Touching Beauty
The Poetics of Kim Thúy
The first collection of critical essays on the work of Vietnamese-born Quebec author Kim Thúy.
Kim Thúy is a literary phenomenon, rising in her first decade of writing to a level of international recognition that few Québécois writers ever attain. The Vietnamese-born author’s novels have garnered literary prize recognition and have been translated from French into twenty-nine languages in nearly forty countries.
Touching Beauty is the first collection to focus solely on Thúy and her economical yet poetic storytelling style that expresses both the traumatic and the beautiful. Her writings, which manage to be culturally specific all while speaking to the fundamentals of the human condition, are examined within the context of what is known as migrant literature in Canada and are situated within the history of Vietnamese literature in French that grew out of the colonial period. Chapters explore food, identity, gender, and the role of writing in Thúy’s life and work. Thúy herself contributes an unpublished poem and an extended interview that focus on her ongoing struggle to find, and write, beauty amidst war, migration, poverty, and loss.
Touching Beauty maps the themes that have, to date, animated a literary career of global relevance and enduring value and encourages a deeper appreciation of Thúy’s writing.
“Kim Thúy is one of the best selling and most celebrated writers of the Vietnamese diaspora in Francophone literary history. Informed by diverse and refreshing perspectives and cogent analysis of the ideas, art, and textual details in Thúy's many works, Touching Beauty offers an overdue exploration of Thúy's fiction and development as a writer.” Xinyi Tan, Coastal Carolina University
« Un excellent ouvrage à dévorer par les spécialistes ou les néophytes qui voudraient découvrir cette écrivaine fascinante. » The French Review
- Commended, Gabrielle Roy Prize, Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures 2023