“To be a whore” — A must-read short story by realist writer from Viet Nam
Up to now, because of the language barrier, most of Vietnam's writings are rarely well-known around the world. Obviously, there are so many reasonable reasons to lead to this circumstance, but writing in Vietnamese only seems to be the biggest obstacle to bring culture as well as the Vietnam ideology to international readers.
Deeply in my heart, I really want to introduce to all you guys one of typically satirical literature in Vietnam by the 1930s via this blog. As the name in the title of this article, “To be a whore” is definitely a must-read short story which is related to sexual views and how it has affected not only Vietnamese woman but also Asia girl at that time.
Author of this short story — Vu Trong Phung who has been famous with the satire in his works, compared to Balzac by some critics. However, due to his realistic description as well as the heavy emphasis on sex, he was called to court by the French authority in Hanoi for “outraging morality” (outrage aux bonnes moeurs). Later on, his works were prohibited to be published or read in North Vietnam because of “obscene publications” until the late 1980s. It could be said that anyone who finds more interested in the literature of Vietnam must totally pay attention to realistic works by the realist writer — Vu Trong Phung.
“To be a whore” seems to be a short film about a long life of a little Vietnamese girl who was working in the sex industry at that time. The story includes 3 main characters — The girl, the author and his friend. The author and his friend caught these girlfriends they admired when they had been high school students while they were in a brothel. Therefrom, the reader could experience a realistic story of a call-girl and what made an innocently well-educated girl become a whore. Throughout the tell by the girl, Vu Trong Phung included a lot of highlight problems such as education, notion and culture which were related to sex — a taboo-word in the Vietnamese community at that time.
Due to outdated thinkings, from even well-educated people, this made a girl become a whore. A remarkable point which makes me consider that Vu Trong Phung’s capacity was as well as other eminent writers around the world is his long-lasting ideology that is up to date until now. The only reason why readers in the world do not know any more about him is that what he wrote, he wrote in Vietnamese. If you are interested in Vietnam or Asia culture, you definitely find it easy to identify mentioned poignant issues in the book (Virginity and Marriage, Prostitution, Social inequality…) are still happening not only in Vietnam but also in Asia now.
Among his works, besides “To be a whore”, “Giông Tố” (The storm) and “Số Đỏ” (Dumb luck) were outstanding too. With these two masterpieces, Vu Trong Phung became one of the greatest writers of Vietnam literature in the 20th century.
You could read one of the most interesting novels by Vu Trong Phung — Dumb Luck via this LINK
References:
Nguyen Dac Gia Bao
