Kim Thúy, writer: “Canada is more communist than Vietnam”

Kim Thúy appears in a dress with colorful flowers and a smile that lights up.

He says that he was wrong to eat churros at midnight: they made him sleep badly.

“I think I'm still 18 years old,” she jokes.

The writer, born in Saigon 55 years ago, was part of the

boat people

, the Vietnamese losers of the war who left the country by sea fleeing the communist victors.

She survived the journey, she arrived at a refugee camp in Malaysia and then Canada opened its doors to her.

She settled in Quebec.

Her novelistic work, based on short poetic vignettes, deals with the memory of the war and also with the process of her integration as a migrant in a distant and new country.

She comes to Madrid to present the film based on her successful novel

De ella Ru

(Periférica), directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud, which was screened this Thursday at the IX Francophone Film Festival.

She is very nice.

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Ask

.

She says in his books that Vietnamese people are very reserved, but you seem very expressive.

Answer

.

The thing is that I am Canadian, and specifically from Quebec, where the French influence is more important than the Anglo-Saxon coldness.

But I think I'm kind of a caricature, because I wanted to be exactly like a Quebecer and I crossed the line.

And then there's the boat.

Q.

What happened on the ship?

A.

The boat broke down when we fled to Malaysia, I was only 10 years old.

If I had stayed there 15 more minutes, I wouldn't be here with you today.

After that, everything is a gift, an extra life, being happy has become a responsibility for me.

Q.

Why did you flee Vietnam?

A.

We were from the south, and, as you know, the north won.

In regime changes there is usually persecution, because those who arrive have to take power from those who were there before.

People change, ideology changes, and we were on the losing side.

We thought we were going to die if we stayed, but we also thought we were going to die at sea.

Q.

There wasn't much alternative.

A.

It was more about choosing the place where we were going to die.

But at least at sea we could make one last attempt.

Our father gave us cyanide pills, in case we were shipwrecked or intercepted by pirates or taken back to land.

Q.

The worst thing for you was not the war, but the end of the war.

A.

Peace does not come in an instant when the war ends.

Peace has to be built.

If peace is not built when a war ends, it will not come.

That is why I am very proud of Canada, a country that has chosen peace.

Because peace is a conscious choice.

The Canadian-Vietnamese writer Kim Thúy portrayed in Madrid on March 14, 2024. INMA FLORES

Q.

In Spain we had the Civil War 80 years ago.

But it remains influential today.

It's hard to forget.

You continue writing the Vietnam War.

A.

Within Vietnam people continue to talk about the war, but only from the winning side.

There it is not called the Vietnam War, but the American War.

That is why the memory of the

boat people

does not appear in any history book.

And it will disappear when that generation dies.

I write about it, but literary wise, we need historians who work, with dates, with data.

I am just a witness.

Q.

When we think of the Vietnam War we usually think of Vietnamese against Americans, but there were also Vietnamese on the losing side.

A.

That is a problem.

We were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

We were in the South, the North was supported by the Chinese and, at other times, by the Soviets.

They provided materials for the war, just as Americans did in the South.

Otherwise, the Vietnamese would not have been able to fight for 20 years.

Or they would have done it with knives and fists.

Q.

We now have terrible conflicts, Ukraine, Gaza... Why do we continue fighting like that?

A.

We repeat history.

He didn't think the words

boat people

would be repeated again, but there are still people fleeing war.

Maybe it's human nature, we have that dark side, not because we want to fight, but because some people want to fight and take the population hostage.

Q.

What do we do?

A.

Sometimes I think that we have to teach children our dark side from a young age.

Not just kindness and empathy, but sometimes we can be cruel, we can feel anger, we can be jealous, and that can lead us to do terrible things.

Then you can learn tools to avoid it.

A mother is just a mother, no matter what side she is on.

“Someone who loses a loved one always feels the same pain, and there is no more politics.”

Q.

In some of your books you tell the little stories in war, the ones that affect people;

So perhaps the horror will be better understood.

A.

You realize that a mother is just a mother, no matter what side she is on.

Someone who loses a loved one always feels the same pain, and there is no more politics.

But we forget it for political reasons.

Q.

What is politics for?

A.

In my head it should serve to guide a country.

What do we want as a society?

Do we want peace, take care of ourselves, be generous?

Look, Canada is more communist than Vietnam right now.

Because communism assumes that we are equal, that we take care of others.

In Canada we pay taxes, we have a health system for everyone, schools.

In Vietnam, only those who have money, those who know the right people enter.

Q.

There are those who say that the Welfare State is the best form of communism.

Others hate him precisely for that.

A.

Of course, in Canada anyone can go to university.

There is a bankruptcy law that allows you to land softly if you fail and, very importantly, allows you a second chance.

That encourages people to be bold, to try.

It allows people to dream.

“If you take someone who hates immigration and you can sit them down with an immigrant and tell them their story, they will completely change their mind.”

Q.

Ultranationalism is growing against migration.

A.

Immigration has become a political instrument to divide the population.

Talking about economics is very difficult, it is easier to say: “be careful with strangers”, which they have been telling us since we were children.

Before, people were scared by communism.

Now he is no longer a threat.

So the immigrants are caught.

But in real life it is not like that.

Q.

What is it like in real life?

A.

In real life, if you take someone who hates immigration and you can sit them down with an immigrant to tell them their story, they will completely change their mind.

And in real life we ​​deal with flesh and blood people.

We should think of immigration as an investment that gives a good return, because many countries need more people.

And many countries are themselves countries of emigrants: in Quebec it is so recent that anyone can point to the town in France where her family comes from.

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