In Memoriam: Y-Dang Troeung (張依蘭) (ទ្រឿងអ៊ីដាង) (1980–2022)

Abstract

In MemoriamY-Dang Troeung (張依蘭) (ទ្រឿងអ៊ីដាង) (1980–2022) Christopher B. Patterson (and the still-surviving chorus) Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 87] I am writing this memoriam fifty-three days after the death of my wife, my partner, my soulmate, my editor, my collaborator, and my co-parent, Y-Dang Troeung. It is four days after the forty-ninth day, when we buried Y-Dang's ashes in Vancouver's Mountain View Cemetery with a gravestone that marks both our names. It is thirteen days since her forty-third birthday, a day we celebrated by eating her favorite dim sum: har gao, chaozhou fun guo, and siu mai. Since Y-Dang's death, fifty-three days have crested and fifty-three days have fallen. During these fifty-three days, I have read hundreds of letters from students, colleagues, friends, family, and distant admirers, who have all expressed their deep love for Y-Dang and have detailed the many imprints that she made upon their lives. Y-Dang did not die alone, nor do we grieve alone, or in the same ways. I knew Y-Dang perhaps better than anyone, yet there were sides to her that she revealed more to others, which too have offered meaning to her death. I have come to accept that Y-Dang will survive differently in others' memories than in my own. In turn, I have structured this memoriam to include the voices of the grieving many, who make a chorus of the surviving still; they who knew her for the many roles she, wittingly and lovingly, played for them, and for me. Danielle Wong "When we met at the 2014 Association for Asian American Studies conference in San Francisco, it felt like I was meeting a celebrity. This beloved student of Don's, who, as he had told me many times, had taught him so much. She represented for me the promise of community. Y-Dang's voice is unmistakable. Exact. Honest. And disciplined in its complexity. I realized that this is what care in scholarship looks like: care for the reader, care for the histories in the work, care for the people for whom she writes. To be as fiercely committed as Y-Dang was to the knowledge and lives of the communities for which she wrote is incredibly rare. Such a commitment will surely guide all of us who knew her into whatever we endeavor. And if you spent time with Y-Dang, you know this. When you've been in her presence, been held by her kindness and her drive, anything feels possible." Like Danielle, I met Y-Dang at a conference in 2014. It was Hong Kong in June, and the conference, "Fashion in Fiction," was one she had helped organize. Y-Dang and I often described how we met in speculative terms: as cosmic, as two destined souls encountering each other after a thousand years apart, as two ancient species who, until that moment, had believed that we were the last of [End Page 88] our kind. And Y-Dang's story felt like a tall tale. Where my life had its challenges of abuse, dogmatic faith, racism, and the constancy of alcohol and drugs, hers was a story of genocide, of being born in a refugee camp, of immense poverty, and of the racisms and hardships of small-town Canada. And yet, neither of us saw our lives as tragedies. We loved life, were happy to have survived as long as we had, and were ecstatic to be working as Assistant Professors in Asia, despite the fact that both of us had been discouraged from taking our jobs because, as we were told, "no university in North America will ever want to hire you again." What others saw as failures, we saw as opportunities. Neither of us were supposed to be here–in academia, in Asia, on this planet. We were viruses that had slipped our way into the academic system, and we had no interest in feeding its most vital organs. Our work, our collaborations, our love, would always reflect this. Shirley Geok-lin Lim"Those whom the gods…(For Y-Dang)In the...