 Welcome. We're just getting started. Hello, everyone. I'm Anissa. I'm a librarian here at the library and I Work on programming so I'm happy to have you here First off I'd like to acknowledge that our library would like to acknowledge that we occupy the unceded and ancestral homeland of the Romitischoloni people who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as uninvited guests We affirm their sovereign rights as first people. I encourage you all to check out the Oakland all women led Organization called Sigourte Land Trust. They're doing some great work in the land-backed movement and The city of Oakland is working with them on that and that's amazing We have some upcoming events it is Lunar New Year Yes They have a big event We have a couple big events happening Next Saturday is a big lunar event down our Coret auditorium As well as it being lunar New Year, it's also Black History Month. So of course we have lots of events around black history This coming Saturday we have an event in our Coret auditorium, which is on our lower level It's a beautiful space if you've never been in it We'll be having audio Burke narrator Paris Lane. We'll be talking about her newest audio book called a Bella And what else do we have coming up? Oh a really amazing vent. We do a lot of events off-site Coming up on Tuesday, February 27th. We'll be at the African-American Art and Cultural Center Which is just like boom right down there about five blocks away on Fulton Street and we're hosting author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton who has an amazing book out called On the Rooftop all about 1950s San Francisco and the Jazz era and really focusing on The Renaissance that was happening here, but also gentrification. It's a really beautiful book I encourage everyone to come check that out. It happens at seven o'clock and doors open at 6 30 so please come check that and without Those announcements, I want to really thank D-Van for being here and this is our first in a four-part series for the year. So that's really exciting we will announce when the next ones will be what locations they'll be at and Stay tuned for all of their exciting work So this has been an ongoing partnership for this our second year working together And I'm really thrilled to keep this continuing and with that I want to thank D-Van for being here And I want to thank all of you for being here and I'm going to turn it over to Isabel Well, thank you for being here tonight I want to thank Anissa Malady's rights and the staff from the San Francisco public libraries for hosting This D-Van quarterly series. So now, you know every year's right every three months will have a reading by Vietnamese American writers, maybe that's break Vietnamese writers and Hopefully more and more also all those South decisions writers and poets I Want to also make a shout out to to our staff to make this event so possible It's right Caroline Ho right here Thank you And the fun, you know, thank you so much and the cut in wins by a CEO Just a lot of work behind the scenes, you know form for us to be able to bring those events here So it's good to acknowledge and in today's also about that our next public, you know I vent with the public libraries will be on a port 20 at the Ruby at 7 30 with alexandra win Teal long Susan Liu and in a fan. So maybe we'll bring that up again, but put it on the calendar, please I mean the one way to support us and you know the other writers from the diaspora is to show up and be here and tell your friends. So yeah D-Van's how many of you have known of D-Van before coming here today. Oh This is really nice. Yes. So we've been around for a long time I've been around for a long time for I've been doing this for 20 years I bring my students to the you know to the communities organizing events and really the reason we're doing all this effort is to you know for issue of visibility right to break the invisibility the marginality they're not, you know Not being understood being misunderstood being sealed typing and not respected not getting the funding that we need to in order to for for for for the groups, right and then to push for That visibility. So this is this is about that right D-Van is about social justice and and and for the community to be seen This last year we became a non-profit organizations. They know what what we got it into, right? This is a big learning curve for all of us and So basically we have a comprehensive Programs right with public events Actually has show accented is very likely to be on KPFA, you know starting in the next month We do riders residencies internationally workshops, you know providing You know like craft workshops to riders and then also for quitting committee member who want to tell the stories and then We are trying to create You know Open opportunities for riders to be published, right some of the book you see here is us working with imprints And in a couple years we you know happy to say, you know, we'll have published You know six eight books by the end of this next year So really making a difference by organizing together and tonight is very special because a lot of the people working behind the scenes when D-Van to Provide the opportunity to support and uplift riders you know are themselves riders and today is really also an opportunity for them to be seen and and and and and and to you know to To be appreciated. Yeah For their work as artists and also as activists Okay, so So, you know, we also always need support, right? So if you like to donate if you can't I had this part, but okay I just did it, you know, just just go to the website and donate Okay, I'll be better with time. It doesn't get easier. I don't know about that part. All the people do it It's just awful, but we do need funding to make this happen Okay, so today is a special You know the first launch of this series. So it's a big deal and The you know one person we invited this strong trend and Damon Porter Trunks is been, you know, as an old friend for for many years and really legends right for the communities here in San Francisco So it's really nice to start with both of them. Both of them wrote a book called looking and seeing so this is how Why this reading start with them Trunk trend was born in Saigon Vietnam is the author of eight books of poetry including a four letter words book of the other Small incomparisons which won the American Book Award and looking and seeing which he co-authored with Damon Porter And he was he has won numerous awards grant and fellowship Trunk lives in San Francisco and teach at Northwestern University previously Mills College in Oakland, California and His co-writer like the person he wrote this book with Damon Porter lives in work in San Francisco Is the author of hundreds words and looking and seeing which are