Humans and Other Animals

AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY VIETNAMESE ANIMAL FICTION THAT EXPLORES THE CONTESTED SPACE BETWEEN HUMANS AND ANIMALS This volume consists of a critical introduction and translations of nine short stories on animals by prominent Vietnamese writers from the French colonial period (1885-1945) to the present-day. These stories have been in active circulation and have been highly regarded in literary circles in Vietnam since 1986, the ‘Year of the Reform’, when Vietnamese literary works were politically and culturally ‘liberated’ and engaged with greater commitment to criticizing, among other things, mainstream ideologies. Specifically, since the inception of ecocritical awareness in Vietnam from the start of the 21st Century, there has been an intellectual movement that has explored and recovered Vietnamese environmental, animal and climate crisis stories since medieval times. These are valued as voices that challenge and counter mainstream socialist ideology that overlooks the survival and lives of marginalized beings, including ethnic minorities and non-human nature. The authors have carefully selected the best animal stories that have been identified as the most influential in Vietnamese literature, which are deserving of global recognition. They have been chosen from various short story collections and literary textbooks—prescribed in schools and colleges—in Vietnam.

Chitra Sankaran (PhD London), has served as (acting) Head of Department and as Chair of Literature, Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore. She is the Founding and Current President of the Association for the Study of Literature and Ecology in ASEAN (ASLE-ASEAN) and the Chief Editor of the Journal of Southeast Asian Ecocriticism (JSEAE). Chi P. Pham is a Tenured Researcher at the Institute of Literature, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi. She received her first Ph.D. degree in Literary Theory in Vietnam and her second Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature in University of California, Riverside (USA). She is the secretary of the Association for the Study of Literature and Ecology in ASEAN (ASLE-ASEAN). Her publications include, Aesthetic Experience in Ramayana Epic (Hanoi National University Press, 2015); Literature and Nation-building in Vietnam: The Invisibilization of the Indians (Routledge, 2021).