This is how I’ll remember you.

Eyes wide, hands weathered yet clasped. You are modest but glowing. Your children are safe in your hands and there’s hope in your faces. You survived oceans and uncertainty, gambling with war and destruction so that I wouldn’t have to. It paid off. In your one-mattress apartment, you slept soundly with your family huddled around you, despite the sirens and the stones rattling against the iron bars as they hit. But poverty was a challenge more than it was an incarceration.

You had dreams. Big ones. And these dreams kept you afloat as you struggled through America without a word of English in your mouth or a dollar to your name, even when they came to harass us for looking like the Commies.

But things changed as time went on. When stable money and a safe place to live became less of a worry, other priorities set in. You turned your gaze from the family to somewhere else. And for the longest time, I remember you sleeping in separate beds more than together. In the time you weren’t there, things decayed. It became too painful to live there and you couldn’t keep up that things were okay. Every time I came back, things got worse.

So you left.

I understand your decision. It’s not like we all didn’t see it coming. I can understand. It was time. But while I do forgive you, I will not forget. I will not allow you to rob me of my anger. I’m pretty pissed off at what you did and what you’re doing. You can’t even tell me to my face about what happened. I really want to ask you now: was it worth it?  Are you happier? Do you ever think about us? Do you wonder who will be there next to you on your death bed, and then regret?

You always taught me that loyalty always run deep, to ride or die for me and mine. So it fucking sucks to see you go back on that.

Thinking about post-grad life hasn’t been difficult for me lately. I have a guarantee of where I’ll be in the summer, where I’ll be in the fall, and hopefully where I’ll be for the two years thereafter.

And the back up plan was to always go home. East Side San Jose. Where a room was there for me for the last 20 years. Where there was family.

Things have taken a different course in the last few weeks and post-grad life seems much more daunting. That home is no longer there. It’s a strange feeling knowing that I no longer have an anchor to the place I was born and raised. There’s nothing stable for me anymore. And as much as I know I have extended family in San Jose, I was never close to them. I wonder how they know me.

A lot of things are running through my head. Is this adulthood? Did I grow up too fast? Did I not spend enough time with the family when they were there? Where do I go now? And who will be there for me?

The last question is starting to scare me more and more, especially coming from a refugee background. My family line here in the states extends back only one generation — all I have are my parents. I don’t know any other family. And now that’s not quite there anymore, I feel so so alone.

I am lost.

Something I wrote for the most recent issue of Non Song. Intersections between being Vietnamese-American, second generation, and gay. Enjoy!

Picture Son: How to Love Yourself and Your Gay Vietnamese Children

By Trung Nguyen

I kept watch at the mailbox every day for the first two weeks of May during my Senior year of high school, memorizing the exact window of time the mail carrier approached our home. He would come between three to four in the afternoon, right when I got out of school. I would rush home at a frenetic pace, keeping an anxious eye out for his white truck and blue uniform, a feverish prayer on the tip of my tongue that I wouldn’t miss him. On the days I managed to bolt home before he arrived, I would wait from my living room with a view of our front yard, straining to identify the envelopes and packages that he would unload from his satchel.

I was on the look out for any oversized envelope, larger than most letters with the dimensions of a manila folder but slender enough to fold to the curved half-circle of our mailbox. Each time that the envelope didn’t arrive, I could breathe for a second, being relieved for the day. But it wasn’t for long – I mentally prepped myself for the next day of waiting and anxiety. It had to come soon. And I had to get it before anybody in the family did.

I wasn’t out to my family. Inside the package would be our prom pictures: my then boyfriend and I, two boys, hands clasped and suits matching. My parents wouldn’t be ready to see this picture, especially because one of them was their only son.

My patience paid off. A day later, the photos arrived and I let myself melt after secretly peering into the envelope. When I looked at our photos, all of the anxiety and fear was worth it. I kept them hidden in my room most of the time, only bringing it out whenever I was feeling particularly lonely or needed something to cheer me up.

