Cultural Ambiguity in Contemporary Vietnamese Representations of Homosexuality

Abstract

Starting from an anecdote about wild dogs in a 1939 short story by Xuân Diệu, I want to pursue a New Historicist reading of Bùi Anh Tấn’s fiction to explore present-day representations of the homosexual outcast in a hetero-normative world of contemporary Vietnam. Despite the author’s humane and positive viewpoint, his fiction remains fraught with cultural ambiguity embedded in strategies of narrative discipline of its subject matter. I will also reflect upon my own autobiographical role as interpreter of these texts, as well as theoretical issues concerning the applicability of a New Historicist practice to Vietnamese literary studies.