you know, which they both co-authored So, please welcome featured poets Trunk trends and Hi everyone, I Asked Damon to actually join me up here to and we're gonna read in in tandem And I think the reason why I wanted to do that was because we wrote this book in proximity to one another it was Right before the days of COVID and we were having lots and lots of conversations and so And I thought it would be the appropriate Approach to to read it in tandem in such a way But before I do I wanted to say My book is called looking and seeing in Damon's book actually and it's a it's a bit confusing But Damon's book is called seeing and looking and what what it is is that we We wanted to do something that was very Experimental in the sense that we wanted to bring together two books and publish it with in proximity to one another so they're both in bound together in this book and Sometimes we're in conversation. Sometimes we're just kindly kicking back and forth ideas and Sometimes we're just just like in total disagreement or not But that was the conversation that that took place and I'm telling you all this because last week when I was getting on an airplane to go to Kansas at For a red eye about midnight on that given night. I had a an old Senior citizen moment. I thought I left a stove on And who would I call but Damon Potter to to say hey, I think I left the stove on can you Go and check for me. So he actually got out of bed Got into his car drove across town and went to make sure that the stove was off and sure enough It was off, but I'm telling I'm telling you this story because it was all the conversations that That happened around this book and around 100 words that we wrote together that led to the that moment and And David and I don't actually talk a whole lot about writing anymore We talk about planting trees and building tables, but But it took a lot of work for us to get to the conversational building tables and planting trees and It was all worth it. So Thank you For being in conversation Before I go further also. Thank you to Carolyn Ho who designed this absolutely impossible book because Because I I went to the publisher and I said hey I want to publish two books together and as one book and I want I want it to be completely Even as as it moves through so there's no front and there's no there's no back covers to this book And that was that took a lot of effort on Carolyn to make sure that it somehow came together. Thank you It's a beautiful book even if no one reads it. We have it and we're quite grateful for But thank you So we're just gonna read and but I'm gonna Said enough so I'm gonna hand off the first part of the reading today I find that my mom and I don't collide much one. I am high one. I'm dry high and feeling fine She has been sad. She has seen friends who are just dying She she tries not to say or tell me these things. She I think knows that I am a desert And when I am feeling laying bed rude She has a hard time accepting my rue and bony fingers And I have a hard time knowing she's dying how all people do and I will miss her Some things are easier when written as poetry When seen as metaphor when say it shook me your words when you declared yourself a loner That's something said about the self can cut so deeply in the other as to remind the other of his otherness You wrote this to me. I am a loner. I Read the words as leave me alone. I cannot tell you why those words cut the way they cut away When I say I want to be left alone so as to live alone that is to say that I am lonely I'm afraid of the answer to this question But right about now I need to ask Should I be leaving you alone? My dad would drive us to a lake Lake Tennessee specifically condam When it was raining so we could see water fall on a big hole. I Know my body will fall on a big hole and that's the worst that will happen to me Oral will damn is leaking. It's dead There's water analogy and someday my prostate will squeeze all my limbs those of you who know me and my current Reinvention of myself might have an a way into this particular home Researching the fetish of masculinity or Sunday morning internet porn On YouTube there are videos of men exacting pain each using the flat of a board to inflict pain upon another The willing participant part anticipates how struts about he embraces each assailant amassing his masculinity the video the video Inevitably ends with him putting his bruised buttocks on display on camera this rite of passage this badge of manhood This thing they do they do on YouTube They do in life. I Should be more like a blackberry thing Pricking aggressive aggressive the borish and mean and holding my fruit out to summer bowls This country is racist and I received received clout bodily safety because I'm white White folks don't say it. We write our books about what we pick up or about fruit It used to be that I would write to enact a desire for isolation It was a way to say I want to be left alone to my thoughts with my words I want you to leave me alone. You can't see that I'm trying. I'm trying to write I'm thirsty. I'm writing these words to quench my thirst I write alone in the hopes that I would write myself into exhaustion Into sleep. I did just that and that was when you came to me carrying water in your mouth You leaned into you passed it along from mouth to mouth your lips Our lips did not touch This was not a kiss a kiss would have not led me here You wake me from sleep by quenching my thirst this last it but a minute. I Am thirsty again today. I'm writing. That's usually to someone. I'm writing something I want to hear it read out loud. I want to see it on a page in a book I want to see you inside these words Where are you? I'm thirsty How are you? Marguerite Not sure why I passed my time for asking you what you asked me you demonstrated decency and me well We saw clear. I'm opponent to the thoughtful dear eulogy for the living a Word is a breath a line is breathing I wake in the mornings to tell myself that I am not that is to say I have been Avoiding this task at the water's edge. He called his mother Once sharp and precise this is the line. These are pavers on a path towards The sadness of living overwhelms this effort. He has left his shoes up on that bridge I'm walking to know I have the capacity to move. I'm drinking to hydrate from this feeling of drowning Making is a response to all that's been taken This writing this breath this breathing this poem I am eating to sustain through sustenance is those sustenance is suspect a Death did not have did happen to make this happen That is to say would I have written this at all? This is not a departing note He marked the spot conveying distance Or is it proximity he wanted to be found? I thought I could hide in cryptic language until I got lost in cryptic language. I Am not close