ACCENTED | She Who Has No Master(s): Would That

The She Who Has No Master(s) Collective will discuss their virtual exhibit “Would That” at the George S. & Dolores Dore Eccles Art Gallery

The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) presents ACCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora , a virtual series of programs that will feature a variety of writers, poets, artists, actors, filmmakers, scholars, and other cultural producers from the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora.

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This installation of ACCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora will be Friday, October 16th, 2020 at 7:30pm PST , hosted by the She Who Has No Master(s) Collective, featuring Dao Strom, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Sophia Terazawa, Vi Khi Nao, and Vina Vo. The conversation will center around the collective’s ongoing virtual exhibit in collaboration with Salt Lake City Community College and the George S. & Dolores Dore Eccles Art Gallery.

She Who Has No Master(s) : Would That gathers into poetic concert the voices of: Angie Chau / Lan Duong / Vi Khi Nao / Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen / Diana Khoi Nguyen / Hoa Nguyen / Isabelle Thuy Pelaud / Aimee Phan / Abbigail N. Rosewood / Dao Strom / Sophia Terazawa / Stacey Tran / Julie Thi Underhill

As women/womxn of the Vietnamese diaspora, our bodies hold many would thats: hungers, silences, absences, wonder(ings)s, and wound(er)ings. There are many things we might wonder would that be, would that have been, would we be—other/not Other(ed) than we are or have been? However, in the Vietnamese language—which we stem from but here do not write in—there is no such thing as the subjective tense, which, if it is to be conveyed in Vietnamese must rely on the context—the surrounding environment—of its adjoining words; what surrounds the action or description places it in or out of time. Which may be to say, what surrounds us is what places us in relation to: history, inheritance, the present, possible futures. We have migrated through time and across geographies, and time and contexts in varying ways have migrated with and within us. As bodies, we know ourselves to be repositories of no-longer-present actions and events, of many layers of witness and memory, of inheritances both evident and abstract, of potential futures too—desires, fears, unknowns. But what if we dis-place our (kn)own bodies from the seeable backgrounds, and what if we re-make those bodies? What if we absent our enfigured selves and ask you instead to (learn to) read anew the spaces left behind? This exhibit explores those spaces of the self, and self-conception/s, and challenges how you will read us, how you will see us, as a cohesive yet collective, diasporic, multi-voiced, Vietnamese-feminine descended entity.

About the Guests:

DAO STROM is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020), and its musical companion piece, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records, 2020); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (AJAR Press, 2018); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West (2015), and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (2006) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (2003). She has received awards from the Creative Capital Foundation, Literary Arts, RACC, NEA, and others. She is co-founder of the art collective, She Who Has No Master(s).

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (Omnidawn 2018), which was selected by Terrance Hayes. In addition to winning the 92Y “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Contest, 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Colorado Book Award, she was also a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize. A Kundiman fellow, she is core faculty in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Sophia Terazawa is the author of two chapbooks: I AM NOT A WAR (Essay Press) and Correspondent Medley (Factory Hollow Press), winner of the 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. She has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona, and her favorite color is purple.

VI KHI NAO is the author of four poetry collections: Human Tetris (11:11 Press, 2019) Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), The Old Philosopher (winner of the Nightboat Prize for 2014), & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.

She Who Has No Master(s) is a project of multi-voiced collectivity, hybrid poetics, encounters, in-between spaces and (dis)places of the Vietnamese diaspora. Through a collaborative art and writing process this project brings together voices of women/womxn writers of the Vietnamese diaspora. She Who Has No Master(s) initiated in 2015 as a group of Vietnamese women writers (and we include in this designation: cis, queer, trans, nonbinary) who in coming together aim to express the diversity and complexity of our diasporic experiences and perspectives. This collective-collaborative process roots itself in the literary art form, but expresses the literary in hybrid and multiple modalities to create “multi-voice” and hybrid-poetic artworks. Each piece and/or series will always engage different formations and numbers of “voices” with the belief that this poly-vocality, while honoring the nuances of individual visions and beings, also expresses the dynamic plurality and connectivity that exists within our diaspora. // She Who Has No Master(s) is a project of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN).

About the Host:

Vina Vo is a writer, storyteller, community building consultant and facilitator living in the Bay Area. She is the co-editor of the anthology this is my body (Nomadic Press, 2019). She is consistently envisioning a world where people can create their way to freedom through her community work and also her work as co-founder of the Novalia Collective: novaliacollective.com

About the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network

DVAN is partnering with Eastwind Books of Berkeley for all book sales and shipping, and books from featured authors will be available on https://asiabookcenter.com for a discounted price.

All funds raised for ACCENTED will go towards supporting DVAN’s mission to promote voices and stories of the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora and connect them to diasporic communities all over the globe.

This program is sponsored by the DVAN@SFSU Project of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.

For more information about the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) please visit our website at https://dvan.org or follow us on Instagram (@weare_dvan)

DVAN believes that the stories, imaginaries, and poetics of a thriving Vietnamese diaspora can unite our global community. Our mission is to celebrate and foster diasporic Vietnamese voices. DVAN presents nonfiction, fiction, and poetry to empower Vietnamese artists in the diaspora and to promote understanding and dialogue within our community, and with others. Our complex and diverse stories must be championed and passed on to current and future generations. We are refugees, immigrants, survivors, and descendants, and our stories must be heard.