica? 2. Why did you choose to use actual photos in the middle of the book instead of drawing them?
Vietnamerica was a pretty compelling read. It reminded me of both Maus and Funhouse, in that the youngish author is trying to understand his relationship to parents that remain cryptic. As people have said, I too found the story confusing at times. There seemed to be a lot of different stories going on and between the character's names and the time jumps, I got lost sometimes. I also felt I could have been provided more context about the Vietnam War, as my knowledge of it is pretty basic -- then I would have understood the stakes more. I really appreciated the visual aspects of this novel; for example, the tonal contrast between the grim war scenes and the more carefree existence at the beachside home. I thought his trick of conveying overheard conversations through broken up text was really clever and the brackets to represent a different language being spoken. Some of his splash pages were very striking, like the haunting one of the refugees clamoring to get out of Cambodia. This novel gave me a deeper appreciation of the immigrant experience. As an American reader without much knowledge of the war, the parts I could relate and understand most was the foreignness of American culture - and the irony of being talked down to simply out of being foreign, having once been a painter or a doctor in a different place. When the father says, "You can't look at our family in a vacuum and apply your myopic contemporary Western filter to them," the second time around, it really makes sense. For that reason, I think this is a really essential book, one that all American kids should be required to read in school because it reflects an experience that is very timely in this globalizing world: one, the feeling of being caught between two worlds. And also appreciating what our parents have been through. As Le Nhi says towards the end, the parents' generation didn't have the opportunities to pursue their dreams, squandered as they were by war, and so it makes sense that they placed their hopes in their kids -- something our generation tends to be irritated by, and take for granted. Though this book was confusing and perhaps too ambitious for its own good, it did make me think about things in a new light, and for that I am grateful.
1) Since there's a lot you must unearthed about your family history, how did you go about selecting what you included in your novel? 2) When you were writing this novel, who do you think you were writing for? Was it important to you that your family was happy with the final product? Did you ever worry about portraying one of your family member's in a light they wouldn't approve of?
Nothing could have prepared me better for this novel than the cover itself. I was exceedingly pleased and surprised by how much the outside of GB Tran’s work suited its innards. The chaotic puzzle of his strained facial expression is the perfect emblem for the struggle of memory in particular as it pertains to identity. As a non-chronological story, Vietnamerica forced the reader to piece together family stories with present day actions in a kind of piecemeal way. History constructed itself in a nonlinear fashion. Sayings were littered throughout the entirety of the novel like little pieces of historical memory that interjected themselves into people’s daily lives. Statements like “our parents care for us as our teeth sharpen so we care for them as our teeth dull” and “they forget nothing and they learn nothing” provide us with profound images that set the tone for the entire novel. Through these simple phrases, we get the sense that our conception of the present is constructed by the past. As we stand ever in the flow of time moving forward, our own history and identity is constantly in flux.
ReplyDeleteQuestions:
1) Why did you decide to tell the story in non-chronological order?
2) Why did you choose to make some dialogue cut off or opaque or incredibly muddled?
3) Why did you to alter the style of the imagery from scene to scene?
To me, Vietnamerica read like the quintessential graphic novel, at least from my experience with them in the class so far and in my past readings. The book seemed like a combination of the wartime story of Persopolis and the deep family soul-searching of Fun Home. I think that this combination worked very well though; GB Tran told a moving, personal, and fascinating story quite well using the graphic medium. I took note of the series of novel graphic techniques he used. For example, he would often illustrate a single panel, often at the end of the page, as an entire comics page itself with tiny panels inside of it. I loved this effect; it made the story feel as though it had another series of stories within it, adding to the depth and the idea that Tran's family's story is not the only one.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the major thing that the work lacked was cohesion. In Fun Home, a similar non-linear narrative is used to progress throughout the story (though Vietnamerica did have some form of linearity). However, the reader is tied in with repeating visual cues, such as the map of the narrator's father's life. In Vietnamerica, however, it was at times confusing remembering where in the story something was taking place or how it tied to everything else.
Questions:
1. Do you feel connected to Vietnamese culture?
2. Do you ever feel guilt about the hardships that your family faced and the relative comfort that you grew up with?
3. Why did you choose to depict certain character's voices as you did? (for example, your mother's voice is depicted in cursive.)
The way that GB Tran played around with panelling and speech bubbles was intriguing. Most of the time I really loved it, although at the beginning I found the combination of that and the boatload of unnamed characters introduced to be confusing. After I made myself a cheat sheet with all the grandparents' names on it, the confusion largely cleared up. The cohesion of the plot and repeated phrases at the end really helped tie it all together neatly, a trick which I greatly appreciated, and I felt that several of the page sequences (boarding the plane, when Uncle Vinh steps on the mine) were brilliantly designed and very impactful. The non-chronological sequence was difficult at times, but it helped to impart the confusion GB felt during his own journey to discover his family's past. The pacing was set by when and how he learned these stories, which I believe added to the feel of the novel. Overall, I very much enjoyed it.