to them. That's still I know where when and why That is to say I don't like writing this now Blunt and bruising this is the poem now as I know it Trung my reluctance to sail out thoughts is a considerate one and a bunch of dandelion pokers I want to be sure that I've done my thinking thought my a braids out morning and noon time Perhaps on till rest or when the moon's up I'd like for patients to grow out a leaf cut without the thorns Sprout my own worm head turn a bright stem Then a puff seed sent into a brick to grow this mutation of what whiteness trains So before I read this poem, I want to tell a little anecdote about how this poem came to be This is gonna be my last poem, but I Wrote this manuscript that took over 15 years to get published and it went through the hands of four different publishers the three of them were white publishers and one is a Asian American press Kaia not this particular book, but the book book of the other and On one occasion the the press which ironically is named nightboat Nightboat told me to go deeper into my own trauma and racist Raises racism enacted on me and I you know and I was very on earnest and saying yeah Tell me how I should do that as my editor and I got ghosted. So so You know how we have Revenge porn in the world. I Actually think that revenge Poetry is also another category. So Dear you or et cetera Feel free to replace you with the pronoun of we Not too many people can say that they left their home and their country on a boat Well, okay, it was actually a ship a Korean tanker to be exact My family and I left in the hopes of finding a better life in the case of my father My mother would say it was about the preservation of life I'm not writing this now out of care out of any desire to retell my story I've written it more times than I care to count. I've given you and yours what you ex what was expected I am writing this now for the purpose of learning this art of irony How on hold on to this knowing for the time being know that my People have been called boat people by your people Who gets to ask the person experience trauma and racist practices to take their work? Further into the examination of race on a personal and societal level trauma around racist practice, etc in Full disclosure it was the et cetera that set it off. I am asking you this in response to your response work who you The use of words to express something other than And especially the opposite of the literal meaning It usually humorous humorous or sadonic literary style or form characterized by irony an ironic expression or utterance This is a new story I am telling this story as a joke 43 years in the making it's taken me this long to arrive at some semblance of a punchline How could I have known that you would come along to deliver such a pithy narrative thread? Now that I have it you will just have to wait wait for it wait Incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result an Event or result marked by such incongruity Incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is Understood by the audience but not the characters in the play Called also dramatic irony tragic irony The boat person was floating in the ocean He was hoping that the boat passing in the night would be so kind as to pick him up The person on that boat having decided not to pick the boat person up went through a transformation He became we for the purpose of responding to the boat persons ask In the pronoun of we perhaps as a way to show some unifying presidents Some collective consciousness a collateral of sorts. He said We all empathize with the speaker but agreed that we wanted to see the work go further into his examination of The issues it's set out to encourage race on a personal and societal level trauma around racist practice etc When asked by the boat person how he could go further into his own trauma or racist practices that was happening to him The pronoun we chose not to respond for some reason or another Without responding to the specifics of the boat person's question the pronoun we Floated away on that boat the boat person could hear their collective voices saying we want to support you in completing this project How asked the boat person as he floated boatless in the night as the nightboat floated further away. I Am learning irony So that I can say write the story Not the immigrant story of my family not the story of trauma or racist Practices enacted on brown and black bodies that story was written It is being written and I will write it again and again and again This is a particular story written to be told as a joke full of what I think is irony a Vietnamese writer labeled as a boat person by a by white people gets his manuscript Rejected by a group of white people on account that he did not go deep enough into his account of race on a personal societal level trauma around racist practices Etc. But that's not the irony or humor of the story wait for it The white people are part of this literary endeavor wait for it They go by the name of nightboat get it boat people Vietnamese people white people white boat nightboat a pretense of ignorance of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the others false Conceptions conspicuous by a droid questioning. Is this funny? Have I gone further into my examination of the work? Are you laughing am I laughing would you say that this is irony this is ironic and Still I ask is this funny? Is this far enough? Do you get it? It's a joke. It's on you It's on me. Are you laughing with me? Are you laughing at me? Should I be laughing along? Are you laughing? Note the definition of irony has been provided for the purpose of reading this work in case You still think I got this all wrong I'm prepared to go further into in its examination of the issues It sets out to engage race on a personal and societal level trauma around racist practices, etc The work is it The it is I No need to emphasize being that we are all boat people here you in the form of we claim it so I was called this and so I guess that makes me so perhaps you as we can give me guidance on where to go On second thought forget I ask I think I know where not to go Thanks for the inspiration to write this the above. I rather like it In an ironic sort of way and still I ask is this funny? irony irony now irony also I Renee, thank you Thank you everyone. Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for joining us here and thank you Jung and Damon for that really powerful reading Just an amazing book and I hope you all go out and and get a copy None here But forthcoming So as Isabel reiterated earlier The in keeping with our theme to celebrate the Lunar New Year We really want to recognize and appreciate DeVan staff. These are the people who work so hard behind the scenes Writers for writers is our theme for the evening and these folks give it their all every day to make events like this happen and they themselves Are also writers and poets so we want to celebrate them this evening So with that I'm going to go ahead and introduce our first reader is on V fan Unvy is our fearless communications coordinator and does all of our beautiful designs coordinated this event with Carolyn Ho and She's doing tremendous work and we're so proud of her so Welcome on V So I wrote this piece eight months ago kind of reflecting on love and the different forms of love that there are and in doing so I really You know I am my mother's daughter and I see my mother in all parts of me and so this is kind of just Discussing that There are a lot of things I don't know about love in my own heart There are things I'm unlearning and relearning every day But one thing I know for sure is that my little fragile heart cannot handle long distance It aches when I see Michael's face illuminated on my phone screen nested in the palm of my hands So close I can almost smell his must sent a deodorant But far away enough that I know it's just a memory. I'm holding on to until the next time I can take a big whiff of him It aches when I catch my first glimpse of him in person after a long while of not seeing each other It aches a little more when I collapse into his arms because I know that although we have this moment and the moments in between There is always a see you later looming in the air It aches the most at the airport when I'm desperately clinging onto his arms sobbing into his chest begging him to stay It's almost childlike the way I shrink from a 23 year old to a five year old looking up at him with glossy eyes and pink It's almost like if I plead enough if I try doing whatever it is I can't at this airport. He can stay even just a moment longer and my heart Absolutely breaks every single time. I lose sight of him as he walks through TSA. It breaks every single time And I cling on to it my little heart and soothe it until I can see him again Until our goodbyes no longer have to be goodbyes But rather see you tonight, babe, or I'll be back from the grocery store soon And when our good nights no longer have to end with the end call button But rather a small kiss before we snuggle up and turn off the lights I stroke this hair of mine with these hands that will eventually find themselves upon my cheeks wiping away the streams of longing and lust and fidget and will fidget among themselves as I alone sit on this part on my way back to a house without my home and In that moment of extreme heartbreak of extreme longing and love. I think about my mother and In a parental way. I wonder if my mother's heart breaks the same way mine does I wonder if it broke the same way when her husband said goodbye without really saying goodbye Drifting off to a land of eternal rest. I Wonder if it broke when she left all that she knew her friends her first love and her family. I Wonder if it broke when she reluctantly let go of my hands summer 2018 Walking into the elevator and looking into the brown eyes that were just like hers one last time And if it broke again this past May realizing her child is no longer all hers But belonging to a world greater than anything she'd known My mom has broken my heart many many times in many different ways But I wonder if she only broke my heart because I broke hers We aren't so different my mother and I our hearts break the same. I think because our hearts are the same I'm also going to hand off the mic to on a go lay Hello everyone I'm really excited to be here And I feel really honored to read Alongside all of these brilliant artists. I'm gonna read one poem today That comes from a larger collection. I've been working on called meet me in the mangroves Five years ago. I was kayaking in Western, Florida with my dad And we were weaving throughout these Channels that were aligned with mangroves I'd seen mangroves before but I was just really struck by them in this particular moment just by how beautiful and Like mysterious they seemed if you're not familiar mangroves are those sprawling trees that often line Tropical shorelines. They have those really tangled complex root systems And they're sort of partially in water partially on land and they're found in brackish water And while we were kayaking my dad was telling me that the mangroves reminded him of his childhood in Saigon And I was just really moved by This special moment and by the mangroves and so I've since done some light research on mangroves And I've learned that they're often the first line of defense during natural disasters So they protect communities and they protect Land and their their roots are so coiled and so embedded in those shorelines that their knots are literally what hold land intact And they also have these special breathing roots that allow them to like breathe together and communicate with their network of mangroves So I was just so inspired by this and struck by that moment with my dad Just the beauty in the strength and the protective nature of the mangroves Made me think of my family of my community of my diaspora Particularly the women in my family. So of course I had to write about it And so here is one poem from a series of many poems I wrote about mangroves And this is mangroves number two. It's those mangroves that hold us up snarled limbs lean shoulder to shoulder Nerve maze keeps sand sound margins anchored Shell and all my grandmother can put an entire shrimp into her mouth Her quick tongue deconstructs the entire thing Seamlessly husks glossy armor pinky flesh untainted Seconds later her chopsticks collect loosened shrimp shells a tower crane rotating in a blink She sweeps those remains swiftly to the edge of her plate All the while her face remains gracefully expressionless exceptionally neutral When the storms hit mangroves take the first blow Swell waves splatter up against coasts It's those mangroves Chain-linked hedge like They repel the wreckage ward off monsters My dad never preferred shells of any kind On rare nights when they'd have fresh crab legs the other kids sucked claws clean eagerly cracked chitin His mom knew She'd scramble up a few eggs into a perfectly yellow ripple just for him It's those mangroves that keep the pulse Even when uprooted I struggle to find sleep My mind takes hikes through treacherous bluffs past peaks haunting I always think of my grandmother and my aunts who never sleep Lay deadlocked in sheets On treks through memories She sweeps those remains swiftly that time she found a human ear in the street far Or when the monks blew to bits The men to their sides snore rich melodies It's those mangroves that Respirate in the toughest of climbs mud and brine It's those pores that stretch And now we have Carolyn Ho. It's very good to be here. Thank