Emerging From the Shadows

"Is that you I'm reading about?" asks Nguyen Van Dung's aunt, phoning from the U.S. Her nephew and I had just sat down in a Hanoi café to talk about Bong, a book about his life as a gay man in Vietnam, when she called his cell phone.

Dung's notoriety is new. For most of his 41 years, he has lived as a shadow — the English translation of the book title (and a derogatory Vietnamese term for homosexuals). "We are considered ill or deviant," he says.

Several years ago, two Vietnamese journalists asked Dung to tell his story. Over months of interviews, the tale of a confused young man took shape, chronicling affairs gone bad and his mother's disappointment with him on her deathbed.

Bong isn't great literature, says Khuat Thu Hong of Hanoi's Institute for Social Development Studies. But it is a breakthrough because it is the first intimate revelation of gay life in Vietnamese. "Its publication is a sign that society is becoming more tolerant," he says.

Some have criticized Dung for his narrative, claiming that it opens gays to ridicule. Many others, however, applaud it. The first 2,000 copies have sold out and 5,000 more are on order.

And Dung's aunt? What was her reaction? "Oh," says Dung after he hangs up. "She asked if I was earning any royalties."