A Tragedy

I have a tender spot in my heart for the textile artworks in my collection, especially embroidery art (shown here in the photos)…not just because embroidery art has been a long-standing tradition for the skillful hands of Vietnamese artisans, but because my memories of some of the most beautiful women in my life are woven into each delicate stitch. One of them is Cô Vân (Auntie Vân).

Cô Vân was my “almost” aunt. She was my Uncle Tony’s first love, and upon meeting her, it was easy to see why he fell in love with her kind and gentle heart. In 1975, The cruel tsunami of fate betided in the fall of Saigon and tore their paths across the ocean from each other. 

Uncle Tony eventually married and became a successful aerospace engineer at the US Federal Aviation Administration. Cô Vân also settled down with her own husband and son in the city that was formerly known as Saigon, taking on embroidery work to feed her family with her meager earnings.

Though their love never materialized in marriage, she stayed close friends with my parents, and I also became good friends with her son who was 1 year older than me. I don’t remember much about Cô Vân, except for she was kind and she was always sewing.

When we were playing pretend sword fights on the balcony of the tiny one-bedroom apartment that her family was cramped in, she was sewing. And from what I heard from her husband, even deep into the dead of nights, when the roosters crowed their 3:00am wake-up call, Cô Vân could still be found hunching over her embroidery work, her tired eyes only guided by a dimly lit kerosene lamp, her frail hands diligently weaving colorful stitches onto thin fabrics to create beautiful art that someone would pay her pennies for. That was how much her labor was worth.

When my family migrated to the US in August of 1997, we lost contact with Cô Vân for a while. About a year later, I learned from across the globe that Cô Vân’s lifeless body was found slumped over her sewing table, a dimly lit kerosene lamp mourned beside her thin, petite frame.

Her delicate hands were tightly clutching on to the unfinished embroidered fabric that she was hastening to complete, so she could trade it for pennies, so she could feed her family.

They said her overworked heart gave out.

Her time was worth pennies. Her life was worth pennies.

And to this day, there are countless artists and artisans like Cô Vân whose intricate and painstaking creations are still seen as worth less than a cup of coffee in the art world, simply because of the latitude and longitude from whence their masterpieces originated.

It is my last dying wish to change that. With every bit of my resources and influence, I must change that.