Our SG Fiction newsletter features an original short story from a different author around the world. It’s part of our set of expanded offerings. At least once a month, you’ll receive an original short story from a different part of the world, today’s selection is by Aimee Phan from our Vietnam guide.
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The Poet’s Child
By Aimee Phan
I never used to care for poetry. Our country was founded upon those overwrought, mewling words that got us into trouble for so many years, keeping us under the thumb of the Chinese and then the Westerners, who stoked and encouraged the melodrama of the arts for the purpose of keeping us weak. Feel with our hearts instead of think with our brains. And we fell for it: over and over again. Instead of fighting back against foreign invaders, the literature and music encouraged us to cry and to plead. Our national poem, for example? The ramblings of a weeping, beautiful, codependent whore. Why not whine and moan, when it sounds so pleasing to the ears?
