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Kim Thúy: The Success of My Failures

Kim Thuy, award-winning author
March 27, 2017
All Day
Mendenhall, Room 100

This Spring, on Monday, March the 27th, join the Department of French and Italian at OSU for a delightful and engaging meeting with award-winning author Kim Thúy who will share with us her unique journey from a homeless refugee to an inspiring storyteller. There will be a reception and a book signing after the talk.

Born in Saigon in 1968, Montreal writer Kim Thúy left Vietnam with the boat people at the age of 10 and settled in Quebec, Canada as a child of war in 1979. A graduate in translation and law, she has worked as seamstress, interpreter, lawyer, and restaurant owner. A kaleidoscope of life experiences prepared her with an intimate relationship with words. Her first book, Ru, a best-seller in Quebec and France and translated to over 25 languages, gathered numerous literary awards, including the prestigious 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award (Canada) and the 2010 Grand Prix RTL-Lire at the Salon du livre de Paris (France). The English edition of Ru won the battle of the books organized by Canada Reads and was declared “the” book to read in Canada 2015.

Author of Ru (2009), À Toi (2011), Mãn (2013), and Vi (2006), Kim Thúy continues to explore central themes of literature such as identity, history, and mother-daughter relationship in the context of cross-cultural migration. Her therapeutic and poetic writing proposes a place of attachment against diaspora, a search for hope amidst tribulations, and a call for reconciliation in cultural collisions. 

Kim Thuy: The Success of My Failures flyer