By Tessa Solomon
The Asian arowana — an iridescent Southeast Asian freshwater fish nicknamed the “dragonfish” — is considered good luck in some cultures.
For the protagonists of Vu Tran’s new novel, Dragonfish, its fleeting presence would symbolize only the secrets and uncertainties now guiding their lives.
Tran will read from Dragonfish at 7 p.m. today at Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St. The book — an expansion of Tran’s 2008 short story “This or Any Desert” — is a genre-bending début, a historical fiction, thriller, and refuge narrative thrown against a noir backdrop.
“I tend to think of really good stories as many stories in one. You have the story the readers read, but then there’s the real-life stories the writers have to tell themselves,” Tran said. “I felt a need to explore those satellite stories I told myself when writing the short story.”
Of those orbiting narratives, the character of Suzy’s proved most captivating. A refugee from Vietnam who fled during the country’s affair with communism, and after the Vietnam War, Suzy feels as if the lies and lives she discarded in her flight have shadowed her every step.
The catalyst of Dragonfish’s conflict is familiar: Suzy’s sudden disappearance. The search for her, led by her Oakland cop ex-husband, would prove anything of a singular intrigue, though. He’s hunting a conclusion that does not promise satisfaction; only truth.
“It wasn’t until I reached back to that refugee story from the short story that I found the emotional backbone for the narrative, for the characters,” Tran said. “From there, I found the novel; before, it was just a crime story that wasn’t as interesting as I wanted it to be.”
Suzy’s unfolding refugee past became not only the thread binding each character but also the cruel scenery for the American Dream.
“It is a bit of a cliché — how the past haunts people — but it’s most detrimental when you feel the past defines you in ways you can’t shake off,” Tran said. “[In the case of Suzy], it kept her from being a full person. That was something I could identify with.”
Having escaped South Vietnam as a child with his mother and sister during the communist takeover, the shock and confusion of a refugee status is personal history for Tran. His family traveled in 1980 by boat to a refugee camp in the Philippines before reaching the United States, a voyage attempted by millions.
“Refugees have no choice, and that lack of choice creates these traumatic and ambiguous memories that are brought to their new lives,” Tran said. “A lot of the novel has to do with the aftermath of that, of what happens when you have to lose your country.”
For Suzy, that aftermath took a quiet violence that left a growing weight. History was a force determined to be acknowledged, if only years later.
“When I was a kid, the most influential book to me was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in which you have these kids enter a fantastic new world,” Tran said. “I would write stories about characters doing the same. Eventually, I realized that I was writing my own refugee experience.”
The world Suzy and Tran braved was less than fantastical. Dragonfish is proof, though, that past and present can do more than collide.
“My sense of being an immigrant and person who doesn’t have full access to the new world that I lived in has affected the way I wrote. But I think that’s a good thing,” Tran said. “When you’re on the outside of things, you tend to look at the inside with a more critical eye.”