Diana Khoi Nguyen

“Writing Into Those Bodies,” An Interview with Diana Khoi Nguyen

This interview was conducted via Zoom by Interview Editor Phoebe Nguyen. Of the process, she said, “Root Fractures is a breathtaking exploration of grief, diaspora, and familial trauma. Diana Khoi Nguyen delivers unflinching honesty in her poems, drawing a raw portrait of a Vietnamese-American daughter’s experience. Root Fractures is all at once painful, heartbreaking, beautiful, and overwhelmingly tender. I am deeply thankful for her time and voice. ” In this interview, Diana Khoi Nguyen talks about language, her literary circles, and San Francisco. 

 

00:00:00--00:00:40

Superstition Review: I'll start with just a quick introduction of myself. I am Phoebe Nguyen, and I am one of the interview editors here at Superstition Review for Issue 33. Here, I have with me today, poet and multimedia artist, Diana Koi Nguyen. Diana is the author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. I'm so excited to be able to talk to you, Diana, and meet you today after reading your work. I can get started with my first question. I'm eager to discuss your poem “Beside.” I was intrigued by your choice to frame these poems in the form of a family portrait. Can you share how you came to write the second “Beside” poem?

00:00:41--00:02:21

Diana Khoi Nguyen: Yeah, sure. I mean, to talk about the second one is really just to talk about all the ones I did that are named “Beside.” Basically, every year for a while–maybe in the first six years after my brother's death in 2014–I would revisit the family archive. So, two years before he took his life, he cut himself out of the family pictures that hung on the walls of the house. And on this particular year (I can't remember what year it was; maybe it was 2016 or 2017), I started to think about the people who remain in the picture. Like the past versions of ourselves, the younger versions of ourselves. And also like the little bits that my brother didn't cut out: parts of his finger, baby finger, parts of his little shoe. I decided just to start writing into those bodies, those entities that are left in the archive. Not to recreate anybody's subjectivity, but I think I was curious what I remembered about each of us, including myself, back then. It changed, then, how I got to think about stanza. That stanza could be a familial self that feels familiar but is still strange. And then, I titled it “Beside” because it's like, Oh, I'm lining them all up beside each other because it's a family portrait.

00:02:22---00:02:42

SR: Yeah, that's super interesting, and I can see how that plays into all your poems. My next question for you is: I loved watching your poetry readings online, especially because the Vietnamese language is tonal, with each pronunciation resulting in a different meaning of the word. How does the experience of reading these poems aloud affect how you write?

00:02:43--00:05:08

DKN: I feel like I can't remember what came first. Around the time that I was working on that sequence, I had recently been taking Vietnamese One because I'm illiterate in Vietnamese. I know household Vietnamese, which is really just mostly insults and food words. That's the extent of my Vietnamese knowledge at that time. Yeah, it is so tonal, which is like things can look the same, but they sound different. They mean different. Sometimes, they barely sound different to me. And so, even just my trying to say it out loud to hear it, it's just an act of me trying to find the nuanced difference. And then, what really helped me ultimately is if I can find the words that rhyme, that can help me to remember the word. 

So, I think in that “Đổi Mới” sequence, I think I say like, “viết” and then “giết.” And those are two words that rhyme to me, I think, pretty exactly. But then they're really scary, like in terms of if you put them together, right? Because one is like to write and then one is to kill. 

It's just so jarring what rhymes and how and what they mean in translation. Yeah, I'm trying to think if I did it the other way around too. There was just a way in which the rhymes would just kind of come to me, like my head was just trying to categorize. I was more recently, I thought this was a rhyme, this is not in the book, but I thought this was a rhyme, and then I asked my mother, and she was like, “Oh yeah, I guess they're the same.”

But then I asked–I had a nanny for our child, a part-time nanny, and she was born in Vietnam–and I asked her if they were the same word. She's like, “No, but they're really close.”

And I still don't even know the difference, and the word would be like for milk and to fix. Like one is “sữa,” and one is ”chữ,” or something like it’s really close. But it kind of sounds the same to me. And I mean, I don't really work, I think, with homophones in English, but I'm just really fascinated with the ways in which language can mirror and multiply in a way.

00:05:09–00:05:26

SR: That makes sense. It's so hard for the untrained ear in Vietnamese. When I visited Vietnam for the first time, I remember trying to talk in Vietnamese, and local people would be like, “Oh, you're gonna get so frustrated. Don’t even try. Don’t even try.” 

00:05:28

DKN: Oh no!

