THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF H. LAN THAO LAM

Two lives, intertwined.

Experimental filmmaker and artist Lin, a genderqueer Taiwanese American, uses Gertrude Stein’s sly Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as inspiration and template to tell the life of H. Lan Thao Lam, a Vietnamese-born artist. Just as Stein “ventriloquizes her own memoir through the ruse of her lifetime companion’s tale of their quarter-of-a-century partnership,” Lin narrates Lan Thao’s story as a first-person account. Born in 1968, during the Tet offensive, Lan Thao’s life changed when the Communists took over. Suddenly, food was in such short supply that people resorted to eating bats. With crime and violence endemic, her family prepared to flee. “Every year after the war ended our prospects grew more and more grim,” Lan Thao reveals. “Escape became the only option.” One attempt failed, but finally she and her father and sisters managed to land in Malaysia, where they spent months in a refugee camp and a transit camp until they finally arrived at a military base in Montreal. Both Lin and Lan Thao have dealt with considerable challenges, including Lin’s with breast cancer, which involved a “battery of tests and appointments, the agony of decision making, the frustrating holes of research and contradiction,” and the long treatment: “Cancer was a full-time job for both of us.” They also respond to the “trauma and brutality” inflicted on vulnerable individuals by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as by “pre-COVID anti-Black racism, overt hostility toward Asians, and mounting anti-Asian violence.” Unlike Stein and Toklas, whose queer identity remained closeted throughout their lives, Lana and Lan Thao are openly gay and became domestic partners in 2021. They travel and work on art projects together, including this innovative life story.

A fresh take on a dual biography.