Watermark

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of its publication, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network and Texas Tech University Press are proud to release a newly updated version of Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, the seminal anthology of Vietnamese American literature. Contextualized by a new foreword from Isabelle Thuy Pelaud and seasoned with new voices, Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition takes its place as a generational work of eclectic and essential voices.

Edited by Barbara Tran, Monique Truong, and Khoi Luu, this updated edition of Watermark continues to center Vietnamese American literature, whose emergence it celebrated upon its initial publication in 1998. Again, some of the most innovative contemporary Vietnamese American writers, such as Truong Tran, lê thị diễm thúy, and Dao Strom, explore thematic and stylistic territory previously overlooked in other collections, which have traditionally focused on war. New voices such as Nam Le, Anvi Hoàng, and Vinh Nguyen are included in this new edition, raising the number of pieces from forty to fifty-four.

Watermark lifts all constraints, leaving the works to reset the boundaries for themselves. And they do—using poetry, fiction, and experimental forms to venture further into the intricacies of the Vietnamese American psyche. A work equal measures foundational and pathbreaking, now available again for a new generation of readers—an essential collection not to be missed.