you to D van for Being D van and for hosting this reading and all the good work that D van does and has done So I'm really proud to have been there and to continue to support them and feel lucky so This is called duck it or duck duck or this is how space breaks My son's father and I have a safe word to de-escalate conversations not going well He refused to name one. So I did duck from my son's workbook a Mama duck and a baby duck swim and dive and live in mono syllabic simplicity We are going back to basics solid sharp words to say to repeat to respect duck as In duck for cover or for duck's sake You are a ducking duck Duck head go duck yourself your whole ducking family is ducking duck you duck duck you mother ducker It was a good choice. That's our cute round fluffy. They like breadcrumbs in the park They bob like soap suds One time in the bath I fell and I thought I would die there and held my breath like I hold the spirit of my Landlord's dead son who had died there or my dog who had died there Maybe a marriage is a dog's final exhale that floats to the surface and passes away There are so many ways to float to be silenced to get my ducks in a row and roast them Hang them by the neck on display in a dim sum deli shop the eyes baked down the mouth open We are all heart and red Succulent and hanging like barbecue ducks Gaping plodding escape lands quietly dangling a rubber neck coiled on a hook The water rises every day the rising laundry the percolating coffee the packed lunch and duck hunt I'm collapsed from one day breaking words into the next duck Duck it My marriage is not going well, so That's not but it's it's fine. It's not over, but it's not it's not there The next poem is called red and this isn't a time when I was learning Vietnamese I'm still trying but it's expensive And what happens when you have this hybrid consciousness is that words that make sense in English That you learn in Vietnamese take on a layered meaning and so red Mao Da Reminded me of Mao like chairman Mao That's they have nothing to do and everything to do with each other So Vietnamese voters make up the largest Asian Demographic in favor of Trump set a 2020 headline from the Stanford Daily and you all better vote The color of Vietnamese is red a communist red is Mao of a small chairman and a yellow star Crispy tiny feet marching in unison to one song an army for my mother who wants to be loved Wants to go constantly to the bathroom. She hears the choir sing in unison Red rushing out like birds our arms outstretched a girl in full napalm We are naked and photographed running in free fall and the singing my mother hears is like love A bruised shaped obedience Unflinching paternal She escaped this violent love story boat story But after 40 50 60 years of American dreams and American pants being a free American manicurist Touching dog feet of so many dog mothers dotted in her Vietnamese papers She finds comfort in the old ways Mao's ways she is looking for her dictator the absolute father the right way to be slapped Her chairman There is something about him that Donald that Republican red promise It compels like an old bird song in unison a flaming orange glow a golden to pay Swelling red pulped to purple a swelling of captivity She is red and alone with the loss of her people. She is lost in awe She grabs my son's arm at Christmas and he flinches. Do you love me and he is silent? Thank you So I would I have the weird alphabetical honor and privilege of introducing Isabelle next That is devans esteemed and fearless leader and I am so excited to hear her Read because I always hear her but I never get to hear her work, you know, it's always about devans So let's please give a warm welcome to isabel. I Came here was all fragile, you know thinking of like how you can bring my money for divan and this and that I'm here I'm like Okay, I love you all I'm inspired. It's all this work is worth it We got to go doing I have no ideas how talented you guys are We should have done this way back. We do this again. Okay, this is wonderful. So yeah, so anyway, I'm happy now So yeah, so so yes, so so yes, I don't really write, you know I basically decided to you know to devote my life to support other writers for different reasons Here I have a piece actually isn't republished soon and the reason it came about is an accident because Bindan asked me to write a piece about mother for an art book that he was publishing and Maybe I read the email too fast because I'm so busy and I wrote about my mother and I send it to him He's like, oh, I thought we were going to write an academic paper about mothers Well, I don't have time to write another one. So so that's that Okay, anyway, it's just So this was a starting with the reflections about the ideas of you know, you know I teach Asian-American study ethnic studies and then one things, you know I thought for 20 years is the idea of no history. No yourself, you know, it's like, yeah And then I have been thinking about this quite a bit. So So this is the end of the stories reflect about that But beginning is, you know, trying to understand my mother. It's a lot about mothers We often talk about our mothers. There's something about Vietnamese mothers, you know holding it all But you know sometime at a cost, right? Anyway, so this is the end of that story after I tell my mother's story a Story is only a story and once it is told it become a ghost a rock on an angel To know my history is not a given Cool mother have a point to not tell me the truth in full Cool living with the guilt of not being as good as a mask be better than living with shame If she cool mother would tell me my American teacher that they spoke no one's sense about the knowledge of history being Tied with the knowledge of the self and then to live with guilt in order to survive and thrive is truly not such a terrible thing It is at least better than me knowing her real story for it will risk making me too angry or too sad It could push me away from her break up bond the very thing she fears the most That's all she truly possessed after all and she needed me to save her Although I like to think of myself as a decider of my own destiny. It is clear now that I have been hers all along My coming to America to live with her sister number nine who blame her for her marriage without the scent in my pocket Was not my running away from father or from racism as I used to tell It was a plan. It is me walking through the dark tunnel She had dug with her nails days and nights for a decade her gamble No, mother the car she will get there and win. There was no turning back I Like to think that he was to make it easier for me to leave that when I asked her if she loved me when I was Starving for such words at 18 she pause and after what seems like a very long time and said It's my duty