Writing Life, Family, and Travel With Heart and Honesty
Ian Waldraff discusses life during Vietnam’s lockdown, finding light in personal storytelling, and writing for those he loves most—his readers and his children.
Ian Waldraff invites readers on a journey that is at once deeply personal and refreshingly relatable. As a writer of both fiction and narrative non-fiction, and a travel photographer with a sharp eye for absurdity and grace in equal measure, his work captures the texture of lived experience—messy, funny, and occasionally profound. From documenting the birth of his first child in Vietnam during the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, to reflecting on the broader meaning of storytelling and family, Waldraff’s voice is candid, grounded, and laced with humour. In this engaging conversation with Reader’s House Magazine, Waldraff reflects on the power of memory, the art of telling just enough, and why the best stories often come from the moments we least expect.
Waldraff’s voice is warm, witty, and grounded, offering reflections that linger with humour, heart, and a rare emotional clarity.
How did your experiences in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic influence the themes and narratives in “Hot as Phở, Vol. 9: Lockdown Baby!”?
Vietnam is a funny place. When I asked Danielle, my wife, to write about the whole experience of having our first baby during the madness of COVID-19 in Vietnam, I asked her to tap into what made living there special to us, and she did it perfectly: Vietnam is predictably unreliable; it is welcoming yet impenetrable; if you are comfortable with a regular dose of ridiculous, Vietnam is a great pace to be. When I edited the piece, I just did my best to accentuate our simultaneous affection for and frustration with the place that will always be where our first child was born.
In your writing, you often explore personal milestones. How do you balance sharing intimate experiences with maintaining privacy and respect for others involved?
I try to overwhelmingly document the positive and not overshare. There’s no reason to overshare if the writing is good. No one who knows me would describe me as bubbling with optimism, but most of us spend enough of our lives working and grinding and struggling. I prefer to focus these snapshots of our lives mostly on parts that don’t suck. I do occasionally make criticisms, but I think they are gently wrought and certainly a far cry from damning. I mean – if someone is about to be given fundal pressure when giving birth, I hope the writing on Globepouncing.com will help that someone say “no, thank you” just to be as safe as possible. Most of what you’ll find, though, are things that make us laugh and make us keep being willing to get up in the morning. The idea is that, eventually, good things will come, and you can decide what your good things are.
Your blog, Globepouncing, offers a window into your life. How do you decide which personal stories to share and which to keep private?
I try not to upset people we care about. I also want these memories to be something by which my children and – Inshallah – grandchildren can remember me and their mom and maybe even themselves. They don’t need to be scandalized by their old man. Like I already said: I want my work to be something that makes us want to get up in the morning. There’s enough nonsense that makes us feel otherwise. The personal stories I share – and I think both fiction and non-fiction can be equally and powerfully personal – are motivators to reach for the good. Like any good Greek tragedy, the blood and awfulness can take place offstage. That stuff happens; it’s still there, but it doesn’t have to be what I explicitly show.
“Hot as Phở, Vol. 9” reflects on parenthood during challenging times. What message do you hope readers take away from your journey?
If you’re not flexible, shit will overwhelm you. No matter the stakes – and childbirth is pretty high-stakes – you can do what you can do, and then you’re going to need some help, and that’s okay. Embrace that. That’s where relationships and experiences worth sharing come from, and what else do we really have other than stories? Here comes the English teacher in me: everything in all of our lives is a story. We all live for stories. You get together with friends, and what do you say? “What are you up to?” “What happened?” “Who did what?” “How do you know?” We’re all constantly asking one another to tell stories, and I have been excited since day one of parenthood to share stories with my babies. In the end, it’s all any of us will have.
How has your background and experiences shaped your writing style and the subjects you choose to explore in your works?
I always see ways that things can – should – be better. It’s a disease. I do try to share the positive, but it is so easy to criticize much of what goes on in our world. I don’t always go for easy, but then there it is again and again. You can’t ignore it forever. I want people to be better. I want things to be better. Because they can be. I always – usually – try to be better. I don’t always succeed, of course. Maybe I don’t even often succeed, but, as I paraphrase my childhood friend’s mom, we should try anyway – because it’s the right thing to do; it’s the best thing to do. I suppose my fiction writing is a shade or three darker than my blog writing because there I do target what I think humanity doesn’t improve at its own peril. In fact, my full-length manuscript Formerly Jane Vo (which as of today still needs a publisher and, yes, features a Vietnamese-American protagonist) treats the question “What does it mean to do the right thing?” I think it’s a solid question with only terribly, deliciously messy answers.
What challenges did you face while writing about such a personal and transformative experience, and how did you overcome them?
With intimate personal struggles, I think remembering can be hard because we are always trying to move forward. In “Lockdown Baby,” Danielle and I helped each other remember. We reminded each other of instances when we would say something to the effect of “that’s not how it happened.” Thus, to tell others the story, we had to tell each other the story – a lot.
What advice would you offer to aspiring authors looking to write about personal experiences in a way that resonates with readers?
I think that if you are honest about yourself, people will be interested. We all have stories. You just have to get eyes on your work and write clearly. Here’s the English teacher again: don’t try to be fancy; be clear. And maybe crack a few jokes.
