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“Crafting my 21-Year-Old Self,” A Portrait Poem
~~~ Hammering down on the mortal page, creating my double clothed in words. Pockets of invisible light penetrating my skin, exposing ruby jewels: tissues, veins, & blood. I build transparent cabinets, housing my strung together vignettes waiting to be unsealed. I cross out uneven bangs from an unfortunate haircut for long, steady black waves. I paint pensive, brown wrapping themselves around a bouquet of fiction books and prayers. I carve mountainous curves on my rosy lips which grumble & trace the sounds of Ancient Greek. Smearing with crumbly charcoal, I erase Mandarin from the page. I stick my sweet teeth together, the tools in my toolbox that work but can’t…
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A Phở Love Story Book Review
Loan Le’s YA romance novel A Phở Love Story is a contemporary Romeo and Juliet retelling with Vietnamese American characters: Bảo Nguyễn and Linh Mai. The chapters alternate between Bảo and Linh’s focalizations. I typically enjoy alternating perspectives; however, I did get perplexed at times because the writing for both characters was almost identical. Linh and Bảo are quite similar because of the way they were raised up: working at their parents’ Vietnamese restaurants and navigating through their own dreams and the familial expectations pressed upon them. I wonder how the book would look like if the two characters were more distinct and contrasting because then it would further differentiate…
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Introduction
On a warm September evening, I commence wandering through my literary journey—one that is quite personal. I’m frightened, frankly, but I’m ready. Last semester, I took a nonfiction course titled Disability Narratives, taught by Susannah Mintz who supported me while I navigated through my previously tucked-away-in-drawers, tumultuous experience with mental health, the dangerous lack of acknowledgement and stigmatized concept of disability in the Asian American community, and all the silences and traumas breathing in my family. One of the primary texts that we discussed was Alice Wong’s brilliant collection of essays written by disabled authors titled Disability Visibility.[1] The memoirs that we read in that class told stories, and I…
