According to recent estimates, Nebraska is home to about 9,000 Vietnamese. How did your family end up in Nebraska, and what was your experience like growing up there?

The story of how my family ended up in Nebraska is actually a super interesting one. My parents actually met when they ended up in the same detention center in Cambodia. My mother, due to her status as an underage teenager, was having an especially difficult time getting anyone to sponsor her over to the United States because sponsors who take children by themselves generally prefer to take younger children through the adoption process. They don’t like taking older children, much less teenagers. My mother’s adopted uncle, at the time, was working in Lincoln, Nebraska to help Vietnamese refugees when my mom’s case file landed on his desk. He brought it home to the person who would become my mom’s adopted mom. She opened the file, saw they had the same last name, and made the life-changing decision to sponsor my mom over just in case they were related. My father, on the other hand, could not get any form of sponsorship to the United States and got taken in by Canada instead. My parents exchanged love letters back and forth for a couple years before my mom married him and brought him to the United States, and they ended up just settling in Nebraska.

I’m not going to lie, growing up in Nebraska has been tough. The majority of the Vietnamese community lives in Lincoln, and I live in Omaha, so growing up, I was never around people who looked like me. This was an incredibly isolating experience, and I admit that I was extremely ashamed to be Vietnamese growing up. My parents were extremely tough on me. I wasn’t allowed to do things the other kids got to do, such as sleepovers and hanging out with friends at the mall. I wanted to feel like I was normal and just like everyone else, and I blamed being Vietnamese for why I didn’t feel like that. I view my poetry about being Vietnamese now as an apology from my younger self and almost also an apology to my younger self that my older self couldn’t be there for her.

As a guest columnist and reporter for your Vassar’s student newspaper, The Miscellany News, you recently wrote an article about the lack of diversity in your school’s English department, calling attention to how there isn’t enough faculty teaching of marginalized writers: “In a time when we begin to recognize that representation matters, I fail to see myself represented in the English Department’s curriculum.” Can you talk a little bit about the inspiration for  this piece and the intersection of writing and activism?

I wrote this piece about a lack of diversity in the English curriculum because as much as I loved my major for it being the space where I could hone my love of writing poetry, my classes just weren’t offering literature that resonated with me. There is only one course on Asian-American literature in the whole department, and it’s only offered by one professor so it doesn’t get taught when he’s on sabbatical. Additionally, the term “Asian-American” spans so many identities that it’s really hard to fit all of them into a single semester. As you can see, this situation was incredibly frustrating, so that led me to write the piece calling the English department out for its lack of diversity. For me, writing and activism have to go hand-in-hand. Language is the most powerful form of communication and the absolute best way to share stories and drive people.

How did you get interested in investigative journalism?

I have always been interested in investigative journalism. As a kid, as weird as it sounds, I loved watching Dateline or 20/20. I loved reading mysteries as a kid too. I got really into the The Boxcar Children for a huge part of my childhood. It seemed natural for me to start doing investigative journalism in college.

What is the significance of having educators who look like you, but also curriculum that reflects your community?

I think that my biggest struggle as an Asian-American writer at Vassar is having to accept that as an underrepresented writer, I’m going to be horribly misunderstood. It is no secret that creative writing is a very white space, and while that’s changing, it’s not changing at predominantly white institutions fast enough. I write so unapologetically about being Vietnamese, and I never stop to explain myself, so a reader who is not Vietnamese needs to do extra work in order to understand or connect with my work. I’ve come out of writing workshops crying from the level of brutality in the feedback given back to me, and it’s been a long journey to teach myself that sometimes it’s not me; it’s them. If my white peers, in never being told otherwise, assume that they are the target audience of my work, their misunderstandings and inability to find my work impactful is not a reflection of my ability to write. And this is why I think having a curriculum that reflects my community is so important. Not only will it validate our existence to ourselves, but it will also remind those outside our community that we exist and that we have a right to.

You have published two poetry collections in the last few years, with I Am Made of War exploring your experience growing up Vietnamese-American in the United States, and flesh serving as an anthem to your womanhood. How has poetry in particular allowed you to encapsulate the nuances of your personal experiences? What went into the decision to self-publish?

I jokingly tell people that writing is the only therapy my insurance will pay for. But I think it’s true. Writing allows me to dive deep into myself and parse out my experiences and my memories and different aspects of my identity and put them all together. As a poet, I’m always looking for connections, whether that be within myself or with my interactions in the world.

What went into the decision to self-publish vs. the more traditional route of finding a publisher?

I decided to self-publish because traditional publishing is a whole lot of gatekeeping that frankly, I don’t have enough privilege to gain access to. A traditional publisher decides who gets a voice and who doesn’t, but self-publishing is my middle finger to that and a forcing of my voice into the world. Maybe I’ll get picked up by traditional publisher someday, but my story can’t wait for someday. She is screaming to be heard now.

How does poetry allow you to express yourself in ways other written mediums cannot?

I like poetry because I feel like I have the most freedom in poetry. There are no rules. There are no limitations. What I write doesn’t even really need to make narrative sense. The abstract nature of it is appealing to me. That’s not to say that you wouldn’t be able to accomplish the same thing through prose. I just felt more comfortable with poetry.

Do you have any advice for young or rising Vietnamese-American/diasporic poets?

Oh, I have so much advice for you, young one. First of all, to be real, it sucks. There are so many days where you won’t feel heard or seen, but I hear you and I see you. Second of all, keep going. I won’t promise that it gets better because I haven’t seen it yet, but I can promise that it’s what you were meant to do and that the world needs you. Keep your head up. Keep writing, pushing, reading, engaging. I am already so proud of you.