BÀI PHỎNG VẤN CÔ LÊ PHẠM LÊ... TIMES NEWSPAPER

Author Le Pham Le, 67, of Pittsburg, is photographed at her home in Pittsburg, Calif., on Monday, Feb. 22, 2016. Le has written two poetry books and three children’s books. Le will give a talk about her new book that depicts children’s resilience amidst war at the Railroad Book Depot store in Pittsburg on March 5th. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) 

Bài Phỏng Vấn Cô Lê Phạm Lê với Contra Costa Times newspaper
            

PITTSBURG — After arriving in the Bay Area following the fall of Vietnam, Le Pham Le took a job delivering newspapers, never imaging that one day her own words would be published in the form of children’s literature that reflect her native country’s heritage.

“I never thought of such a big dream as I just started all over again with so many troubles to deal with,” said the Pittsburg resident, who has also published two books of poetry translated into English from Vietnamese.
On March 5, she will read from her second children’s book, “Guava Hill,” at the Railroad Book Depot in downtown Pittsburg. The book was inspired from Le’s childhood experiences of playing make-believe war in a war-torn country while linking the story to Dinh Tien Hoang, who lived in the 10th century and was Vietnam’s first emperor who unified the country after liberation from 1,000 years of Chinese rule.
“There was actually a Guava Hill that belonged to my parents and was located in our backyard. My childhood friends and I used to gather there to pick guava fruits and play together everyday,” she said.
“So when I wrote ‘Guava Hill,’ I wanted to merge my experiences of growing up in Vietnam during the war with the childhood world that I created based on history.”
The story is geared to 9- to 13-year-olds and Le hopes it will pique children’s curiosity about historical figures.
“Guava Hill,” along with Le’s two other children’s books,
“Magical Voice in the Forest” and “The Baby Sparrow Song,” all stem from children’s poems she wrote in English in free verse.
The 66-year-old retired Los Medanos College employee shares her home with two dogs, including one that is a bit of a critic.
“Tear Drop used to wag his tail as he listened to me recite my poetry and ran frantically around the bed when he heard me crying over a sad story, ” Le said of the nine-year-old Jack Russell terrier who lives part-time with her when not at her son’s house in Southern California.
Le graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Vietnamese language and literature from Saigon University of Pedagogy and taught high school literature in Vietnam for five years. In 1979, Le and her husband arrived in the Bay Area, living briefly in Antioch before settling in Pittsburg and raising three children, all college graduates and full-time professionals.
She delivered newspapers for the Contra Costa Times in 1982 at about the same time she started taking classes at Los Medanos College to improve her English and learn new skills.
“I got up at 3 o’clock and attended school in the evenings,” Le recalled with a chuckle of those long-ago, long days.
“Returning to college was a good start to overcome my language barrier, culture shock, financial problems.”
After graduating from Los Medanos with an associate of arts degree in computer science in 1986, Le worked there as a coordinator in the school’s English and English-as-a-second language computer labs until her retirement in 2011.
While at Los Medanos, Le started writing poems in Vietnamese, drawing in part on her immigrant experiences. Her poems have been published in several literary magazines and she has presented her work at various universities, libraries and bookstores.
She decided to expand her creative voice to children’s books after a Yale University professor remarked that folk tales are an important part of Vietnamese literature that needed to be introduced to American readers.
“Vietnam has a very unique oral tradition in which stories and history have been passed down over centuries and have become a part of everyday life,” she said.
“Unlike in the United States where parents read bedtime stories to their children, Vietnamese parents sing lullabies or recite poems to them instead. Children and adults alike know these stories by heart told by their parents, grandparents and neighbors.
“Many of these stories are a mix of myth, magic and history.”
The experience of writing children’s books has been a rewarding one for Le.
“(Children’s) expressions and reactions remind me of my former high school students in Vietnam when they raised theirs hands wishing to be called upon for their answers to my questions in literature class years ago,” she said.

IF YOU GO
What: “Guava Hill” reading by Le Pham Le
When: 10 a.m. March 5
Where: Railroad Depot Bookstore, 650 Railroad Ave., Pittsburg.
Cost: Free
Info: 925-427-2334