00:05:28–00:05:35

SR: I was that off the mark, but it's something about the untrained year where it's so hard to pick up on those nuances.

00:05:36–00:06:27

DKN: Oh, I'm sorry that they told you don't even try. I had the opposite experience. I think I was in a cab coming from the airport to a hotel, and then the guy was like, “You're Vietnamese, right?”

(I mean, he said it in Vietnamese) And I said, “Yeah.”

And then he’s like, “Well, why don't you speak Vietnamese?”

And I was like, “Oh, tệ quá.” You know, like “so bad.”

And then he's like, “No, no, no. You just got to try.”

And then I would, and he would correct me because I think I said fiveteen instead of fifteen. And then he just corrected me. He's like, “Nope, try again.” It was like I was getting a lesson in the car. But I liked that he was really encouraging for me to just mess up. I hope you'll continue to try next time you return.

00:06:27–00:6:54

SR: Thank you. I hope so, too. That was a big regret of mine, not learning Vietnamese more before, but I came in completely not knowing any. My next question for you, Diana, is as you crafted multiple poems with the same titles in Root Fractures, such as “Đổi Mới,” “Cape Disappointment,” and “Misinformation,” how did your relationship with these titles evolve throughout the writing process of each new poem?

00:06:54–00:08:43

DKN: Yeah, so, in order to talk about this, I have to talk about my writing practice. So, I teach at a university, and I don't typically write during the academic year. And what that means is I write in concentrated bursts in the summer and in the winter. And when I say bursts, I mean like fifteen days in a row, trying to write a different piece each day. But that's really hard to write a whole new poem every day. And what's really helped me over the last decade, I've noticed, is if I start on a project and then the next day I'm gonna write another part of that project. And inevitably, that meant that I just would be titling a poem the same title. 

Or like different poems with the same title, and so, it kind of forced them into a series. You know, I could have changed titles, but I kind of liked having these long series that kind of moved in different directions. And so, it was just kind of organic, I think, in that way for me. It was more of an intuitive move. But, actually, for the poem “Misinformation,” that was just one longer poem that I wrote all at once. And then, it didn't make sense to keep it intact in the book because I had all these fragments. So, I wanted, then, to break that poem up, and it kind of worked because it's in sections anyway.

But that was the only one where I would say that I wrote as a whole. Yeah, and I think,  when you break things up into chunks, it allows for recombinations, a modularity, weaving to happen. Right? A braiding, we have three parts, three strands in order to braid. I had never done that before, honestly, and I was really into it! I don't know.

00:08:43–00:09:03

SR: I really liked that, too. There was definitely a movement between each poem, and being able to think about how the meanings of them built on each other as I read through. That's super interesting to hear about “Misinformation” and the way that was just written all at once, but then you kind of separated those into different sections.

00:09:03--00:10:45

DKN: I kind of like that there's a way in which the series interrupt each other. They never get to unfurl completely, and it's kind of episodic, in a way. Yeah, I don't know, that spoke to me. And then, of course, we haven't yet chatted about this, but “Đổi Mới” that's technically two series in a way, right? There's the prose poem sequence, and then there's the kind of lyric essay. But, of course, to me, in my head, they also kind of cover similar-ish terrains, but the different forms do it in different ways. And I liked that you said, I think “Đổi Mới,” because that's how I always used to read it until I put it into Google Translate, and then I was like, oh shit, that's a different word than I thought it was.

But I kind of liked my version of what I thought it was. And so, there's a way, actually, too–I would say it's more latent or implicit–which is: the poems are actually kind of working with mishearings too, and what we think we know versus what it actually is. But rather than one being correct and one being not correct, I think both can be correct if you carry it with you for so long, and it begins to kind of have meaning. And actually, you're not the first one. I've actually had other Vietnamese Americans misread it too. And because I would do that for so long, any time it happens, I'm like, “Yes, me too! Let's talk about it.” Because there’s a way in which that is also kind of the secret shadow title.  

00:10:45–00:11:16

SR: This is so funny that you mentioned that because I remember watching one of your poetry readings, and you talked about a woman (at Berkeley, I believe it was) who pronounced it the “incorrect way,” but the way that you'd always pronounced it. And you said something that I found really interesting, which was that you had kind of a “feral relationship to the Vietnam language.” But I practiced for so long trying to say “Đổi Mới” before this interview for multiple days trying to get it right.

00:11:16

DKN: Oh my gosh! You did your homework.

00:11:18–00:11:22

SR: Yes, I did my homework! I still butchered it, but thank you. 