One day, I got a call from my mom while I was out. “I cleaned your room today. I just wanted to let you know.” Searching for a reason why she would call me for something so simple, I thanked her and let her know I’d be home for dinner.

The realization only came later. My heart stopped. I forgot to put away our prom pictures. I rushed back home.

***

I was my parents’ many firsts. I was their first born (and only) son, the first to be surrounded by an entire family who had spent the last twenty years resettling from Vietnam, the first to graduate high school with a 4.0, and the first to go to a UC school – these were some of the highlights of many other firsts.

While more these firsts than I could count were met with anticipation and celebratory welcoming than with unease and tension, my parents never expected that I would also be their first gay child.

I grew up in East Side San Jose, an immense Vietnamese-American enclave and Southeast Asian refugee haven. It was nearly impossible to be alone as a child: our entire extended family lived within three blocks of one another, my schools offered Vietnamese bilingual education, and my friends didn’t question why I brought out fish sauce instead of soy sauce to the dinner table. I had a strong sense of my history and my heritage. Yet despite being affirmed in my Vietnamese identity, I couldn’t shake off a chronic sense of immense loneliness and crippling fear I had growing up. It was a fear I couldn’t escape, one that I was reminded about day to day: the fear of being who I was and loving who I wanted to love. It was paralyzing.

This same fear propelled me home the night my mom called me. Would my key work or would the locks be changed? If I had five minutes to stuff my belongings into a bag, what would I take? How much of a physical or emotional beating could I take before I made a run back out the door?

I was terrified — mostly, of losing my family. I lingered on the sidewalk of my house, carefully observing the lights in every room, as if staring at the flickering yellow glow would magically show me what everyone was doing. I talked to my then boyfriend and made back-up plan after back-up plan in case I would get kicked out. After assuring me a warm place to sleep and food to eat, I worked up the courage to enter the house.

My keys worked. I stepped inside. It was quiet. My mom was watching TV with my dad. I snuck my way past them, still fearful. As I entered my room, I couldn’t have prepared myself for what I saw.

At the front of my desk was my prom picture, neatly framed in new black wood.

***

We don’t speak of it much but small actions have liberated me over the years. They no longer bother me about girlfriends. They invite my “friend” over for family celebrations. They leave out two plates for breakfast when my boyfriend stays for the night. In the process of letting go of fear and allowing myself to love without fear of losing my family, I have become an active member of both the Vietnamese and LGBT community, working with youth and advocating for a stronger future. I would have never done any of this had I continued to live in fear.

Like many Vietnamese families, there wasn’t much my family could offer by way of support, but what they did have was their love. But this was all I could have asked for and this is what I ask of all my readers: continue loving your sons, daughters, little brothers and sisters even if they love somebody of the same sex. You have the power to transform and empower a life and I urge you to use it for the better.   

I never use this word, but damn my parents were swagalicious.

I’ve had the blessed honor of mentoring and interacting with a great number of youth, particularly youth of color, in my last four years of college: Breakthrough Collaborative, SEA Admit Weekend, High School Conference, SASC-SI are some of the highlights. Across my undergraduate career, I’ve interacted with hundreds of young folk only half a decade younger than I. It’s been amazing speaking and working with the inspired and inspiring younger generations about their dreams, goals, and aspirations toward higher education. As somebody who grew up in their shoes and held their entire families on their shoulders, mentoring these youth have been key to my growth and sustainability as an organizer.

However, there’s been a shift in how I must mentor these youth — a saddening reality.

I used to be able to ask questions about their aspirations toward higher education beginning with “what are you passionate about?” or “what do you love to learn?” or “where do you see yourself in five years?”

Now, the reality is that I must begin with “how much do you parents make?” and give them an honest assessment as to whether or not they’ll realistically be able to attend or afford the university in the first place. This is unjust. This is infuriating. It is ridiculous and absurd I must limit their dreams proportional to the size of their wallets.

