“Mẹ, Translated” is a project on intergenerational language and love.
BIBO-XINHXICH
Bi
Bo
Xinh
Xich
Translation is an interpretive act. Based on context, gestures, tone-room-feeling of an uttered word, we create meaning. That meaning of the word changes each time we attempt to explain it. New iterations, contexts, interpretations, and feelings attach to the word, breathing new life and meaning.
She used a certain vocabulary to tell her stories.
Hy sinh Khó khăn Chịu khó
I did not understand their precise meanings, but became familiar with their sounds. Whispers of the past professed through stories of struggle and sacrifice.
Hy sinh Khó khăn Chịu khó
The words were fragmented totems—heavy with a metaphysics of meaning and untranslatable into the American English of my suburban childhood realities. I held the totems in my hands, ran my fingers along their textures, and carefully placed them in my treasure chest.
The words represented my mother’s life. Each word embodied tales of worlds past, dreams lost, the impossible overcome.
MISS/MIS is a feminist exploration of all things deemed ‘mis-‘ –wrong, dirty, broken, ‘abnormal.’ From misfits to misreading, misunderstandings to mistakes, MISS/MIS confronts the categorical impulse of labeling things as good/bad, yes/no, men/women, appropriate/not. I pause, ponder, and ask why? Join me on this journey.
I am tired of treading softly between glass boundaries of what is considered ‘appropriate.’ I am tired of listening obediently to the voices of Reason, the Future, and Others tell me that I must be more or less. I want to look in the mirror and see myself, not others.
“Train/Xe lửa” Bi-lingual poetry on History, Memory, and Language published in independent Vietnamese and transpacific publisher AJAR PRESS, issue 5, song song || para||el, Fall (2017)
