by Rhamy Payne
Sometimes, we just want to move away from it all.
In a perfect world, writing would be the ultimate escape route. No bounds, no rules – everything is in the hands of the writer. Even so, race, gender, and class can dissuade branching out and demand the safety of normalcy, especially for women. Fortunately, there are those who fight fiercely to remove such condemning barriers – and Trinh T. Minh-Ha, through several different genres, tries to bring about revolution.
Minh-Ha was born in 1953 and grew up in Hanoi – in the midst of a conflict-ridden Vietnam. In addition to a first-hand account of many critical events, her family was also ideologically divided. After studying in the Philippines (as well as Saigon), she moved to America in 1970. Currently, she is a member of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley, and has enjoyed careers in writing, filmmaking, and even composing.
Regardless of her medium, Minh-Ha has always left a lasting impression on her audiences. One of her most common themes is the presence of race and gender in our lives, and questions them regularly. Her aim is usually to disrupt conventions (but not eliminate them outright), and she is no stranger to the issue of selfhood. Naturally, the writer is a champion of women, asserting that the fairer sex should find their own voices, not just duplicate those of men.
However, the greatest draw of Minh-Ha’s creative works are the strategies she uses to assert them. In an interview, the writer declared:
I rarely think in terms of message. I think more in terms of processes of transformation. Every film that I make, for example, is a transformative process for me. I mean by that that whenever I start a film, I may start with an idea, an image or an impression. By the time I finish the film, l am somewhere else altogether, even though I have not lost what I started out with. In the process of making the film your consciousness has changed considerably.
Minh-Ha definitely keeps her word. She doesn’t commit her work, despite the medium, to a single subject or idea; she almost seems to allow it to take its natural course. Audiences are greeted with a peculiar display in her works – a sort of “order in disorder” mentality; in her films, there is no clear-cut voice feeding the audience an answer, or even an explanation of what transpires onscreen. Rapid flashes, random silences, and images superimposed upon one another are entirely possible. Through this method (a method that, to some extent, persists in her writing), Minh-Ha consolidates her goal: the complete disorientation of the audience. As a firm believer in the necessity of transience – that one must always move forward ideologically – the audience is refused the chance to settle into a comfortable spot based on the work; they must come to their own conclusions. One could argue, quite successfully, that unpredictability is one of Minh-Ha’s greatest weapons. By the same token, one could also argue that to be able to create such a potpourri of words and images and have some coherent idea emerge from it is a testament to the rhetor’s mastery of logical appeal. Her desire to shift opinions out of accepted niches is made more than possible by her continuing efforts; she is a force that, by reaching to others, drives countless minds toward a change in paradigms.
Works Cited/Further Reading
Minh-Ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcolonially and Feminism, 6, 16-17, 19-20. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
Minh-ha, Trinh T. When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 1991. 29-50.
Spangler, Tina. Interviewer Interviewed: A Discussion with Trinh T. Minh-Ha. Emerson College, Dec. 1993.
The Regents of the University of California. “Breaking Boundaries through Film.” Framing the Questions: New Visions From the Arts and Humanities at Berkeley. 2000.
Longballa, John. “T. Minh-Ha Trinh: Voices from the Gaps.” University of Minnesota. May 2001.
Brigham, Robert K. “Overview.” The Wars for Vietnam: 1945 to 1975. Vassar College, 2003.
