Vietnam stole my heart

Photo by Phil Nguyen on Pexels

"My heart is here, the Lady of Many Tongues had said days before. Here, where I see how beautiful Đà Lạt is. I had thought the same of Saigon, despite the smoke and lights and buildings—how it could've been mine in another life. A different one, not necessarily better or worse." ~ She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

I know it's cheesy to say that, but it's true.

In some way, going to Vietnam for the first time helped me figure out that I'm not alone in this universe and that I still belong somewhere. Even though a lot of Vietnamese people don't view me as Vietnamese at all or more Việt Kiều than anything else. I feel like a fucking oddity, honestly. I can understand the language to a certain extent depending on the context clues given, but when it comes to speaking... Well, a baby can speak it better than me at this point.

Everyone is also always trying to show me how to eat Việt food, even though I grew up eating it. And there are always the comments about my body, cao quá, and wow, you're so skinny. (That does not help my eating issues.)

It's annoying and sometimes frustrating. 

Yet despite it all, my heart bloomed when I was over there. And a part of it is still over there. 

If it weren't for world events that led to one thing after another, which eventually led to my parents coming to the United States, maybe, just maybe, I would have been born in Vietnam and had a different life. Not necessarily better or worse, but it would have been mine.

And now the weather:

girls like me don't cry (remix) by thuy ft. MIN

~ Stacy N.

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My two cents on the Vietnam War

Photo by Philip Jones Griffiths
Creative Commons

After watching Áo lụa Hà Đông (The White Silk Dress), not only was I sad but I was pissed. Really, really pissed. Because, honestly, the Vietnam War wasn’t really about Việt Nam at all. It was about America’s want/need to get rid of communism. To stop it from spreading before it hit (if ever) America. Imagine it this way, communism was like spilled milk. In order to prevent it from spreading any further, America cleaned it up (or at least put a “wall” around it) by going to war in Southeast Asia and threatened the Soviet Union. That caused about one to two million Southeast* Asians to leave their country behind. And plenty dead. The closest thing to this in today’s times is the Syrian refugee crisis, with approximately nine million refugees.
It also angers me that when the Vietnam War is mentioned, it’s almost exclusively told from an American (aka white) perspective. This also saddens me because it seems like more people want to read about “"realistic" accounts of the war in the boonies that focus on repulsive realities like soldiers stepping on shit-smeared punji sticks, suffering from crotch rot, or keeling over from dehydration.” (Nick Turse, “Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Rape in Wartime”) than the real truth about what happened. How the war was really about suffering, death, sadness, heartbreak, and secrets that the U.S. government was trying to hide that involved killing many innocent Southern Vietnamese civilians.**
The whole point of teaching history is to prevent certain events from ever happening again. If those parts are hidden, then they’re most likely to be repeated, over and over again. That’s why it makes me happy, when Vietnamese people make movies, write books, and sing countless of songs about the Vietnamese War, (despite how sad most of it is) because we’re taking control of our own narratives and telling people another side that’s very rarely shown. A side that’s about missing people, seeing your home get destroyed, seeing people die right in front of you, trying to survive, trying to live in a new country, bullying, etc. In the hopes that maybe history won’t be repeated again. However, Americans also need to tell the truth about what has happened, if we want to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again.

And now the weather:
I Was A Boat Person: Vietnamese Refugees Look Back

*The reason why I say Southeast and not Vietnam was because the Vietnamese War also affected the surrounding countries like Laos and Cambodia. But the main focus is still on Việt Nam. Fun fact, apparently 21 countries were involved in the war. 
**Note: I still have yet to read Nick Turse's book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, so I am a bit dubious about its truth and how valid his sources are. However, I don't doubt the fact that a lot of Vietnamese people were killed either by the Americans, either of the Vietnamese armies, trying to escape the war-torn country in a boat/plane/another method, etc.

~ Stacy N.

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Easier to understand it than to speak it.

Honestly, I'm disappointed in myself for never really taking the time to really learn Vietnamese when I was younger. Of course, there were times when I would try to learn the language, whether it's from a book, some cds from the library, or online. However, that would last only a couple of days, because boredom would take over. Plus, I want to speak Vietnamese now instead of going through the hard part of learning a language.
However, as I learned during my eighteen years of living on this wonderful yet problematic planet, in order to get the things you want, you have to work hard for them. Hence the reason why genies are almost impossible to find.
So in the end I'm not going to give up learning my language. No matter how slowly it may take through listening to real life conversations, youtube videos,  movies, television shows, and music (mixed in with a bit of reading), I'm determined to learn the language of my people. Because I want to preserve this beautiful, complex language that's been uniting the Vietnamese people for thousands of years.

And now the weather: 

No Love No Life (Nơi Anh Không Thuộc Về) by 365DaBand

~ Stacy N.

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I'm forgetting my Vietnamese name.

Sad but true. My twin can only speak in English. My older sister still remembers Vietnamese. My brother, I'm not too sure about. While me, I still remember a few phrases and words like I love you, I'm sorry, I'm full, I'm going to school/the library, etc.
When I first moved in with my older sister, I used to miss listening to Vietnamese everyday. Even though I only understood a few things here and there. Now, all I hear is English, English, English. Which is nice. But it's sad, because I'm forgetting my heritage. 

~ Stacy N.

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