![]() ![]() Johnson: Reading about you as a teacher online, my impression is that as a teacher, you emphasize helping students find their voices. Learning to write a good sentence allows you to be more honest and more truthful in your work, and that’s when your “voice” emerges. I think finding your voice is basically the process of learning the craft and gradually revealing who you are to yourself. But of course, it’s hard to be a professional writer these days without also being a teacher, so I ended up a professor after all, but I quite like being a teacher, so that worked out for the best. My intention then was to be a writer and nothing else. When I went off for my MFA, I discarded those plans. In college, that was my plan, to be a professor of English and then write creatively on the side. Sherbert didn’t distract me from that, but she kind of put me on the path to being a scholar. I knew I wanted to be a writer in the first grade. Johnson: Had you already started thinking about being a writer before then? But yes, she was my first truly tough teacher. It’s about being honest with your students so that they can then be honest to themselves, because without that level of truth and commitment, you can’t get better, no matter what you do. But it’s not about being tough for the mere sake of it. Johnson: It seems like when people look back and name their most important teachers, they’re usually tough teachers. She taught me all these things, and she was a very tough teacher. Art is a mode of living, not just something you engage with now and then for aesthetic edification. ![]() She taught me that art isn’t just about beautiful things but about ugly, uncomfortable things, and that these things often get closer to the truth. ![]() They can be read in many different ways, according to when, where, and why you’re reading them, and they teach you a seriousness of mind that can be applied to every aspect of your life: your job, your relationships, your approach to the world. I’d always loved books, but she taught me that books aren’t just about entertainment. Vu Tran: Well, she was the most important teacher I think I’ve ever had-definitely the most important one through high school. Michelle Johnson: In the acknowledgments following your first novel, Dragonfish, you individually thank several teachers, beginning with your twelfth-grade English teacher, Pat Sherbert, who taught you “how to value literature.” That’s really important. While visiting Oklahoma City to speak to students in Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth MFA program, he sat down with WLT’ s managing and culture editor to discuss the best teacher he ever had (spoiler alert: she was tough), his work, the role of language in dehumanizing others, and why art should make you uncomfortable. Also a contributor to the collection of essays The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, Tran left Vietnam at age four and grew up in Oklahoma, graduating from the University of Tulsa then obtaining an MFA from the University of Iowa and a PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Author of the noir novel Dragonfish, Vu Tran teaches English and fiction at the University of Chicago. ![]()
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