Essays

“Let’s sing it again,” she whispers, launching us into another round of Socratic dialogues.

I washed my hands twice to get the dirt out from under my fingernails. I wanted clean hands to touch the piano.

Lynda Trang Đài’s provocative choreography was a middle finger to the status quo of Vietnamese music about love, loss, and missing the homeland.

“Má, why do you always listen to this sad, slow music? Can’t you listen to something fun?”

On Trường Sa, time is frozen. The fight for sovereignty, like the struggle for many without a home, a land, a nation or a state, is burdensome and slow.

My mom used to remind me of a Vietnamese folktale when I was a little girl, for those times I wasn’t perfectly obedient. “You should be careful,” my mom would say. “The gods could turn you into a pineapple.”