00:11:22–00:11:33

DKN: Not at all! I told you that was also the right way, too, you know? I don't think you butchered it at all. Thank you for doing that research. 

00:11:34–00:11:42

SR: My next question for you is, you touched on it, but can you describe your method for organizing your poems into collections?

00:11:42–00:14:20

DKN: Hmm, yes. It's fairly basic, which is that I just write a lot without thinking too much about what I'm writing about. So, for Root Fractures, it was really just years of writing into these very series. Not sure if they would overlap, or not sure if they coalesced if they were related to each other. But I can't force the topic, so I'm just gonna write. And then when I have a bunch of pages, and I feel like, okay, let's print them out. Let's take a look. And actually, I did. It was during the pandemic I printed it all out. I made little piles according to, kind of, thematic piles. And then I got overwhelmed Phoebe, and I was like, no. And then I put it in a folder, and I put it in my bag, and I didn't look at it for a while. Then we all got vaccines, and we were traveling again, and I would carry it with me everywhere I went, thinking, I’ll do it now in this hotel. I never did it. And then I got pregnant and then I had a baby. I was still carrying it around! 

And then, it was only until after I gave birth. I moved back temporarily to be closer to my parents. I think it was around when the baby was about three months, I dropped her off with my parents. And then, I went to my childhood library and I ordered the book. Like I put it all on a big conference table. It was so weird. It was like I needed to go back home. And I needed to have like this, I don’t know if I needed to have this child, but …there's something like, oh, I have this child now, I really gotta just finish this other thing that I left hanging.

I don’t know. So, something coalesced and shook loose. And then, in ordering it in that library, I will say, just thinking, I let so many pages go to the floor. There were so many “Beside” poems. There were so many other parts that I was like, no, it doesn't need to have all of them. Maybe it just needs to have one little piece of it, and that piece gets spread over time. And so, I was really trying to think which were the pieces that made sense, that were talking and speaking to each other. I think, maybe before, I couldn't see it. I couldn't figure out which pieces belonged and which pieces didn't. And I was like, this is too many pages. I'm kind of dizzy just looking at it. Maybe just having all that time helped me to see it, I don't know, as a stranger could. A little more differently. 

00:14:21–00:14:48

SR: That definitely makes sense and I feel like your relationship to the poems you'd written in the past evolves with that time. I liked what you said about how you can't force yourself to write about a topic. Especially when you're trying to write a poetry collection, I don't think it comes out as organically as Root Fractures did, where there's just a movement in the book that you can really sense as a reader.

00:14:50–00:15:52

DKN: Yeah, thank you. I feel like the first book, Ghost Of, was a lot easier in some ways. I didn't really know if it would be a book. I didn't know if I would send it out. I just was like, oh, I have a lot of poems dealing with these pictures. Let's see what happens. And then I was like, Okay, boop, boop, boop.  It was just so chill. I was just on the sofa. And then, okay, well, tomorrow I'll go into my computer files and just put it into one file. Then I sent it out, and I didn't think about it. And then it got picked up. It was just so fast, Phoebe. It felt like a fluke. And then, this one, I was just like, what is this? 

It just felt so much bigger. It was so much more of a sprawl. I couldn't really see it in the way that sometimes we can't really see ourselves as others could. So, thank you. I feel like all those years I probably was thinking about it in the background of my mind. 

00:15:52–00:16:04

SR: My next question is: how has your experience teaching at Randolph College and the University of Pittsburgh shaped your writing? I know you touched on it a little bit by saying that you don't write during the academic year.

00:16:04–00:19:09

DKN: Sure, they're very different communities. I really much enjoy working at both. And I would say the main thing about teaching is it's so inspiring. I learn so much from conversations with writers. I barely even call them students because I feel like, sure, but I'm kind of a student in my brain, too. Like we’re all just people trying to write. And so, having conversations really based around close reading, close listening, deep listening, and discovery is really what we do. And so, I would say the demographic at Randolph College it's kind of a nontraditional student. Folks who are usually a little bit older, and they have families, various kinds of life situations, and they just can’t afford to move and uproot their life or their families for two or three years. And there's a different kind of hunger of those students at Randolph. And I would say, I don't know if they're less anxious or I just have less access to it, but there’s a way in which everybody is so grateful every time you gather every six months for a residency, where we have lectures, workshops, readings.

And then, at the University of Pittsburgh, I teach undergrad and graduate students. I would say for the MFA students in a full residency program, it's a tiny program. There's like three poets a year, maybe. And so, it's just really intimate. The classrooms are small. Everybody really knows each other. They know each other's work really well. And you kind of move as like one organism in a different way. It's kind of like a family in that sense.

