In this pilot episode, host Hà Trang and Kim discuss the two works that each finds most intriguing. While Hà Trang delves into poem "Headfirst" by Ocean Vuong and explores a counter-narrative of the war's heritage that has been passed down from a war-woman to her son, Kim picks the all-time-controversial Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
It is the tension between the beautifully rendered prose drenched in poetic and musical sentiments and the utterly disturbing subject matter of pedophilia that destabilizes the readers; if you love the story for the language, are you practically endorsing a crime? The discussion then takes a detour by moving into how prose and poetry intersect and how each genre has its own strength in delivering certain types of story.
