Monthly Archives: February, 2020

I was doing the High Holidays not only as an act of ritual, but also as a result of a deep yearning for something to feel familiar. Amidst an incredibly abrupt change of scenery—moving across the world to a new country, getting food poisoning during my first week, and most recently, contracting dengue fever. All of this, of course, occurring all at once on my first visit to Vietnam in over a decade.

Through this podcast, I wanted to break “banh mi” with fellow AAPI folks in Chicago and beyond to share their own experiences connecting to their AAPI roots, the work that they are doing to empower their community, their family, and themselves. 

Butterfly Yellow is a Vietnamese refugee story but also an American one—the way the idea of America is not exactly aligned with the way America actually is.

■ News from the Diaspora ■►UK police say 39 Vietnamese died from lack of oxygen, overheating■ News from Việt Nam ■►Vietnam Quarantines Entire Commune...

Bao: My parents loved Vietnamese arts and poetry but knew they lived in a culture that doesn’t value that. And yet here they had a son who was going into art in the English language, and they feared for my survival, which is a pressure a lot of people don’t understand.

In this except of this is for mẹ, Tam Nguyen reflects on a phone call with her mother, exploring how this simple interaction can carry pregnant silences, anchored by words left unsaid, and a love that is textured, ferocious and complex.

I was conscious that the readership would be much broader and unfamiliar with the historical and political context against which much of Cabramatta’s gangs emerged, became Australia’s heroin capital and infamously led to Australia’s first political assassination.

My counselor asked me if I’ve had any traumatic experiences lately. This was 12 minutes into our first meeting, after he asked me to rate my happiness, on a scale from one to ten.