Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai: The Color of Peace
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai returns to America on a book tour for her debut poetry collection in English titled The Color of Peace. Last Thursday, April 25, the day after my 47th birthday, I invited my son to join me to hear her read some of her poems and conversation with Vietnam veteran Wayne Karlin. As I am writing this, today, April 30, 2025, also marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the American War in Việt Nam. During the event, Quế Mai read “The Fish” and “Thorns of Roses” from her collection. I enjoyed her Vietnamese reading even more, especially when she incorporated ca dao singing into her poetry. In The Color of Peace Quế Mai the pain and the sorrow of a Vietnamese woman who were born during the time of war and who witnessed the casualties of war at a young age. Quế Mai uses literature to speak out for peace. Listening to her talking the war and her passionate of peace made me give her a title: “The poet of peace.” This collection is moving, powerful, and deeply personal. “My Mother” is one of her personal poems. She wrote:
When I told my mother
I would go to America
to read my poetry, she
knocked her pair of chopsticks
against the boiling pot
and called out “America?”Forty-one years before that
when she was carrying me
inside her stomach
from the sky, blackness
came and
exploded into American bombs.My mother jumped into a shelter so small
she had to arch her back
so her baby wouldn’t be squashed
against the crumbling earth.And now, the baby—her daughter—the poet from Việt Nam
had been invited to come
to America—the land of her former
enemy to share her stories.My mother cupped her palms
into a lotus in front of her chest
and told me she wished
she could replace guns, and tanks,
bombs, and bullets,
violence, and hatred,
with poetry.