I don't know if this has been your experience in school, but I would say there's something about MFA students; I feel like there's a kind of anxiety where people are just so nervous about what to do afterward. How can they be, not even how they can be famous, but how can they just be successful, whatever that means to them? And I'm just like, “Just write. Just, the way you do it is, you just write the best thing.” And they don't wanna hear that. 

And then I really love teaching the undergrads because they’re not doing it, quote, “seriously,” it's like a relief for them from other classes. They just love reading, and they love to write and they love talking about it. So, I would say getting to have these kinds of conversations in so many different circles at academic institutions has really shaped my own way of thinking about poetry.

And also seeing certain poems from some people, like other writers that I'm working with, and I’ll be like, Oh, that made me wanna try this other thing in a poem.

So, there's a way in which community helps to engender other kinds of ideas. So, yeah, I guess it's so fertile. It's fertilizing.

00:19:09–00:19:15

SR: Moving on to my next question for you, how did your approach differ as you move between writing in Vietnamese and English in Root Fractures?

00:19:15–00:22:50

DKN: Well, different, I think maybe. Because I'm so rudimentary in my Vietnamese, It's kinda more singsongy. Hence, things rhyming. It's maybe part singsongy but also part weird ways of saying things. But, like my head, that's how I think, but I'm also coming at it from a really fluent English speaker. For example, when I was reading the audiobook, I had my Vietnamese teacher there to correct my Vietnamese pronunciation. Because I didn't want a different voice, I just wanted it to be me. But actually, I was kind of okay with it being imperfect, too. But I remember this one sentence, and she understood what it meant, but I think the phrasing was awkward, which is like not how somebody would say it usually in Vietnamese. And when she was reading, I could hear her reading it very slowly, as if to be, what? And that then signaled to me like, oh, that's not how one says that. 

And so, there's a way in which Vietnamese is a second language, right? But Vietnamese is my first language, so it's really confusing because it was my first language, and then I wasn't allowed to speak it. And then it was English, and now I'm trying to get back to Vietnamese. So, it's like I'm in this in-between space. You know, almost like I'm in brackish water. 

And then with English, I mean, it's such a product of all the places I've lived, the things I've read, and also the translation work I've done. I took Latin for many years in high school and then also a couple years in college. And so, a lot of my syntax is totally (what's the word? I don't know if it's derivative), but it's totally influenced by the Cicero I had to translate, which is such a thing to say. You know, talk about a really old, dead, white guy. And I feel like he used tons of semicolons, and then for a long time, I used so many semicolons. But it also is informed by friends I had in college. Just things you hear. 

And in some ways, I think that Vietnamese is not dissimilar. It's me trying to remember what it was like when I first knew it as a child and then what I've grown up overhearing and recognizing but not fully understanding completely. And then there's this other element, too, of just collaborating with Google Translate or dictionaries. And now I'm entering through this new phase where I'm taking classes, and I have workbooks, and I have a textbook, and it's telling me to do stuff. Yeah, so, I guess the approach in writing is…maybe that's the approach in thinking…but in the actual writing, Phoebe, I just allow myself permission if a Vietnamese phrase comes to my mind, I'm just gonna write it down instead of translating it. Or, sometimes, like the parts that are awkwardly translated into Vietnamese, it's because I wanted to say that to my mother, who would be able to understand Vietnamese more fully than if I spoke to her in English to talk about my complicated feelings. So, then that's me rendering it into a language where I'm trying to communicate with her, even though she might not hear it or read it.

00:22:50–00:23:13

SR: That makes sense. I can definitely see the singsongy quality in your writing, which I really appreciate. My question for you, Diana, is that during your poetry reading at Green Apple Books, you mentioned that San Francisco in many ways feels like home. What is it about the city that feels so comfortable to you?

00:23:13–00:27:11

DKN: Oh, I love that you asked this question. It was a formative time in my life. After college, I didn't know what I was gonna do. Because originally, I was gonna go to law school. I was gonna apply and go to law school, but then I had a mentor who told me to do an MFA, and I was like, okay, I'll do that. 

But I didn't wanna go right away. So then, what does that mean? What am I doing then in the in-between? I was like, I'll just live!

So, my roommate and I (my college roommate and I) we decided to move to San Francisco, where we had friends, and I needed to get a job. I had another friend who was like, “You should get a job at the Apple Store.”

