Cynsations is celebrating its 20th anniversary by switching to a quarterly publishing schedule, featuring in-depth interviews and articles. Thank you for your ongoing support and enthusiasm!
Today, I’m overjoyed to welcome children’s author Doan Phuong Nguyen, who has written two middle grade books related to her Vietnamese heritage. Her debut novel, Mèo and Bé, illustrated by Jesse White (Tu Books, 2023), was a 2024 Notable Book for a Global Society and a 2023 Freeman Book Award Honorable Mention. Her new fictionalized memoir-in-verse, A Two-Placed Heart, illustrated by Olga Lee (Tu Books, 2024), received a starred review by the School Library Journal, which stated, “this highly readable verse memoir beautifully portrays the internal anguish of growing up and adapting to life in a new country.”
Since she was a little girl, Doan Phuong felt driven to write stories. And she knew at a young age that she would someday write her own story, which she’s done in A Two-Placed Heart. She immigrated with her family from Vietnam to the United States when she was in elementary school. Thus, she was assimilated into American culture while trying to retain her Vietnamese language and traditions. Her new book is an incredible mix of lived experience, compelling fiction, sensory worldbuilding, and emotional impact derived from childhood innocence, joy and trauma. This literary recipe will keep readers wholly immersed in the book from start to finish.
Congratulations on your new book! Mèo and Bé is fiction written in third-person prose. What inspired you to write about yourself and your family in A Two-Placed Heart, and why did you choose to do so in a first-person, fictional verse memoir?
My friends have always told me that my family’s history was interesting, especially my father’s life story, which I share in A Two-Placed Heart. He was a spy during the Vietnam War, and then spent almost a decade as a prisoner of war in a communist “re-education camp” after 1975.
For many years, I attempted to write about my childhood and our immigration to America. I tried writing it as a chapter book, as a prose middle grade novel, and finally, as a verse novel. Although I don’t think my own life story is that interesting, there are elements of it that are universal, especially my relationship with my sister, Bo. She’s always been more Americanized than me, and for a long time, she rejected her Vietnamese identity. I knew there was something there, and A Two-Placed Heart is a reflection of that. It’s a love letter from one sister to another. Bo moved to America at only three years old, and has no memory of our time in Vietnam. I’m so happy that I can share my Vietnamese memories with her in this book. It’s also thrilling to have my memories written down, so my sons can learn about their other culture.
Also, I’ve never read another book that tackled the loss of one’s birth language as an expression of identity, and I’m thankful I was able to explore it with this book. There are so many universal themes in this novel—family, friends, joy, heartache, loss, belonging—that will resonate with children from all backgrounds.
I found that the first-person fictional verse format lends itself perfectly to memoir, as I skip years. The story itself isn’t always chronological. It jumps between the present (1996) to the past. Also, I’ve often expressed my feelings best through poetry, and as this book is my fictionalized life story, the verse format was ideal for getting those feelings across.
Both of your books are geared towards middle grade readers. Why is this your preferred age-group audience?
The middle grade voice comes most naturally to me. Whenever I start writing a new story, it’s always with a middle grade point of view, usually between the ages of eleven and twelve. Those years were so special to me, and I loved being that age. It’s a time where you are still innocent, but the seriousness of life is starting to hit you. When I write stories, I write for that sixth grader version of me.
You provide three reader resources: a family tree diagram, a pronunciation guide and a glossary of Vietnamese words and names. Why did you include these rather than having the readers decipher meanings and relationships from content?
My family tree is complicated, and because many of the poems in A Two-Placed Heart reference extended family members (like my great-great grandfathers, as well as my grandmothers’ siblings, and of course my aunts and uncles), I wanted to share with readers how we were all connected. In America, I feel like you only know your immediate family members. Sometimes, you know aunts and uncles and cousins, but usually it goes no further than that. In Vietnam, we know who we are related to from all different lines. For example, I’ve met my grandmother’s sister’s children’s children. I consider them my cousins, even though they are technically distant relatives. I know my father’s first cousins’ kids and grandkids.
In addition, I love that there is a pronunciation guide to the Vietnamese words, so kids can try to say them. It also helps comprehension and makes the story more realistic as the young readers get immersed in the Vietnamese experience. And the glossary can be helpful to kids who may not be able to pick up on the context based on the text.
Verse novels lend themselves to being easier and faster to read than a traditional prose novel, especially for reluctant readers. I hope that these reader resources help make my book more accessible for all children.
You’ve created a poignant book about your immigration and assimilation journey. How essential is it for young readers to have access to such immigration stories, written by those who experienced or were personally affected by it?
I’ve met many young readers from immigrant families who have shared their experiences of being integrated into a new culture or having difficulties balancing or straddling multiple cultures. We share common threads, even if I’m not from the same place they’re from.
Moreover, reading stories about immigration opens up a dialogue about different cultures, and how they may be different. I hope it creates reader empathy, and I hope all readers come away from my book with a better understanding of multiculturalism, and feeling more empowered about their identity. Whether you are an immigrant or not, we all question who we are and where we belong in this world.
Your book sometimes explains how what’s customary in Vietnam is unconventional in the United States. Do you think raising awareness of cultural differences in kids books makes a difference in how they treat and/or accept each other?
