Ông Ngoại1 rose from the dead and decided
to quit alcohol and cigarettes, altogether.
Ông Ngoại invented a cure for pneumonia
and fought dauntlessly like Thánh Gióng fought Giặc Ân.

Ông Ngoại stopped the libricide fire with a finger snap
and sewed the torn pages back together by a magic spell.
Then birds whispered the missing words into his ears,
and he taught us about the country that was his love and pride.

Ông Ngoại wrote poems with his black ink pen.
Ông Ngoại raised children with his black ink pen.
Ông Ngoại fought the War with his black ink pen.
His words were so loud that the foe asked to write with him.

Ông Ngoại watched my sister grow up.
Ông Ngoại read his granddaughter’s poems.
Ông Ngoại won the National Book Award for Poetry.
Ông Ngoại befriended Ocean Vương and they drink together sometimes.

Ông Ngoại flew poets from all over the world,
on the weary navy blue Vespa that he loved as a child,
to a tiny stilt house, at the end of a dark alley, above a fusty canal
to talk poetry and life, freedom and war,
and laugh about it, like it all happened in another lifetime.

you can call me “yellow” but I adore my darker skin tone because of the abundant melanin that gave my forefathers the strength to withstand the sun and plow and rake and sweat on Nam Định rice fields for ages and not get burned. our skin is coated with the sun

you can say “you must be good at fighting” but you would never know what magic weapon our people had contrived in order to keep our country whole after two thousand years of Han and French and American colonizations

you can say “you must be very good at math” but I am prideful of how smart and diligent we are

you can tell me “I really like Phở” and I will talk about how elegantly my ancestors had entrenched the layers of spices and herbs and bones and vegetables into our culture, inventing a miraculous broth that could cure all illnesses in the world

you can make fun of my stiff dark hair but it will turn into Thác Bản Giốc and drown you to death

you can try to hurt me but my skin is made of gold

you can laugh at my flat nose and small eyes but my face is the result of countless fights against family criticism, thousands of love poems in the war zone, and glimmers of the lover all over a young artist’s paintings. my face is made of the love stories that survived famine and migration, prejudice and segregation, war and prison.

It was not until
I was halfway across the world,
on a late-night phone call,
mẹ said to me:
“You’re Vietnamese.” 

It was not until
two years after
studying abroad,
I thought to myself:
“I am Vietnamese.” 

It was not until
I started to think in English
and read faster in English
that I wanted to write
in Vietnamese. 

It was not until
I’m fully accustomed
to pizza and grilled cheese
that I crave mom’s
cơm cá kho tộ. 

It was not until
I’ve finished building “Jannie”
that excitement zinged through my body
when someone called me “Thư.”

That summer, I visited the cramped and humid 

azure trailer, in which my rigorously Catholic grandmother 

has lived for over a decade. Bà Nội - 

survivor of the feudal system, patriarchy,

colonization, racism, and immigration.

One sticky afternoon, we talked 

on the corny-looking floral tapestry sofa - 

science breakthrough, universal healthcare, international non-profit

 - dreams so big that I did not dare to verbalize 

to myself. Bà Nội nodded left and right, then said:

"The higher you climb, the harder you fall."

Had feudalism, colonization, slavery, and war

made du people Annamite apathetic?

Giran's voice ached in my head:

“The Annamese is indifferent and passive, 

content with scarcity, 

for they have no great needs, 

and no grand desires.”

I stared at the dead cockroach trapped in the screen

of the archaic microwave which Bà Nội refused to discard.

I contemplated her journey from North to South 

because jealous Charlie2 despised all theists.

I envisioned her mud spinach field and pig pens 

that put all five kids through college.

I hurt,

for oppression is the theme of our history,

for war is how the world recognizes our nation,

for indifferent and passive is how my people are portrayed, 

which I write, against, against, and against ...