And I was like, oh, okay. And Phoebe, this is right around the time that the first iPhone was invented. So, this is like a long time ago. This is circa 2007. I got a job, not selling iPhones, but actually got a job supporting the general manager and helping him run the different aspects of his store and also opening new stores. It was a time of huge bursts of growth for Apple, and I learned so much. I was 21, and then I just had this job that nobody had had before working for this flagship manager, and he trusted me. He would just be like, “Okay, here's all we need done. Go do it.”

And then there was nobody checking in. I was just like, oh, I'm just gonna call this, do this, and it felt really empowering in many ways.

I got to know really well people from different parts of the store, which is like the “tech geniuses,” the management team, other employees. I really made new friends new family. And it was a really formative time of my life. 

Right when I got that job, I broke up with my high school boyfriend of like six years.

I started dating a lot of people. You know, it's like you're making your own money. You're not in school anymore. So it was just like, whoa. There are so many ups, highs, and lows. 

I mean, I ultimately left to do an MFA because I actually kind of got really depressed the year before. And I don't know what it was. I had a decent job, and I had good friends, but I was just like really sad, you know, and I was like, okay, well, I think maybe I should, it's time for me to do this MFA. 

My whole time doing my MFA, I moved across the country; I moved to New York. And I just missed San Francisco, like there was just something about I chose this place. Chose it for me. You know, I went to UCLA for my undergrad, but I had followed my boyfriend to college. And I didn't choose to be born in California. You know what I mean? 

So there was a way in which I chose this place, and I made a living, and I made all these adult choices. I also fucked up a lot. But there was something just like San Francisco became that map,  where all of these huge, important kinds of life, adult firsts. And I always look back to that time with a lot of fondness.  For a while, I had regrets about a lot of things. But how can you regret being young? You know, you just try to learn from those experiences and do right now and going forward. Yeah, I think it still will always feel like home, but I would say even when I return now, it's not the same city. You know, tech has really kind of replaced and pushed out all the people that I used to know, all the chefs and artists. Almost all. But that doesn't make me sad; it’s just like, oh, San Francisco of my youth is a home, but it kind of just exists in my brain and not in reality anymore.

00:27:11-00:27:18

SR: There's kind of that nostalgia for a place that still exists, but not in the way that it was to you.

00:27:18–00:28:23

DKN: Yes! I think Vietnam is like that for my parents, you know? Oh my god.

I don’t know if you ever thought about this, but I met a young Vietnamese American artist at RISD, and they were like, “Diana, did you know our parents speak 1975 Vietnamese? Like, if we went to Vietnam and spoke the way they speak, people would just be like, ‘Oh, so old fashioned and phrasing.’ You know? It's like tucked in a time bubble.” 

And they were right, you know? I was like, oh yeah, I never thought about it like that. Because they didn't get to stay in a community where the language evolved, and they’re kind of trapped in this linguistic bubble. But, now my dad does speak a little bit of contemporary slang because he watches YouTube of young Vietnamese vloggers, so he knows some of the slang, but I just remember hearing that and thinking how even the linguistic, the language itself is a kind of nostalgia. 

00:28:23–00:28:42

SR: My last question for you, Diana, is that in the acknowledgment section of Root Fractures, you express gratitude to Dao Strom, Hoa Nguyen, Lily Hoang, and Vi Khi Nao for showing you that “both Vietnamese kith and the Vietnamese language can be radically tender.” How does this tenderness manifest in your writing and your life?

00:28:42–00:32:19

DKN: Yeah, on a really just literal level, the Vietnamese language was really one where I was scolded or constantly being commanded or ordered to do something. And the tone was always very harsh. In my household, I don't really remember the gentle tones. What is it? There's that Ronnie Chung set. (Is that how you say it? I don't remember how you say his last name.)

Anyway, he's a comedian, but he had this one special (maybe it was on Netflix) where (I can’t remember if it’s with his wife or what, but his wife will always get mad. I'm butchering this) but, basically, people have a tone, people will get mad at him because his tone is so harsh. It's like, “That's just how I was raised. We just sound like we're yelling at each other.”

And he says, “Listen to the content, not the tone.” He's like, “Content, not tone.” 

And I think about it all the time because I feel like I am so affected by tone. 

So, in many ways, I used to associate Vietnamese with a very kind of scolding tone. When I started to meet other Vietnamese Americans like me, artist types, writers, and then hearing some of them, and some of them weren't fluent in Vietnamese at all, but some were, and some could speak, and then hearing them speak it. 

