this is the most memorable essay for me
written by my sweet classmates kim as her assignment through writing rhetorical course,
Ohio university
Listening to the music of Sad Angel from an old radio in Rhapsody café shop and looking at the people passing by the street in Ho Chi Minh city made me think that life is a journey and people are passengers who bring their specific gifts into my writing world. When I meet an interesting person, I imagine about him in a story where he becomes a character but he doesn’t know about it until I reveal it to him. I couldn’t cease laughing when my friend asked me, “Are you falling in love with someone? I can see your red cheeks. It looks like you are thinking about him.” I was very surprised at her question but I smiled then answered her “Yes, I’m falling in love with my main character. He is a handsome guy and that is the man I want to get married in this life”.
I know I am a crazy girl but how wonderful life is when I can play many roles such as a girl, a child, a man, an animal and even a ghost in my writing. I can live not only in Viet Nam but in a city in Europe as well. Sometimes my friends ask me, “Where are you now?” because I am here but my mind is wandering in the middle of nowhere and only I know that I’m living in my literature house. I don’t have only one life as my friends know. I have another life, which is my life in writing. Life in the boring circle in office is full of stress but I know how to escape from it and live in another life. I love this present, an awesome gift from my mother -my passion for writing.
When I was a pupil in secondary school, I didn’t understand why I had a special love for a poem named “Miss Homeland River” of a Vietnamese poet. I came back home then told her about it. “Baby, that was the poem I sang for you when you were still a fetus”. I was very surprised “Oh, is that the answer to my question why I love literature while my siblings don’t?” Maybe a writer was born when she sang folksongs. I know I am a lucky girl when I got that present from my mother and I found out my passion for writing in this life. I got the most important answer on what my dream is - to be a famous writer. I’m not a talented writer. I understand it because I got many refusals from publishers. A dream doesn’t cost any coin, why don’t we have a bigger dream? In Asia, I saw many Indian, Chinese and Japanese writers
who were very well-known around the world, but I have never heard of a famous Vietnamese writer who spreads his wings across our border. Why? Because of the Vietnamese language or maybe, they are not talented writers. No, I don’t think so. Radwa and I have same dreams about having a good novel and movie script. My friend and I dream to have a famous novel that will be noticed and brought to the screens by Hollywood. Do I have a big ambition? I watched a film named “Quiet American” with the setting in Viet Nam but it did not reach a vast number of audiences. I want to have a film so that people will have a different impression of my country, not a poor land after war or a remote land. I believe that with Radwa and with English, our dream will come true. Dream. Dream. I don’t wander in my road alone and I’m not aimless anymore because I have a dream and I will slowly take steps towards the ladder of the literature house. When my friend called me “Accounting girl”, I shake my head. When they call me “the poet and writer”, I smile. Yes, I want to add “Writer” in my CV.
Everything has its start. My original passion for writing began from my mother’s poem when I was still inside her. When I was a kid, I stood in front of a black and white television and watched cartoon and films. I believe that little Evelin Tamm had the same question. “What is going on with smaller people in that machine? Were they kept in the machine? Why do they create many beautiful places like that? Why did they call that America not Viet Nam?” Dream about dream. I dream about my invented characters in my dream. “I had great interest in languages, literature and especially poetry.” Evelin, all I want to say here is I can understand your feelings. When I read a poem or listen to a new language, something inside me drives me crazy. Yes, that emotion is happier than a glimpse of a good-looking man that suddenly passes by.
One time, I was locked in the library of my elementary school because I was reading books and I forgot to tell my teacher that I was still there. I had a sad memory when I studied 5th grade in elementary. That time, if I get excellent results in my second semester, I wouldn’t need to attend graduate exam. But I borrowed a lot of books from the library and devoured them which lessened my time for homework. As a result, I got a bad score and needed to attend graduate exam. Books are my food. When I pick a book, I can’t drop it. I must follow it till the last page because a curious girl in my head just wants to know the journey of the characters and to keep pace with the author’s imagination. Childhood plays a very important role in creating our personality and it is true with me. Writing is my thought. Writing is my breath. Writing is my lover. Maybe one day when I get married, I would admit to my man that “you are my only husband in this life but I have many lovers in my literature”. Writing is a stream running in my brain and it turns into a river when I touch the computer’s keyboard, a pen or my mobile phone. With passion for writing, I found out this awesome course to improve my English, my writing skills and above all, I am lucky to make friends with Kareen, a writer who kept my eyes in her writing. “I feel like writing is a fire that seemingly burn within me. I feel like every time my fingertips touch the computer’s keyboard, there is a force that runs from me and into my hands.” Dear Kareen, have you felt that our characters go on strike when we keep silent with them for a long time? I have just finished my short story named “The Curse of Taban Flower” after 4 years of getting ideas and re-writing it 3 times. Some publishers refused my spirit child but there are still two publishers who are giving me hope. I am comforting myself that in case they also refuse my baby, I will still keep on writing so that one day I will become a famous writer and at that time they will ask me to publish it. Well, that is a long road in the future. I don’t care if that dream will come true when I am already in heaven. My next generation will be proud of me with that wonderful gift for them.
When I met Nick Ut, a photographer of the “VietNam Napalm Girl” picture in the American Center, he gave me an advice “think before you shot”. Reading. Reading more books from different cultures and from all walks of life. Watching. Watching people waking by. Opening your heart and feeling life with it. Thinking. Thinking. And thinking. Writing. Writing. Then Writing. Simple methods to become a writer. Keep going to the literature land, my writer friends. If you think that you can’t write, your ship will sink into a sorrow ocean like Titanic. I am here, as your faithful reader, to read your writing, to encourage you even if I’m in Viet Nam or my native language is Vietnamese. You are not alone on your writing road. I’m excited to become your first reader. I don’t wish to have eternal medicine to keep my youth forever. I wish I could live forever as a writer from this generation to the next generation like some famous writers around the world, who lives in my heart from the past to the present. I dream about that dream.
If you read them, you will get the same emotion as mine.
My First Assignment of Radwa Nabil
To Meet The Other In The World Of Words And Languages of Evelin Tamm
Snowflakes, Ink Blots And A Dream of Kareen Liez Ecal Datoy
