Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood’s Constellations of Eve
Introduced by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud
In her novel Constellations of Eve, Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood centers the perspective of talented and complex women expected to be happy in a couple, as she follows three reincarnations of a protagonist named Eve—into an artist, wife, and mother—and her loved ones. Each reincarnation is a chance for Eve to “get it right” and ward off her most crippling fear of being abandon by the very people she loves the most.
This magnificent novel, with all its unexpected twists and turns, explores the Buddhist concept of destiny in a modern Western context that encourages individual choices: Is serendipity and mental health part of karma¾a belief in which people build merit and collect debts in one lifetime, to then be the recipient or payee in a following life? Can true love really transcend time and space, and what does true love even look like? What happens when one person suffers from a loved one’s emotional or physical absence? How many lifetimes does it take to repay each other’s karmic debts and find one another again?
Conjuring the most unlikely scenarios, Constellations of Eve keeps readers in awe of what just had happened to them as they read this dark, torturous, and passionate modern love story that defies what may be expected of an Asian American woman writer. Constellations of Eve is a literary jewel, wherein hope for true and restful love is unexpectedly lost and found.
This book also makes crucial interventions on standards of gender and genre in Asian American literature. In Constellations of Eve, Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood does not portray women characters as Dragon Ladies, sacrificial mothers, treasonous prostitutes, or waiting wives. Since the unprecedented success of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1975), autobiographies and creative non-fiction by Asian American women writers have been relatively popular. A part of this literary genealogy, Vietnamese American women writers face unique pressures. As minority women, they do not always trust mainstream readers because of the voyeuristic gaze which perpetuates exoticized stereotypes that are shaped by an American history of racism and sexism toward Asian women. It is no coincidence that the memoir form by Asian American women writers appear more palpable and therefore more desirable for readers.
As daughters bound by filial piety and a collective desire to save face due to the stigma of war, Vietnamese American women writers can also experience the pressure to not write about taboo subjects, such as a woman’s ambivalence toward motherhood, sex without intimacy, rage, and horror. By writing a novel (instead of a memoir) that centers complex women free of ethnic markers, torn between conflicting passions and desires, Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood writes against both mainstream expectations and community pressures to conform. In short, she subverts mainstream audience’ gendered and racialized stereotypes and tackles traditional taboo subjects headfirst, without holding back. It is a courageous, and breathlessly creative move that I believe, will open doors for daring Asian American women writers who feel restricted by identity politics and by the pressure to save face within family and community.
Constellations of Eve is the first publication of the DVAN/Texas Tech University Press series, and we are so proud to start with such a remarkable book. This exquisite novel stands out for its originality, writing, and daring positionality. Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood’s exploration of what it means to be simultaneously connected and disconnected from the community and society at large is riveting and brilliant. Death and its impact on the living permeate this incisive text. In this ground-breaking novel, Rosewood offers three variations of one love story to ultimately show that love for another being can transcend one’s professional obsession, grief, and ultimately even death.