I have an urgent request for you, my readers. I know I ask a lot of you but I truly believe that you have the power to enact change.

I implore you speak up against tuition hikes and defend education — on my behalf, on these youth’s behalf, on your future’s behalf. There is a UC Regents meeting this coming Monday at 8:30 in the James West Alumni Center and I urge you to mobilize out and advocate. Shuttle up some folks if you aren’t from the area or school and we’ll have lunch after but hell, just showing up to this meeting on an early Monday morning shows that you care enough.

Do what you can if you can’t come out. Educate yourself, reblog a post, talk to a friend. But whatever you do, do not discard this information if you have any hope for our collective futures.

Hey Tumblr friends,

It’s quite easy to reblog the pictures of police brutality at UC Davis. You might even go the extra mile to add a short sentence in order to put your two cents in the matter and all the support is great. But I would like to remind you that a quick reblog really doesn’t go far enough.

You’re armed with knowledge now and that makes you as much as an actor in this drama as the person occupying or the person committing violence. Inaction is as much of a decision as every other option and to elect not to act is to allow this to continue.

UCLA students — the API community is having a town hall this Monday from 7PM - 9PM about the development of the West Coast API Student Coalition, a network of all progressive API orgs across the West Coast. Here, we hope to get your input how we want to use this movement and how we can mobilize today. If you aren’t a UCLA student but still want a space to organize your API community with us, hit me up through ask and I’ll send you some details on what’s been going on. I’m specifically calling out to CC’s, CSU’s, and Private Schools. Hell, high schools get up on this too.

You are wanted. You are needed. If you cared enough to reblog those pictures, you care enough to close your laptop screen, come out to our town hall on Monday, and discuss where you want us to go and what you want us to do.

Love and solidarity,

Trung

(knowthesaurus.tumblr.com)

I had the wonderful privilege to speak to the UCLA community about Proposition 209 yesterday. I would like to share with you all my speech. My hope is that somewhere, this will make sense to somebody. And we stand in solidarity with you.

I am ashamed that it has taken over ten years for us to get to the point where the ban on Proposition 209 is now back in the hands of the courts. Over ten years – long enough for a generation of youth of color to grow up without mentors and without seeing figures who look like them in institutions of higher education. In one fell swoop, a golden legacy borne out of the assertion of millions of transformed minds and decades of empowered work cut shamefully short.

However, I am even more ashamed that we live in a time where the public blinds itself to the systemic injustices that Proposition 209 has actively addressed and sought to correct. This was not the California which I was raised to believe in.

What kind of place do are we in today where a public education sought is a public education denied? What kind of place are we in today where the overwhelming majority of our public high schools are more effective as a mechanism to marginalize and criminalize youth rather than serve as a mechanism to liberate, empower, and reaffirm a human life and experience? What kind of place are we in today where so-called ‘merits’ and ‘indolence’ are wrongfully conflated with the underlying issue of inequitable distribution of resources and access as navigated through race, national origin, gender, sexuality?

The fight for affirmative action is not about quotas, merits, or unfair preferences as you might have been wrongfully told. Rather, the fight for affirmative action is a fight for a more just and equitable America that recognizes why it was a pursued solution in the first place: in order to liberate education from its cages in the hands of the few and privileged in this country and allow those who are most separated
from it the chance to pursue it.

At the cusp of a great social upheaval as we are today where teachers join hands with freedom fighters in order to rise up to critique our economic structures, now is the time to act as those who do not act are just as culpable as those who actively resist change.

So today, I stand here in solidarity to repeal Proposition 209 not because of statistics, facts, or any other quantitative reason. Rather, I stand here in solidarity because repealing Proposition 209 is simply the right thing to do and I urge you all to exercise your right to democracy and ensure the future is bright for our generations to come.

-Trung Nguyen, UCLA Asian American Studies, Asian Pacific Coalition Director

Me: Hey Mom, I’m taking Vietnamese at school right now.

