this is for mẹ

Lynn Nguyen Boland shares a poetic homily to her mother, meditating on memories of mothering and the complexities of belonging, heritage, language and home.

Somewhere between this love-hate-consume-inserting dynamics, and somewhere between my coming of age, somewhere in my lung-full of drowsy cries, I defied the things I love. A reversion. The flip one must do to serve râu câu.

"Oh, sure. I mean, it isn’t very spacious, my womb. Always been a little too small. Suffocating, even."

I like making really tiny zines and the challenge of trying to express big ideas like love, loss and heartbreak with very few words, images and pages. It feels like I am writing a haiku or a poem, or trying to work through a puzzle.

I want the British Vietnamese identity to own both identities and values with more ease and less burden than our parents' generation faced.  I would like more British Vietnamese folks to really own who they are and be fearless in that.

"We had ancestors who were food advisors and cooks for royal families in Central and Southern Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, it was harder to hold onto our treasured recipes. As a first-generation American, I want to ensure our family’s rich history and long-lasting love for Vietnamese food will still be celebrated by generations of Vietnamese people throughout the world."