She did not make it in America because she had missed her mother too much I did not give you love so that you could leave without looking back and succeed not like me. She now tells me Maybe it is better to never have hope to start with That is the loss of hope that drove mother to gamble her life and that the life of a child After the Clorox incidents the day after my two birds die And I had run out of the street barefoot in my white gown in the middle of night to escape father's wrath Mother went in the back of the garden. I was ten years old It was a April 30, 1975 And maybe now I know why With a mixture of river dirt and compost she made a mask for me She had more time on her hand to make it this time She tried to remember what one in from my mother's alter and the joconde of her old textbooks looks like It was so long ago My mask she made sure to tell me as she put it on my face would not be as powerful as hers She made it special so that it covered the top of my head because she said he was full of bird that saw too high Each time a human came close. I had to stop trusting people. She said for my protection She carved the mouth shut in a shape of a light smile so that my voice will be muffled and not be heard It is with mother's mask on that I went on living after that. I could not remove it At first it worked well. It was relieved not to be seen and not to be heard But I also spent years waiting for drops of joy to fall from the sky When they came I laid in the clear clearing covered with grass and daisies eyes open wide Matching the smile of my mask. I caught as much as I could cash sticking everything in It is in one of this moment that I caught the idea that people are believers that we all carry a story in our head That echoes I'm good or I'm bad. I belong to the best or I belong to the bed For my story pops a bubble that attaches to the back of a belly button in the bubble floats five words I'm afraid of you or I'm afraid of me We pick up crumbs on the ground and signs from the stars We fight to keep the covers of our story clean extra shiny even we think in shadow and light Some of us are served a story in a bottle at birth Some of us spend a lifetime searching for crumb to satisfy the hunger that makes no sense to those born with a story in a bottle And then there is always a shade of a skin and much coins We have in our pockets whether we are born a boy or girl or something in between if we hold this or that passport How beautiful we look I had and whether we are at the right place at the right time as Kill and how learn we are to tell and believe stories For better or worse, I have inherited father's scissors The one I've used to cut his journal and books from which I pick up a few words to put on the page From mother I've learned to gamble not to win but to break even maybe To move away from the needle of survival to walk the path of living My gumball is to yank my mother's mass for my face and fine tune if I cannot Possibly smash it the small compass have inherited from her head in my head and be willing to face The end of the world will I ever succeed in my mouth is a memory of the taste of crumbs I ate too fast out of hunger for her story. I Learned up. I line up what I can remember of the shapes up to my eyes and try hard not to close them. I Called mother before I betray her. Hi mom What happened? Nothing just calling to say hi Are you okay? Yes, are you? Yes, I am. What do we do now? I Think I know Thank you so now is a pleasure to Introduce a Julie T. Handel hills and all friends have been with even for since the beginning You know, she's you know talks right a lot about charm Being charm Americans a lot of you know, like a venom is like 15 more minorities. I think minorities Vietnamese have you know, I killed the mini champ but not all died And then Julie is here to tell her story and the story of her mother She's a poet a teacher and a grandwriter welcome Julie I'm gonna read a short poem from 2009 Followed by a memoir piece. I wrote a couple of weeks ago Followed by a little longer poem. I wrote in 2008 To hold a beating heart To hold a beating heart within is enough To know the hair's breath wait for life to continue after the pause between each silence dust jackets My earliest exposure to poetry was through books by shell Silverstein Gifted by my father's second wife Lynn an eighth grade art teacher who nourished my love of reading She bought me where the sidewalk ends and a light in the attic two hardcover collections of poetry was simple line drawings I liked how each poem was easy to understand yet also playful the poem about Sarah Cynthia Sylvia stout who wouldn't take the garbage out culminated in a transcontinental pile of trash by then it was too late It was an epic warning to do one's chores yet mostly it was an absurd catastrophe fun to imagine Sometimes shells snuck in bits of deeper wisdom as a teacher of children in his short poem about Hearing impaired Donald who fell in love with talkative Sue Yet neither understood the other the way they each expressed love was Unintelligible to the other and yet even a seven-year-old girl in Texas could sense a timeless warning beneath the poem's calm exterior Remember the way someone else expresses love isn't always like your own pretty heavy, huh? But with rhyming couplets that flowed like song and like songs listen to you over and over I came to memorize that poem and many others Through return and recitation. I learned the pleasure of revisiting a story even when I know how it ends Over time one dust jacket grew ragged and the other disappeared as did Lynn's marriage with my father One day after his violence Lynn left him By third grade all I had left of Lynn were the books She'd bought me until years later when I found my first step my first stepmother living in Michigan We began corresponding and eventually reunited in my early 20s when I met Lynn's best husband and only biological daughter We remain in touch Several years ago. I texted Lynn a note of appreciation as a reason. I began reading poetry You were writing it too. She added your first poem was about playing in puddles in the rain Until that moment I'd played but I placed my first written poetry at age nine Because those are the earliest poems. I still have Even after her prompt I couldn't recall writing or sharing that first poem But Lynn remembers my first poem the way I remember the poems she gave me When I am like this It's probably because some days still act like summer But then other days the chilly gray seeps into my bones and the apartment manager doesn't really turn on the heat My bay windows although beautiful are poorly insulated and I've received a rent increase to go with the recession I bought a down throw so I won't be as cold as I read at night as my 799 black Friday splurge