Mom (in viet): LOL REALLY? I’m gonna text you instead of calling you from now on and you have to respond back in Vietnamese.

—

And then she tells me that she’s gonna go to bed smiling tonight.

colorblinding:

“Back in the day,” as my sons would say, the term Asian and Pacific Islander American was born of the need to define ourselves rather than let others do it for us. Much like in the African American political movement where Negro became Black and Black became African American; Oriental became Asian and Asian became Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) and all are subject to change because the terms are dynamic and demand to be redefined as our reality changes.

“Back in the day,” you couldn’t find our newly defined identity in the dictionary or the library card catalogue because the term wasn’t historical in nature. It wasn’t anthropological or biological. If anything, it was political.

“Back in the day,” the use of color to define groups of people prevailed. Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White all dominated the dialogue about race, racism and how people viewed each other and themselves, but then someone said “I’m not yellow. I’m more brown.” We had yellow Asian Americans and brown Asian Americans, and we realized that color was not adequate to define such a diverse community.

“So back in the day,” we started ethnic studies programs to do research and find out more about our histories and cultures here in the United States. When we did that, we realized that our history and culture was alive in the stories of our communities, families and in ourselves. It was as dynamic and ever changing as our lives were, and it didn’t fit into only one subject area or category. 

After the exclusion of all Asian immigration in the mid-1930s, the re-opening of immigration in 1965 and the end of the Indo-china War in the mid-seventies which connected the refugee experience to the immigrant experience, Asian and Pacific Islander America grew by leaps and bounds and created a critical mass whereby we are not a small minority anymore only living in certain geographic areas and regions. Asian and Pacific Islander America had arrived with the new millennium ready to take its rightful place with our other sisters and brothers in the American family.

Furthermore, the natural law to redefine ourselves is still in play because our realities have changed. Even though we continued to define ourselves as one collective group, we always knew that APIA was not homogeneous. Should Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders be a sub-group while sharing equal billing in the term APIA? Of course not, and as they define and redefine their communities both here and abroad, we shouldn’t stand aside; we should support, work with and learn from their self- determination. What of the growth of interracial and interethnic relationships and families, how are they to be defined? They are to be embraced, loved, and welcomed because their realities will add more texture, color and substance to our ever-growing tapestry of community. The same holds true of all APIA communities that come to the United States with individual religions, culture and customs. It is also true of our children, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, moms, dads and elders who are loved ones to us all and demonstrate the connection from one generation to another and the uniqueness of each generation’s experience. Embracing individuals within the APIA community also includes those of the LGBT community who are another important voice in our collective experience. 

“So today, not back in the day”, where do we go from here? To me, the Asian and Pacific Islander community is a big tent with room for many more. A horrific event, 9/11, connected one community with another who felt the same impact of another terrible event, December 7, 1941. Some from the Muslim and Arab American and Japanese American communities have been able to share their experiences as a result of xenophobia from war. Because of these external events, lives and histories in America were transformed with negative consequences. But this connection, this community bonding, redefines Asian and Pacific Islander America with Muslim and Arab Americans becoming sisters and brothers not based on anthropological or biological terms but by common experiences in our paths to becoming part of American society.

How do we define Asian and Pacific Islander America? It is dynamic and ever changing based upon our collective changing American experience. We can define it any way we want.

— Warren Furutani, via Angry Asian Man

this should be required reading and/or discussion for all apias

Performing at Tuesday Night Cafe was a blessed experience. In my eight minute set, I performed three pieces (Rosary, Rebound Boy, and Fucking Ugly).

It was a great, supportive crowd especially since everybody was pretty welcoming to newcomers. I was very humbled to share the mic with such talented people in the community. Some points to take away: I should watch my timing and allow audience time to react.

In any case, it was a dream realized for me — ever since I watched TNC for the first time two years ago, I dreamed to perform some pieces up there. It got me to start writing.

Two years later, I achieved it.

Mahalo to all those who came out and to those who have been supportive throughout my writing career. It has shaped me to who I am today. :)