Hearing the song of home

During an OFA Artist Development Fellowship in Hà Nội, Việt Nam, a poem from 50 years ago sparks both imagination and connection to the past and the present. 

By Mai Kim Nguyen '24
ADF Guest Blogger

Mai Kim Nguyen ’24 is a resident of Currier House concentrating in Comparative Literature, with a secondary in Educational Studies. She was awarded an OFA Artist Development Fellowship to research, write and produce an album featuring original collaborative poetry, music and visual art in the style of Vietnamese ngâm thơ, Nguyen has performed or worked with Harvard College Opera, Harvard Collegium-Musicum, Expressions Dance Team, The Wave pan-Asian magazine, and the OFA Harvard Jazz Combo Initiative. She was co-director and director of development for Continuo Boston and a volunteer at Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and Y2Y Shelter.  

Đặng Thị Hà, a high school student at Nguyễn Gia Thiều School in Gia Lâm district of Hà Nội wrote this poem on December 22, 1971. She was killed by US B-52 bombers on the night of December 19, 1972. 

I live in the present
Sing still optimistically
Sounds of rememberings
These are my dreams
First, to turn into a liberator
Second, to become a future teacher 
It is the soldier that does not mind any war zone
who brings life-loving song and serves our home. 
      — Đặng Thị Hà, excerpt from Life and Song 
          December 22, 1971 
          Translated from Vietnamese by me 

You can see Đặng Thị Hà's poem for yourself, straight from her diary, in the 

Đặng Thị Hà, a high school student at Nguyễn Gia Thiều School in Gia Lâm district of Hà Nội wrote this poem on December 22, 1971. She was killed by US B-52 bombers on the night of December 19, 1972.  

We live in the present 
still brightly singing  
voices still reminiscing 
These are our dreams 
First, to be freed from colonized strife 
Second, to have the winds of change on our side  
     — Đặng Thị Hà, excerpt from Life and Song 
          December 22, 1971 
          Translated from Vietnamese by me 

You can see Đặng Thị Hà's poem for yourself, straight from her diary, in the Bảo tàng Lịch sử Quốc gia (National History Museum) as I did during my Artist Development Fellowship last year on my very first day out in Hà Nội, Việt Nam. How could I not take notice of it? I myself was carrying around my diary, taking notes, drawing little sketches and jotting down bits of poetry as I walked around the exhibition until I stumbled across her diary.  

I took a picture and once I got home, transcribed and translated the poem. And as the days went by, I found this poem to be a close companion in my adventures around the city. 

Listening and singing along to quan họ singers in a boat drifting across a pond at the Văn Miếu (Temple of Literature), I remember how song has been, still is and will be a source of intergenerational unity across millenia.  

Walking by the statue of Lý Thái Tổ, founding emperor of the Lý dynasty, along the Hoàn Kiếm Lake shore, I remember how deep Vietnamese people's search for true freedom runs, starting in 1009, the first year of the dynasty.  

Licking my ice cream at Kem Tràng Tiền, I remember that 1958, when the popular ice cream shop opened, was only four years after Vietnam gained independence from France. Yet I can sit here in my ancestors' future, my present, enjoying my ice cream.  

Watching carts rattle by the gate outside my house, I remember how blessed I am that my home – not my home in Cambridge but my other home, where I am always welcome no matter how long I am away – is no longer a war zone.  

All this to say: I can't bring myself to like the poem by Đặng Thị Hà. I don't support glorifying war, as I feel this poem does. I feel comfortable sharing my translation only because it is no longer a literal translation, but rather a projection of my own experience of humanity (what good translation is, some would say). I've learned that when art and music come to define a people, those arts can be hard to dissociate from how they define a people in not just ethnic, but also nationalistic and patriotic ways. Just as my feelings about the poem changed over the course of a month, so did my translation.  

I turned 22 a couple of days after seeing Đặng Thị Hà's poem. While I have the privilege of being alive to witness my art and my self grow, Đặng Thị Hà does not. Even if I don't agree with her politics, I can appreciate her artistry and see that we are still of the same people, and we are creating in the same intergenerational traditions of poetry and music.  

Conversing with her words gives them a life where they can grow. The past may be fixed. But art, just like the present, is always open to change.