Something Failed Instead Something New

Form Representative as Diaspora Experience

Joshua Nguyen portrays the diaspora experience on many levels in “A Failed American Lục Bát Responds”. Not only within the poem itself but with the title of this poem, and the direct acknowledgement of this supposedly “failed” American Lục Bát does Nguyen detail the essence of erasure and the un-belonging that comes with having two (and or multiple) homes: “In between self-hatred & self-actualization, I exist, so who will / abandon me first?” This line alone asks the reader to contemplate the abandonment that occurs in the immigrant and or ethnic first, third, etc. generation household while simultaneously holding meaning for the abandonment of the lived homeland (the States) versus the left homeland (Việt Nam), with an identity in flux: never wholly American, nor wholly Vietnamese. 

This collection is composed primarily of pieces with food and or cooking related elements, such as “Add Coconut Water,” and so on. With eight of these poems preceding this one, another meaning is added to the opening lines: “How much of me must be / written before I am just another / bastardized item?” As a child of immigrant parents, learning to cook one’s family’s ethnic plates feels like a bastardization. So many factors into the seemingly simple act of cooking. What are the ingredients needed for the dish? Are the ingredients local to the States as well? And if not, what is a suitable replacement? Roy Choi, renowned Korean American chef based in Los Angeles, once stated that even the same dish will be cooked differently every time with factors affecting the dish, such as outside weather, wear of pots and pans, etc. 

Then there is the bastardization of the Lục Bát itself. In the notes section, Nguyen shares the rules of the complex form. Languages are rarely ever translated one for one, and this is especially true with the Lục Bát, which calls for beauty sonically and visually. The rules for the American Lục Bát continue the throughline of diasporic existence: “these rules may be adhered to as tightly or as loosely as one would like.” Despite the title claiming it is “failed,” here Nguyen creates a new form, or rather, a variation of the existing form. Nguyen makes space not only for what he wants to create as homage to country and culture, but for himself, and other Vietnamese American creatives, as well. 

The final layer of bastardization is the experience of maneuvering the world with a diasporic identity. There is a painful give and take: “My accents will soon leave / the letters to float away / across another ocean.” Often, one’s native language is the first to be forgotten when in a new country. There is also the curious rage of meeting a white person who who is fluent in this language, or as detailed in these lines, the white person who decides they want to “shed light” onto a “new” and “exotic” cuisine: “Find [my accents] under outstretched tongues, / broken down by enzymes, / spit, & fast food.” There is also the fear and dread, with the realization of colonization, that comes with the acts one had to do to survive, and those acts often meant rejecting cultural and ethnic markers: “can I self-colonize myself, / be the fusion the world doesn’t want to see?” 

While this poem is an outcry of this pain at the reflection of self-hatred and loss, the existence of the form proves that self-actualization is reached. “These rules may be adhered to as tightly or as loosely as one would like.” The diasporic person has the agency to decide what their identity is to them. And just like the American Lục Bát, they exist distinct and whole as they are.