And then I was like, oh, they can be expressions of love? And kindness? And I was like, wait a minute. I was like, well, I don't know that Vietnamese. And then I was like, of course, these are the same words, but I just was so unaccustomed to hearing it and receiving it in that way. 

And then for them to also just invite me into it. Like not correcting my language in a harsh manner but just being so encouraging, which is not my parent's model. It's not an encouraging model. It's either like, “Don't fuck up,” you know? It's like the stakes are so high. And then I don't say that to cast dispersions on anybody. It’s just different cultural contexts. 

And so, how does this tenderness manifest in my writing in my life? I think it's allowed for me in doing the archival photograph work. But in the memory work, to hold those moments I had previously thought of as different or difficult or sad. 

I try to be tender. Like, oh yeah, sure, my parents did inappropriate things, or my mother was abusive. And I don't would never diminish that, but I also want to see her tenderly, which is like, she had a hard life. You know? And she didn't have models. This is how she was raised. And I'm not making excuses, but it helps me to understand her context. And I don't have to be angry at her whole life. Like that doesn't do anything. I can be tender. And I can choose to just like say no thank you when things go in a different way emotionally that I don't wish to engage in. Which, I didn't have those tools when I was a kid. And so, I would say the tenderness that I've received, and been gifted, and learned from my chosen family has really helped me. I would say it's really helped my relationship with my biological family. 

00:32:19–00:32:28

SR: Yeah, and I definitely noticed that tenderness in Root Fractures throughout it. That's really beautiful.

00:32:28-00:32:43

DKN: Oh, thanks, Phoebe. Thanks for reading it and just your careful research and your time with the materials. It means a lot to me that another Vietnamese American person is reading it because it's always like, that's who I'm writing for. 

00:32:43–00:32:49

SR: Before I let you go, Diana, I just wanted to open up the floor to you to ask if there's anything else you'd like to add.

00:32:49–00:32:57

DKN: Oh yeah, I don't think so. Maybe I'd love to ask you a question if that's okay. 

00:32:57

SR: Yes, of course!

00:32:57–00:33:14

DKN: I'm curious to hear about how you think or feel about language or family after engaging with the book in your own life.

00:33:14–00:34:00

SR: That's super interesting.  I was adopted from Vietnam and raised by white parents, so when I read Vietnamese writers and just learn more about Vietnam, I feel a connection to it, and yet I feel like such an outsider to it, almost like I don't have a right to it. And so, it was just really interesting; it made me reflect on the one time I've been able to visit Vietnam. So I just felt that connection to you being a Vietnamese American and being seen as Vietnamese, but then it made me reflect on how I feel so much like an outsider to Vietnamese culture and that identity, too.

00:34:00–00:35:46 

DKN: Oh, thank you for sharing that with me. Wow. I mean, in some ways, I'm just now thinking about what I know about Dao's upbringing. I mean, she was raised by her mom too, but the white father really ruled, like had all these dictates. I don't imagine necessarily that's how you were raised, but yeah, I mean, there's so many degrees of feeling like an outsider to it. You know, because in an alternate universe, we were all growing; we are all growing up in Vietnam, but we didn't. We grew up in the United States, and some things are kind of familiar, but some things are so foreign. And you know, one huge thing I think about, I don't talk about explicitly in the book, is that I really wanted to make it be okay for myself and others, whatever your proximity and relationship to Vietnamese culture: parents (biological or otherwise), food, language, there's no wrong way. That's the diasporic way. Cause I think growing up it’s always like, “Oh, what's wrong with you? Why can't you speak it?” Or like, “Why so American?”

I was like, “Because I am American,” you know, first and foremost, in many ways. 

Yeah, so thank you so much for sharing that with me, Phoebe. I’m just really grateful to hear you share about your experience with it. I'm grateful for these thoughtful questions and your time, and I hope we cross paths.

00:35:46–00:36:07

SR: Me too, definitely. Thank you so much, Diana, for speaking with me today. It's been an honor to meet you, and I've been so excited to speak with you. This has been just wonderful to read your work and to be able to talk about it more in-depth with you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

00:36:07–00:36:37

DKN: I'm so appreciative, too. It's clear how much care you put into it, and I couldn't have imagined anything better. So, hopefully, you have a good rest of your day. I don't know if there's still daylight. You must still have daylight out because we still have daylight out a little bit. Have a good week, and hopefully finals go well and it’s a wonderful final celebration. Take care and let yourself make mistakes, you know?

00:36:38

SR: Thank you, Diana, you too.