and this is my throw down But the whole point of this missive is facing why I keep not being able to write a 20-page paper That's due too soon. I read articles and chapters and take notes, but can't write I'm afraid I'll overreach with notes than fuck myself with too much to do in the final weeks What's my problem this time of year for one? So Gina sent me a Dharma talk on home by Tich Nhat Hanh which resonated so resolutely Her translation for me even with its linguistics assessment of Vietnamese kinship and all Pronoun expressions of connection the very words I have learned these past months How do I consider home in my heart? Despite the silences this world has asked of me Quieting the fits and the unfit the starts and the endings the distances I cannot remedy the fissures and slibbages and losses and I won't do my dishes Although I should or even cook when I'm like this since I only really want to cook well when I cook for others Perhaps I can trick myself into a sort of cunning hospitality and Mindfully consider myself and other So I'd be willing to procrastinate writing my paper at least by brightening my life with a fabulous meal When I am like this, but I haven't enough fresh vegetables in the fridge So instead of writing the paper I should be writing I write poetry that reaches its hand into my heart and rings it to sleep Attemptation, but I can't sleep. No, I need to get more done even at 2 a.m Maybe I will start with a cup of tea start again with a cup of tea and while the kettle boils I'll do five dishes a piece offering Thank you And now I have the honor to introduce Kathy when who is along with Issa the other Significant pillar holding up D van as our COO. We're very very grateful to have you with us And I'm very excited to hear your work So I'm gonna read an excerpt from a longer work in progress. It is a novel of historical fiction Saigon 1975 Two weeks after the plum trees have bloomed showering Saigon with canopies of white and pink blossoms a Girl named Lynn Lang Thie with a bright red mark over her left eye Follows a woman with a pockmarked face who gives her candy He wears a green dress with a red apple on it Sucking on the tamarind sweet They whine through alleyways past crowded markets filled with food stalls Tended by cooks fanning the embers of their charcoal grills Past women hawking Buddha's hands and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves Old men and women sit on low wooden stools exchanging gossip in the latest news of the war Teenage boys crouching doorways plotting revenge Army helicopters carrying wounded soldiers were above them heading to the military base The woman with the pockmarked face tells T. They're almost there They're going to see a man who the woman tells her helps children The woman says she'll like it there lots of children to play with But he has to behave she has to obey like the others He nods not caring where they go so long as sugar stays on her tongue He can talk now, but she mostly listens Taking everything in Speaking only when she has to They went their way through the busy streets of Saigon onto a white boulevard with tall leafless trees White paint rings circling the trunks No one notices. No one pays attention to them Just another woman with a child trailing behind her Air sirens blare the sound is deafening. He covers her ears He has been gone all day No one misses her not until the late afternoon when a neighbor asked the housekeeper Where the child with the red mark on her eye has gone The neighbor hasn't seen the child playing alone in the alley as usual The nanny is busy tending to the baby boy. She doesn't notice when he wanders off The housekeeper whole scolds the nanny a girl herself Barely 16 The neighbors began searching for the missing child calling T. I con go They round up the neighborhood boys who scatter like pigeons the boys jump on their bicycles Peddling furiously down side streets the boys stop passers by describing the missing child the best they can She was wearing a dress though. They're not sure Maybe it was shorts. Yes, that's it red shorts her hair tied into a knot on top of her head The nanny said that she remembered One thing is certain the girl has a red mark on her eye It's unfortunate said the neighborhood women. She might be pretty otherwise such a shame At the headquarters of the South Vietnamese army in Saigon These father receives the news during a meeting Upon learning his child is missing major Lin Thanh Viet storms out of the building Accompanied by two soldiers. He runs toward the gate shouting for army jeeps He stops mid-stride turns and races to the Mewba The major had erected a shrine at the base in honor of a woman warrior Whose husband had been killed in battle by French invaders a hundred years before The woman warrior took up her sword to avenge her husband Fighting on horseback her child tied to her back Her long black hair whipping around her like a shield She fought alongside her husband's troops at the Battle of Gui Wah Fending off the French before their cannons pummeled the Saigon Citadel Annihilating thousands of enemy soldiers and the woman warrior her child still clinging to her back She became known as the lady spirit Men and women worshipped her Soldiers prayed to her before going into battle The lady spirit had saved the major's life more than once From the swamps of Gamal to the jungles of Ben May Thut She had guided him Speaking to him in dreams Keeping him alive when soldiers were killed all around him The shrine stands in the shade of an enormous banyan tree It's gnarled limbs and wide branches fending out like a fortress The dirt path to the shrine is strung with flowers Scattered by the wives of South Vietnamese soldiers living and Dead who come to pray and make offerings of fruit and rice wine to the lady The major approaches the shrine quietly his heart pounding He lights incense and claps his hands together in prayer Bowing down and kneeling before the carved wooden statue of the lady spirit Sweat streams down his face Please help me find my child. He says I would give my life Please help me Major says the driver folding his cap in his hands. The jeeps are ready, sir Viet glances back at the lady spirit his eyes plating He gets into the Jeep his jaw clenched the guard at the gate salutes him a second guard opens the gate City sounds magnify Motorbikes honk their horns Weaving between Ciclo drivers and three-wheel lamb retas a Stream of school girls in white aw yai on bicycles Shiny Citroëns and Chevrolet's Volkswagen buses heavily loaded army trucks a swarm of Vespas the smell of diesel thick in the air For a moment Viet remembers his life before the war Before his child was born and nothing is yet lost Thank you Now I have the honor of introducing Sydney van Thal He is our publications coordinator