Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh (Vietnamese Đinh Linh, born 1963, Saigon, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese-American poet, fiction writer, translator, and photographer.[1]

Linh Dinh
Linh Dinh, reading at the Asian American Literature Festival, Washington, D.C (27 July, 2017)
Born1963
Saigon
NationalityUS
Genrepoetry
Notable awardsPew Fellowship

He was a 1993 Pew Fellow.[2] He writes a column for The Unz Review.[3]

Biography

Dinh came to the US in 1975, lived in Philadelphia and in 2018 is moving back to Vietnam.[4][5]

In 2005, he was a David Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England.[6][7] He spent 2002–2003 in Italy as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers and the town of Certaldo.[8][9]

He was a visiting faculty member at University of Pennsylvania.[10] From 2015–2016, Dinh was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.[11]

Career

He is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House[12] and Blood and Soap, and five books of poems: All Around What Empties Out,[13] American Tatts, Borderless Bodies, Jam Alerts, and Some Kind of Cheese Orgy. His first novel, Love Like Hate, was published in October 2010 and won the Balcones Fiction Prize.

His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004, The Best American Poetry 2007, and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present. The Village Voice picked his Blood and Soap as one of the best books of 2004.[14] Translated into Italian by Giovanni Giri, it is published in Italy as Elvis Phong è Morto.

Politics

Linh Dinh writes for The Unz Review.

He is a Holocaust denier, writing that “the elaborate Holocaust myth... [is] propped up by a shoahload of bogus scholarship and tear jerking movies,”[15] and has expressed suspicion that the 2018 shootings at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue were similarly fictitious, saying “The always reliable US media announced that 11 Jews were killed in Pittsburgh, although there’s not a single pixel of visual evidence[...]so the cat must have instantly covered all the corpses with dirt and lapped up every drop of blood.”[16] He has suggested that Donald Trump is an agent of the deep state and that “to better serve Jews, Trump is willing to appear as their piñata.”[17]

He believes that "Israel is a violent concept that is executed and maintained with terror, and by this I mean American-sponsored Jewish terror, though these world class terrorists are so relentless with their propaganda, they have made "terrorist" nearly synonymous with their enemy, the Muslim. There is hope for Palestinians, however, for as the USA implodes, Israel will also go up in smoke. Working in tandem, the US and Israel have collapsed several Muslim governments and generated millions of refugees. The same fate awaits Israel, though its dissolution should be permanent, for only then will peace come."[18]

He has suggested that “in every field besides sports, entertainment and politics, blacks are failing spectacularly against all other races,” writing that “during segregation, blacks [...] were self-sufficient, because they had to be. With integration, blacks can take their money to superior, non-black businesses, and that’s why you see almost no black businesses any more, not even in the blackest neighborhoods.”[19] “Black hip hop [leads] the decay” of the American mind, he writes, saying “much of this has been accomplished under the stewardship of Jewish impresarios.”

Reviews

Publishers Weekly reviews Linh Dinh's American Tatts:

The second effort in verse from this rising star of the small-press world turns his considerable powers to the depiction of acrid ironies, unmitigated disgust and politically charged gall. One of its opening poems imagines the poet as a half-knight, half-corpse "Cadavalier," exclaiming, "This pinkish universe is really nothing/ But a flocculation of my desires." A fast-moving poem called "Pick-Up Lines"—one of many about sexual discomfort—instructs a lover to "listen to my effluvium." Dinh (All Around What Empties Out) often imitates (or perhaps quotes) subliterary material: online personal ads, instant messaging, brochures and corporatespeak ("We've entered a new level of parking consciousness"), confessions of X-rated adventures by semi-literate writers. His swift lines also portray the kind of grotesque caricature ("The day before her abortion,/ The one-eyed lady accidentally swallowed her glass eye") used manipulatively in politics. Exploring disgust while toying with frames and assumptions, the poet becomes in one sense a real heir to Charles Bukowski; in another, he joins other younger poets (such as Drew Gardner and K. Silem Mohammad) in a movement toward hard-edged, provocative parody. It might be hard to call Dinh's volume pleasing, but readers of a certain temperament may well find it irresistible.

He has translated many international poets into Vietnamese, and many Vietnamese poets and fiction writers into English, including Nguyen Quoc Chanh, Tran Vang Sao, Van Cam Hai, and Nguyen Huy Thiep.

Works

Poetry
  • Some Kind of Cheese Orgy, Chax Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-925904-78-2
  • Jam Alerts, Chax Press, 2007, ISBN 9780925904683
  • Lĩnh Đinh Chích Khoái, (Nhà xuất bản Giấy Vụn, Sài Gòn, 11.2007)
  • Borderless Bodies, poetry (Factory School, 2006)
  • American Tatts, poetry Chax Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-925904-55-3
  • All Around What Empties Out, Subpress, 2003, ISBN 978-1-930068-19-3
  • Drunkard Boxing, Singing Horse Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-935162-18-9

Fiction

Translations

Editor
  • Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (Seven Stories Press 1996)[21]
  • Three Vietnamese Poets, translations (Tinfish, 2001)[22]
  • Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam, anthology, Seven Stories, 1996, ISBN 978-1-888363-02-9

Anthologies

References
  1. "Linh Dinh". Vietnam Literature Project (VNLP). Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  2. "Đinh Linh: Thi Văn Định Mệnh". Archived from the original on 2009-10-13. Retrieved 2012-12-18.
  3. "Linh Dinh Archive". The Unz Review. Ron Unz. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  4. "Poet is latest in literature series". SignOnSanDiego.co. Union-Tribune Publishing Co. October 25, 2006. Retrieved 2008-09-18.
  5. "Go Where You Don't Belong; An Interview with Author Linh Dinh". Neonpajamas. 2018-05-20. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  6. Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership. "2009/10 David T.K. Wong Fellowship". Apwriters.org. Archived from the original on 2010-10-19. Retrieved 2010-10-09.
  7. "Linh Dinh-Eating Fried Chicken". Asianamericanpoetry.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-07. Retrieved 2010-10-09.
  8. TinFish Press. "All Around What Empties Out - by Linh Dinh". Tinfishpress.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 2010-10-09.
  9. Linh Dinh (2004). "Acknowledgements". Blood and soap: stories. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1-58322-642-1.
  10. "Faculty". Writing.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2010-10-09.
  11. American Studies Leipzig (September 10, 2015). "Next Picador Professor Linh Dinh". Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  12. "Fake House". Philadelphia City Paper. January 11–18, 2001. Archived from the original on 2009-04-16. Retrieved 2008-09-18.
  13. "Excerpts from A L L _ A R O U N D _ T H A T _ E M P T I E S _ O U T". TinFish. TinFish Press. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  14. "Our 27 favorite books of the year". Village Voice. 2008-01-22. Archived from the original on 2008-09-06. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  15. "Blacks, Jews and You". The Unz Review. Retrieved 2018-11-18.
  16. "Disruptive Uncle Sam, Rising Eurasia and Murky Pittsburgh". The Unz Review. Retrieved 2018-11-18.
  17. "Disruptive Uncle Sam, Rising Eurasia and Murky Pittsburgh". The Unz Review. Retrieved 2018-11-18.
  18. Alkhateeb, Tahseen (2015-09-14). "Interview with Linh Dinh: Poetry, Politics, and 'Postcards'". diacritics. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  19. "Blacks, Jews and You". The Unz Review. Retrieved 2018-11-18.
  20. https://www.tupelopress.org/hao.shtml
  21. Rubin, Merle (October 2, 2000). "Tales of the World's 'Unchosen' Misfits". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2008-09-18.
  22. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 2010-10-09.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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