I had the honor of hosting an artist talkback with Susan Lieu after her show in Boston in November 2019. Check out this inspiring, uplifting, heartwarming, and hilarious artist, and catch Susan’s show “140 lbs” on tour now!
[Read more…] about Susan Lieu’s “140lbs” and Artist TalkbackConversation Starters and Questions for Vietnamese American Diaspora (Bilingual)
Here is an ongoing list of conversation starters and questions as part of my ongoing #FamilyNotes project. This list is tailored to the Vietnamese American diaspora (questions are in English and Vietnamese). However, many of the questions could be used for all conversations. Thank you to all who have contributed to this list!
[Read more…] about Conversation Starters and Questions for Vietnamese American Diaspora (Bilingual)Family Notes
Family Notes is a conversation toolkit to help facilitate intergenerational, multilingual conversations between loved ones. Rather than focus on genealogy and the concretizing of capital ‘H’ History, Family Notes welcomes the complexity of language and storytelling: non-linear, mythical-folkloric, creative, iterative, and collaborative. Family Notes Toolkit will include a 1) field notes style booklet, 2) an accompanying website for resources, and 3) ideas and examples of creative projects sparked by the conversations.
While writing and researching Family Notes, I will share resources, working chapters, and media here under posts tagged #FamilyNotes. Follow along here or sign up for the mailing list below.
[Read more…] about Family NotesInhale the Air of Tiger Balm / Hít vào không khí dầu con hổ
In 2017 while in Hanoi, I wrote this poem in English about my grandmother. It remained in draft version as I worked on the translation, feeling inadequate and lost. During this month of Black April and remembrance, I remember them both by finally letting it go.
[Read more…] about Inhale the Air of Tiger Balm / Hít vào không khí dầu con hổ
Bà Ngoại: A Call and Response
To you Grandmother,
Love your bạn, em, chị, cháu [friend, younger sister, older sister, granddaughter]:
Bà đâu rồi, cháu siêu nhớ bà.
Bà có nhớ cháu của bà không?
[Where are you grandmother? Granddaughter painfully misses you so.
Does grandmother remember her granddaughter?]
And you respond,
Hôm nay tôi mệt quá. Thôi đi về đi, tôi có nhiều việc làm.
[Today I am so tired. Sigh, go home. I’m really busy.]
Today you are tôi and I the distant stranger.
Imagining ‘America’: My Mother’s Refugee Journey to America
For much of my life I had dreamt of one day writing down my family’s refugee narrative. I had envisioned a beautiful photo, audio, and essay project that would do justice to their story. But I never quite got there.
I would begin to write, transcribe her words, and then weep. Putting into words her refugee story somehow made it real. It was not just a distant tale of heroism, escape, and hope. It was my mother, my family, me, who lived this reality.
[Read more…] about Imagining ‘America’: My Mother’s Refugee Journey to America
Hello, MISSTEP
Currently: I am re-examining my relationship to my body–that forgotten instrument, a vehicle of my consciousness, an extension of self, my best friend and foe.
a two-step misstep to the clackety clacks of computer keys
Command + A step here.
Control + Zipper. No, zebra. A zigging and zagging and surrender to the zephyr on my cheek.
Option + Alt you. You hilarious tease of forgotten functions.
//
Mavis Beacon, did you say something?
I can’t hear you between the patterned pecks of perfect precision.
Move/Be/Do Here, there. now. Everywhere. Nowhere.
Boolean
y
n
CAPSLOCK n.o.
Return to
\\
A song in my stomach, twisted into computerized contortions
A wellspring of movement, made mistakenly malicious.
The way you make me feel, I make me feel, I make me me.
Seeps out, secretly through the meticulous cracks of caked fears.
An
inhale
exhale.
A nod. Then two.
A twitch of the finger
tips of the toes bounce in the tight space between.
>>> spam = ‘A mischievous literary litany’
>>> spam
A sly smile, a knowing glance
to the Miss Step, who was always there,
here
everywhere
and nowhere.
+++++
—
Shibuya, Tokyo 2018
Written to the rhythm of Dirty Computer, Janelle Monae.
An Asian American’s Language of Mental Health: Empowerment and Understanding through Conversation
I never learned the word ‘mental health’ in English (my language of primary expression) until my 20’s. It took nearly another decade until I actually began to understand what that even meant. I am still learning this word in Vietnamese (my language of communication with my parents).
However, language is more than the sum of vocabulary words. Language is context, subtle unspoken gestures, symbolic actions and its mis/interpretations. Language is when my mom made me canh khổ qua (bittermelon soup, my favorite) after I mumbled through tears that I needed to get mental health support.
Open Letter: To all the responses to “Mẹ [Mom], Translated” Project and “The Undeniable Force of Khó Khăn” Film
The past week the responses to my announcement of my project “Mẹ [Mom], Translated” and my recent film “The Undeniable Force of Khó Khăn” has been overwhelming.