I hope so. Kids can be so mean to each other, especially in middle school and high school. Everything was so unfamiliar after my move to the U.S., and it took me a long time to learn and adjust. And during that time when I was trying hard to “become more American,” I was picked on and shamed for being different: for looking different, for not speaking English well, for having a name that was hard to pronounce, for not understanding American holidays and traditions, and so on. I felt stuck between two worlds, one that I was born to and proud of, and a new one where I longed to belong but which often rejected me.
A Two-Placed Heart was written as a “window” book through which young readers can see and experience facets of a world outside of their own. My hope is that when kids read my book, they embrace different viewpoints, learn to celebrate diversity, and love and accept others for their differences. Learning about diverse cultures opens your eyes to the fact that the world is much bigger than your own life in America.
The book’s worldbuilding triggers all of the senses. I especially liked the food descriptions, like “Má fries a slice of bánh chưng, and I eat it, dipped in fish sauce. Crunchy on the ends, soft in the middle….” What process do you use to create such authentic worlds?
I tend to be descriptive in my writing, especially when writing about a culture that Americans may or may not be familiar with. It’s important for me that readers can visualize the story. I want them to see it play out like a movie in their minds.
I visualize my scenes in my head as I write them (for example, I have an image in my head of what everything looks and feels like, and I attempt to describe that picture using words). I want you to smell and taste the food, understand what the streets were like (the dust caking my clothes as I ran home from school, or the sounds of the motorbikes in Saigon). Also, I’m a foodie, so in my books, there are lots of food descriptions.
Can you share other crafting processes (e.g., are you a pantser or a plotter)? As a full-time photographer, mother and author, how and when do you find time to write?
I’m a pantser most of the time. Sometimes I will plot, but plotting is overwhelming to me, and it kills my drive to discover the story. Typically, I have a vague idea of the overall shape, and I might have some beats (I use Save the Cat for story beats), but I prefer discovering the story as I go along. Often this means I have multiple messy drafts.
Recently, I’ve discovered zero drafting. I have one of those alphasmart free-writing keyboards from the ’90s, where it’s very difficult to delete your words or go back and rewrite, so you are forced to keep drafting. For me, it’s so freeing to just type out ideas or a rough draft of a story. I can write 2,000 or 3,000 words within an hour. They aren’t good words, but they are words, and you can also go back and edit later. As they say, you cannot edit an empty page.
Since I’m so busy, I make it a goal to write 30 minutes every day. I don’t have much more time than this. Sometimes, I only get in 15 minutes. But a little bit of progress adds up. I keep a writing journal where I track my progress. Each day, I log how much time I spent writing and how many pages I got through. I’ll give myself a sticker for making progress. Recently, I felt that I made little to no progress, but I looked at my journal and saw that I got through 80 pages in a month, and I was impressed. A little bit at a time can go a long way.
What message can you convey to young readers who have struggled with one foot in one world, while the other foot is in another world.
As I wrote in Mèo and Bé, keep your memories close, so they never slip away. As time goes by, I feel like I lose more of my old memories, and I want to keep my Vietnamese memories close for as long as I can. I’m so thankful I wrote my childhood down in this novel, because some of these stories in A Two-Placed Heart have started to fade away.
I urge any readers who are from a different country or culture to write down their memories, so they will always have them to look back on. Writing is a wonderful tool to preserve the past.
What advice can you offer children’s authors who want to write about their countries, languages and cultures of origin?
Struggles, conflicts, challenges are universal human truths that people understand regardless of culture. So be as authentic and honest as you can be in telling your story. Write from your heart. Use the power of your emotions. Even if your recollections are fuzzy, dig deep and root out the feelings, vulnerabilities and passions of that time, and probe the sources of your joy and pain, so when you write about those experiences you connect with your reader on a more personal level. You want the reader to care, to feel, to be moved. I also found that looking up images on Google or Pinterest helped me describe places and things that were starting to fade from my memory.
Will your Vietnamese identity and history, and how they influenced who you are, alway be present in your work? What’s next for you?
I’ll always write about the Vietnamese experience in some way. It’s what I know best. It’s what feels right for me. It’s what I know intimately. I want my writing to always feel authentic, so I’ll always write from the perspective of a Vietnamese person or Vietnamese-American character. Whether I decide to continue to write historical novels or change to contemporary stories is yet to be seen. I’m currently working on multiple projects, and I’m hoping I’ll have more middle grade books in the future.
Cynsational Notes
Doan Phuong Nguyen was raised first in Vietnam, and after immigrating, in Nashville, Tennessee. She eventually settled in the Midwest. She received her BA from Vanderbilt University and her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her two middle grade novels, Mèo and Bé, illustrated by Jesse White (Tu Books, 2023), and A Two-Placed Heart, illustrated by Olga Lee (Tu Books, 2024), have already garnered awards and a starred review. When she’s not writing, Doan Phuong is a photographer, where she documents beautiful stories as the owner of Zoe Life Photography. She’s happily married and is the parent of two cute Vietnamese-American sons.
Gail Vannelli retired as an attorney and now writes primarily middle-grade and YA fiction. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she received several scholarships, including the Holy Smokes Scholarship. She also holds a Post-MFA Certificate in the Teaching of Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She has won several Writer’s Digest awards for her fiction. Her recent work has appeared in Lunch Ticket Literary Journal, where she has held the positions of lead editor, assistant editor, interviewer and blogger, and in Cynsations, where she is an industry news reporter and writer. She’s the founder of Kids Story Studio, a free kids story writing class.