Tenderloin Museum Myrtle Alley Block Party Celebrating

McSweeney's 78: the Make Believers Issue Release

Ft. readings by Vu Tran & Doan Bui + a DJ set by Topazu

Thursday May 1, 2025 | 6-8pm

Myrtle Alley (at 835 Larkin St.  b/w O’Farrell & Geary)

Free! All welcome! No registration required!   

TLM celebrates the latest issue of  McSweeney's with a block party in the heart of Little Saigon. On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, the SF literary quarterly features writers of the Vietnamese diaspora reflecting on what it means to be “Vietnamese.” Readings by Vu Tran & Doan Bui + a DJ set by Topazu. 

From April-September, Tenderloin Museum teams up with SF Planning to produce a series of block parties in Myrtle Alley during the SF First Thursday Art Walks in the Tenderloin & Lower Polk. The inaugural event celebrates the release of a special issue of the iconic SF fiction quarterly McSweeney’s that publishes on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War (April 30).  Contributors Vu Tran & Doan Bui will give readings, and San Francisco based DJ Topazu will perform in Myrtle Alley, an outdoor space adjacent to TLM’s venue for its immersive play The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot at 835 Larkin St.

That momentous occasion has special significance in the Tenderloin–after the Fall of Saigon, many of the Vietnamese refugees who came to San Francisco landed in Tenderloin SROs, and the sudden influx of families indelibly transformed a neighborhood that had long been a residential enclave for single people who were “working class” and/or working in various underground economies. The diaspora that made a home in the TL 50 years ago remains a vital presence in the community today–this is visibly evident along the commercial corridor of Larkin St. populated by Southeast Asian restaurants and small businesses and celebrated as “Little Saigon.” 

A San Francisco institution, McSweeney’s is an independent non-profit publishing house founded by author Dave Eggers; its sister organization, 826 Valencia, supports under-resourced youth develop writing skills and has demonstrated a special commitment to the TL (and the 3500 children who live here) with its 826 Tenderloin Center, in operation since 2016. Here’s what McSweeney’s has to say about the 78th issue of its quarterly: 

In McSweeney’s 78: The Make Believers (guest edited by Thi Bui and Vu Tran), ten writers of the Vietnamese diaspora write from the eclectic hodgepodge that is their shared imagination of what it means to be “Vietnamese.” Packaged in a beautiful foil-stamped cigar box (with art by Bui on each and every surface), and including two booklets, one menu, and a glossary of broken Vietnamese, the work in this issue spans from highbrow to lowbrow, proper to naughty, logical to absurd, and painful to funny. Published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, its contributors work across perspectives and multiple languages. In this completely singular, nothing-else-of-its-kind anthology, these artists write (and illustrate!) from a place of collective loss and joy.

For this program, TLM is honored to partner with our neighbors in Civic Center, the Asian Art Museum, to offer an expanded experience for our members. Prior to the block party, the Asian Art Museum will host a “Curator’s Choice Lecture” featuring writers Doan Bui and Vu Tran in conversation with Natasha Reichle, Associate Curator of Southeast Asian Art, followed by a walk through Little Saigon to Myrtle Alley. This Curator’s Choice Lecture is open to members of the Tenderloin Museum and Asian Art Museum, and will begin at 4pm in AAM’s Samsung Hall (200 Larkin St.). Click here for more information and to register for the member event. 

Copies of McSweeney’s 78 available for purchase at the event, or you can pre-order a copy (or subscribe) over at McSweeney’s.net.

Thanks to the generosity of local brewer Fort Point Beer Co., we’re excited to offer complimentary Fort Point products at this event! 

Artist Bios: 

Doan Bui is a writer and journalist. She was awarded the Prix Albert Londres for her work about refugees. Her memoir, Le silence de mon père ( 2016), won the Prix Littéraire de la Porte Dorée. Her most recent work, the novel La tour (Éditions Grasset, 2022), was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. With Ukrainian writers Pavlo and Viktoriya Matyusha, she wrote Lettres d’amour et de Guerre (2023). She also composes music for artistic performance and loves to karaoke in Vietnamese.

Vu Tran is the author of Dragonfish and a forthcoming novel, Your Origins. His other writing has appeared in publications like The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007: The Best Stories of the Year, The Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and he is an associate professor of practice in the arts at the University of Chicago, where he directs undergraduate studies in creative writing.

Topazu is a San Francisco-based selector who hosts the local Infinite Beat Ambient showcase and radio show Infinite Beat on Radio Valencia. Since 2015, the show features producers, artists and DJs that are shaping the Bay Area sound in experimental synthesis as well as celebrates romanticism, nostalgia and cinematic themes with modern day electronics. Besides curating Infinite Beat, she has also been featured DJing many local shows including Sure Thing, Surface Tension, Honey Soundsystem and VX with her interests in abstract textures, carnal rhythms and her exuberance in darker, chaotic noise. She was a featured performer for the first San Francisco edition of Mutek in 2018.