Posts From Author: The Sweetest Fruits

Seriously Questioning…Monique Truong

Monique Truong is the author of three novels—The Book of Salt; Bitter in the Mouth; and now, The Sweetest Fruits, and her work has been published in fifteen countries. Her awards and honors include the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award. On November 12th, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, For Good Measure alongside Nina Burleigh, James Geary, and Maggie Paxson.   What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? I remember reading thin paperbacks of Vietnamese legends and stories when I was growing up in S. Vietnam—so I would have been six or younger. I remember speeding through them, begging my mother to buy me more each week. What is your favorite line from your current work? First line of The Sweetest Fruits: “Patricio Lafcadio Hearn was born hungry.” It was also the first line that I wrote of this novel. To me, it’s the key to understanding Hearn and how he behaved and interacted with the women, who in the TSF, narrate his life and theirs. What is your favorite first line of […]
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