By Thuy On
Twenty-five year-old Joey Bui speaks with a slight American twang, though she assures me with a laugh that she’s been trying to shake it off by watching local TV shows to refamiliarise herself with the vernacular drawl.
The Australian-Vietnamese writer is back home in Melbourne for a month in the lead-up to her debut book, Lucky Ticket. Though born in Australia, Bui has been a globetrotting wanderer since she left high school, and the 12 short stories in the anthology bear testament to her experiences from afar.
Joey Bui says her book starts with Vietnamese refugees and finds connection with migrants from other conflicts within other countriesCredit: Luis Ascui
Several of the tales are based on the plight and postwar aftershocks of Vietnamese refugees around the world, but Bui is quick to clarify that they are not direct translations; while she tried to make her versions as authentic as possible to the original voices, they are necessarily transfigured and embroidered by the art of fiction.
‘‘I would blend bits of people and considered the interviews themselves to be inspiration, so there are speaking tics and location sources all blended together rather than aiming to portray anyone’s personal tale,’’ she says.
Even though Bui says she’s been writing ‘‘forever’’ (her first book was written when she was nine), Lucky Ticket was the result of a capstone (a final thesis) at the end of college at New York University Abu Dhabi, where she spent four years studying literature.
Lucky Ticket by Joey Bui.Credit:
Originally Bui’s fascination with a career within political science nearly swayed her to to work in the field of migration but instead, her interest found expression in fiction.
‘‘The book is a collection of stories about war and migration; it starts with Vietnamese refugees and finds connection with migrants from other conflicts within other countries, like the Nepalese civil war and the Argentine dirty war as well as migrant labour in the UE.’’
Written with insight and passion in prose that manages to be elegant, poetic and bluntly honest, Lucky Ticket cuts across age and gender in its restless roaming and desire to explore identity and dislocation across multiple countries.
It’s no coincidence that its breadth of characters and global ambit bear resemblance to another Vietnamese Australian’s collection of fiction, Nam Le’s The Boat. Bui even dedicates a story to Le, whom she has never met but who remains the single most influential writer in her life.
‘‘I discovered him when I was a teenager. The stories in The Boat are fantastic, and for the first time I felt when reading him that literature can be about people like me … and not just about white families.’’
Aside from aspects of race and sexual dynamics, class and grasping poverty are recurrent themes in the book; there are stories set in Saigon’s teeming metropolis as well as quieter rural backwater towns where hapless victims of war and happenstance have to work within the narrow parameters granted them.
A single child, Bui has visited her parent’s motherland no less than six times, and has a large family there that makes her feel integrated into the country. But she confesses the familiar lament of any second-generation migrant: ‘‘Even though I speak the language, while I’m visiting in Vietnam the people there just know that I’m not one of them. The way you walk and dress, your accent … these are all tell-tale signs that I’m also foreign.’’
Some of Bui’s stories grapple with the power imbalances of being a person of colour in a white world.
There’s an American-Pakistani girl, for instance, whose white boyfriend is far higher on the socio-economic ladder, and the casual racism on public transport that another character endures with stoic unease, but Bui shrugs apologetically when she explains why there’s no single character in Lucky Ticket that best resembles her. ‘‘Every single time I put myself in there I felt it ruined it. Maybe writing about myself is the next goal.’’
Though she already has ideas about another book, Bui is presently doing a law degree in Boston and planning to work as a litigation trial lawyer. Given the hardscrabble stories within Lucky Ticket, It seems completely apposite that, as she says with with vehemence, ‘‘I’ll be working with poor people to bring their cases against big corporations. Fighting for the little guys.’’
Lucky Ticket is published by Text at $29.99.