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Monique Truong Quotes

All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty. People either sipped fine vintages in celebration or gulped intoxicants of who cares what kind, drowning themselves in...

Monique Truong

All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty. People either sipped fine vintages in celebration or gulped intoxicants of who cares what kind, drowning themselves in...

Tags: asian american, vietnamese, wine, writing

Alcohol, I had learned, was an eloquent if somewhat inaccurate interpreter. I had placed my trust that December night in glass after glass of it, eager not for drink but for a bit of talk.

Monique Truong

Alcohol, I had learned, was an eloquent if somewhat inaccurate interpreter. I had placed my trust that December night in glass after glass of it, eager not for drink but for a bit of talk.

Tags: asian american, vietnamese

About Author
Monique T.D. Truong (born May 13, 1968, in Saigon in South Vietnam) is a Vietnamese American writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Yale University and Columbia University School of Law. She has written multiple books, and her first novel, The Book of Salt, was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2003. It was a national bestseller, and was awarded the 2003 Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award. She has also written Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, along with Barbara Tran and Luu Truong Khoi, and numerous essays and works of short fiction.

I was certain t find the familiar sting of salt, but what I needed to know was what kind: kitchen, sweat, tears or the sea.

Monique Truong

I was certain t find the familiar sting of salt, but what I needed to know was what kind: kitchen, sweat, tears or the sea.

Tags: vietnamese, writing

Má, please do not cry. I know I could have bought bread with it, a room for the night. I could have bought acts of love with it, but I could have never bought back the years of your life. Sorrow, even...

Monique Truong

Má, please do not cry. I know I could have bought bread with it, a room for the night. I could have bought acts of love with it, but I could have never bought back the years of your life. Sorrow, even...

Every day when I walk the streets of this city, I am just that. I am an Indochinese laborer, generalized and indiscriminate, easily spotted and readily identifiable all the same. It is this curious mi...

Monique Truong

Every day when I walk the streets of this city, I am just that. I am an Indochinese laborer, generalized and indiscriminate, easily spotted and readily identifiable all the same. It is this curious mi...

The Old Man, like the French, believed that black was the only appropriate color to display and wear in order to show grief.I know Má, black is the color of our hair, the color of our irides with the...

Monique Truong

The Old Man, like the French, believed that black was the only appropriate color to display and wear in order to show grief.I know Má, black is the color of our hair, the color of our irides with the...

Seconds before, we were a boy and a girl standing next to each other. The distance between our bodies was out of habit and not out of lack of curiosity. His movement was swift and unexpected. I rememb...

Monique Truong

Seconds before, we were a boy and a girl standing next to each other. The distance between our bodies was out of habit and not out of lack of curiosity. His movement was swift and unexpected. I rememb...

We loved our opposites so that we could free ourselves from our selves.

Monique Truong

We loved our opposites so that we could free ourselves from our selves.

While you have been waking up to the aroma of coffee brewing, dressing to the hushed rhythm of other people’s labor, I have been in the kitchen since I was six and in your kitchen since six this morni...

Monique Truong

While you have been waking up to the aroma of coffee brewing, dressing to the hushed rhythm of other people’s labor, I have been in the kitchen since I was six and in your kitchen since six this morni...

We all need a story of where we came from and how we got here. Otherwise, how could we ever put down our tender roots and stay.

Monique Truong

We all need a story of where we came from and how we got here. Otherwise, how could we ever put down our tender roots and stay.

Every day, Anh Hoâng was shoved into the ground by the weight of the vanity cases of French wives. They, with their government clerk husbands, were touring their colony, forgetting who they were, forg...

Monique Truong

Every day, Anh Hoâng was shoved into the ground by the weight of the vanity cases of French wives. They, with their government clerk husbands, were touring their colony, forgetting who they were, forg...

After a week's worth of failed fairy tales—stories that made my eyelids flutter open and not shut—my father tried telling me stories that belonged only to him. Thomas told me of an island off the coas...

Monique Truong

After a week's worth of failed fairy tales—stories that made my eyelids flutter open and not shut—my father tried telling me stories that belonged only to him. Thomas told me of an island off the coas...

I know you are in your best áo dài. You bought it when you were just eighteen. Gray is not a color for a young woman. Gray is the color you wanted because you were practical even then, knew that gray...

Monique Truong

I know you are in your best áo dài. You bought it when you were just eighteen. Gray is not a color for a young woman. Gray is the color you wanted because you were practical even then, knew that gray...

But that, I am afraid, was my mistake from the very beginning, the fatal flaw in my design. I thought that I could suffocate the Old Man with shovelfuls of dirt and mud. But with his body in the soil,...

Monique Truong

But that, I am afraid, was my mistake from the very beginning, the fatal flaw in my design. I thought that I could suffocate the Old Man with shovelfuls of dirt and mud. But with his body in the soil,...

The truth about my family was that we disappointed one another. When I heard the word 'disappoint,' I tasted toast, slightly burned. But when I saw the word written, I thought of it first and foremost...

Monique Truong

The truth about my family was that we disappointed one another. When I heard the word 'disappoint,' I tasted toast, slightly burned. But when I saw the word written, I thought of it first and foremost...

As if in grief, the bamboos were pressed to the ground. But within a matter of minutes, they nodded and waved. They shook off the rain and reoriented themselves toward the sky. My mother was impressed...

Monique Truong

As if in grief, the bamboos were pressed to the ground. But within a matter of minutes, they nodded and waved. They shook off the rain and reoriented themselves toward the sky. My mother was impressed...

Sorrow, even when tempered by sweat and toil into a whisper weight of gold, is still sorrow. Worthless to us both in the end, Má.

Monique Truong

Sorrow, even when tempered by sweat and toil into a whisper weight of gold, is still sorrow. Worthless to us both in the end, Má.

She laughed that sharp, quick laugh that smart girls all had, until they found out that the sound of brilliance flashing made boys nervous. Most of these girls, Kelly included, then adopted that slow,...

Monique Truong

She laughed that sharp, quick laugh that smart girls all had, until they found out that the sound of brilliance flashing made boys nervous. Most of these girls, Kelly included, then adopted that slow,...

Years of alcohol can do that to a person, make him dead but not departed, make him indelible to those who have had the misfortune of sharing his name.

Monique Truong

Years of alcohol can do that to a person, make him dead but not departed, make him indelible to those who have had the misfortune of sharing his name.

Though contrary to what the Old Man would have me believe, the vocabulary of servitude is not built upon my knowledge of foreign words but rather on my ability to swallow them.

Monique Truong

Though contrary to what the Old Man would have me believe, the vocabulary of servitude is not built upon my knowledge of foreign words but rather on my ability to swallow them.