ReplyDelete1.) If you had the page count, would you have focused more on the sorts of lives you and your brothers and sisters went on to lead in America and/or the struggles you faced while growing up?
2.) Did you or your father ever contact Leonard again?
The thing that struck me most about this novel was Tran's fearlessness with using every aspect of the medium - the look of the book is defined by his willingness to use any graphic novel technique that would communicate his ideas. I particularly liked the family tree on the inside over, the distinct color scheme of every memory (the scene of Tri's life in Saigon is even drawn in an entirely different style from the rest of the book), and the repeated symbols (phrases, images, panel styles). These decisions helped organize and clarify the story, which was I thought was a little confusing but also very organic and true to the experience of learning your family's immigrant history. The final product is less a conventional story than a graphic simulation of Tran discovering his family.
ReplyDeleteQuestions:
1. How did you go about writing dialogue? How much was transcribed from your parents/family members contemporaneously, reproduced from memory, or imagined in the characters' voices?
2. Where did you make the decision to color each scene differently (i.e. from the book's conception, during scripting, during drawing, during coloring)?
3. What do you think your most important decision was with the look of the book?
Wow, that was one damn unique graphic novel. It was entertaining, albeit the story structure was a bit too all over the place for me, especially with it going out of chronological order and that there were so many characters. I sometimes found it hard to keep track of who's who due to each character having several designs because of the great span of time this book covers. I really like the use of typesetting to distinguish between the different narrators in specific events. On a more personal note, I could relate to the entire story because my parents went through the same thing, and I can't grasp how they survived because I never in my life had to starve. This book made me appreciate more what my parents have done for me in giving me an opportunity to live in America.
ReplyDeleteQuestions:
1. Why did you decide to write out of order?
2. How did you choose the art style for this book? Did you always know you were going to stick with this style?
Reading over everyone else's comments, it seems like a lot of us found the story structure and lack of chronology a bit confusing. Vietnamerica is definitely a graphic novel that merits re-reading (probably with a notebook handy to keep everyone straight). I really like the way GB Tran structures his pages, he breaks the grid pretty effectively, and uses parallelism to his advantage. I really like the page where he shows how his mother reacts to her children Americanizing (where we understand the origin of GB and his mother is laughed at for saying "co-walker" instead of "coworker"). It's really effective pacing to show these instances of her discomfort and show how her expression grows more resigned in the passing years. My dad is very close-mouthed about his childhood, but he grew up in Africa during apartheid, which definitely affected his experiences upon moving to America. I can draw a parallel between my curiosity about my father's childhood and GB Tran's fascination with his family history, so it was very satisfying to watch his process of unveiling his family's past.
ReplyDeleteQuestions:
1. What other artists/ works did you draw inspiration from while drawing Vietnamerica?
2. Why did you choose to use actual photos in the middle of the book instead of drawing them?
Vietnamerica was a pretty compelling read. It reminded me of both Maus and Funhouse, in that the youngish author is trying to understand his relationship to parents that remain cryptic. As people have said, I too found the story confusing at times. There seemed to be a lot of different stories going on and between the character's names and the time jumps, I got lost sometimes. I also felt I could have been provided more context about the Vietnam War, as my knowledge of it is pretty basic -- then I would have understood the stakes more. I really appreciated the visual aspects of this novel; for example, the tonal contrast between the grim war scenes and the more carefree existence at the beachside home. I thought his trick of conveying overheard conversations through broken up text was really clever and the brackets to represent a different language being spoken. Some of his splash pages were very striking, like the haunting one of the refugees clamoring to get out of Cambodia.
ReplyDeleteThis novel gave me a deeper appreciation of the immigrant experience. As an American reader without much knowledge of the war, the parts I could relate and understand most was the foreignness of American culture - and the irony of being talked down to simply out of being foreign, having once been a painter or a doctor in a different place. When the father says, "You can't look at our family in a vacuum and apply your myopic contemporary Western filter to them," the second time around, it really makes sense. For that reason, I think this is a really essential book, one that all American kids should be required to read in school because it reflects an experience that is very timely in this globalizing world: one, the feeling of being caught between two worlds. And also appreciating what our parents have been through. As Le Nhi says towards the end, the parents' generation didn't have the opportunities to pursue their dreams, squandered as they were by war, and so it makes sense that they placed their hopes in their kids -- something our generation tends to be irritated by, and take for granted. Though this book was confusing and perhaps too ambitious for its own good, it did make me think about things in a new light, and for that I am grateful.
Questions:
Delete1) Since there's a lot you must unearthed about your family history, how did you go about selecting what you included in your novel?
2) When you were writing this novel, who do you think you were writing for? Was it important to you that your family was happy with the final product? Did you ever worry about portraying one of your family member's in a light they wouldn't approve of?