and also the deputy editor of our online literary journal diacritics Sydney is also working on his PhD at UC Berkeley Welcome Sydney. It's great to be here I'm really blown away by these poems. I think that one thing Vietnamese people all have in common is we have really crazy family stories. I It's like when I talk to another Vietnamese person and then we start trading stories I just expect that they'll say something crazy to me And I don't I don't want to say powerful stories because it seems more holistic But that's how I feel and you know Everyone who's been reading so far I feel like you guys have all had such amazing ways of reading and being storytellers So I have two poems about my grandma a chair That is the name for my mother's mother in Haka. I Asked the question which I never know how to ask what was the war like She answers the only way that she can by telling the story of her entire life Because there is nothing which the war did not touch Lopda a chair come big chat lady How can you recognize death when it is everywhere? It is as if I'm seeing her face for the first time How can you think about death when everyone else is thinking about food? Yachta bomb among tad a young weapon gear dip dog bang My grandmother at the market listening for the sound of bombs Gathering her cone hats like a tower on her head Her powers of balance in a time of emergency It is supposed to be funny. She reminds me and I am seeing her face for the second time Look that a chair to be came think hi come big chat come it die On other occasions She is shouldering her bags of syrup and dragging a block of ice behind her so that she can keep selling shaved ice Our country is already hot enough as it is without being bombed and we all want shaved ice Look that a chair come big chat lady Because this is the greatest surprise that you can live through war and not know what death is But neither do I not having lived through war know what death is But I do not know death the way that my grandmother does not know death and not knowing that what do I know of her? I am seeing her face for the final time and here's that here's another poem My grandmother was married at 18. I asked if it was something she wanted. She laughs at me What did it matter what she had wanted? She asked back? It is a story that still confuses me The person who wept the most on her wedding day changes every time It was her aunt lamenting because my grandmother's father who cared more about character than wealth had given her away To a man who refused to concede that war compromises us all Or it was my grandmother's father because her aunt who could no longer spoil her had given her away to this poor country doctor Or was it my lonely grandmother? Because she cannot bring herself to be had a chicken for my grandfather failing her first task as a wife Or is it me that is crying as I find myself wishing against this marriage and the marriages of all the women in my family And wishing against myself But still none of us have finished mourning my grandfather's passing ten years ago Did she want to marry him is it a question she can answer now seven decades on What does it matter now what she had wanted then she would ask I? Will be married next month on Her wedding day my grandmother was worried that it would be all too expensive That her heels would be stuck in the mud that she would never see her aunt again That my grandfather would always be a stranger to her on My wedding day my grandmother can just eat So I'll be introducing Vinovo who's been with divan for such a long time And she's always juggling so many different activities in projects And her coffee and tea company is finally having its official launch In a week or so and so she'll be reading a bit from Her manuscript that she's working on Congrats in your wedding. I'm so glad your grandma can just eat. Hope she eats a lot. Thanks everyone for being here My name is Vina, and I'll be reading a short excerpt. Well, not really short somewhat short excerpt from a novel I've been working on so I'm really excited to be able to share it with you first time. I've been reading it out loud So Feeling a little nervous, but thanks for for being here and witnessing that so this this piece takes place in the Macon in the early 80s When I was born slipping out of my mother bloodied and screeching the midwife Examined the two flaps between her legs and declared her a girl See I told you my mother said to my father, but go home was right So just short of seven years old. I became Chi Hai But go home our villages most revered fortune teller was an elderly woman Skin dripping from her face like an old wax candle But the white her eyes were still as bright as a full moon her pupils dark as night The village people claimed that her eyes were actually the gateway into the spiritual realm as Legends went at the age of four Bakohama was bitten on the ankle by poisonous snake Instead of succumbing to the venom which traveled up her legs a shaman prayed for the snake to spare the young child in Return she would atone for the sins of the snake by helping people escape misfortunes According to my mother the fortune teller told her that marrying my father was either going to be a great choice or a horrible one Even she in all her divinity could not predict which it would be Some things are left to the skies But if you marry him you will have two daughters And these two daughters will be very beautiful and very talented My mother told me that that promise alone was enough for her to take this chance at this marriage She took a chance with the fortune teller's prediction and from the way her eyes crinkled upwards I could tell she was satisfied with her choice Ba on the other hand didn't believe in Bakohama's readings He didn't believe that our fates were already predetermined and that someone could read the whims of the skies Or maybe like our neighbors He was also hoping for a baby boy someone to take on his trade when he became too old to work Girls were short-term investments who could help you with housework when they were living under your roof But once they left they belonged to their husband's family That night I couldn't wait to see bad like the firecrackers that I found hidden in his wooden trunk Firecrackers were usually reserved for that each year to ward off evil spirits Despite how little rice each household had in their stone jars They would allocate enough funds for this important symbolic start to the year Aside from that the only other time people in our village lit firecrackers was to welcome a baby boy into the village There were times I watched as disappointed faces begrudgingly stripped down the dangling red banner from their home when a girl was born But bad was different. Surely a healthy baby girl was worth celebrating too I waited and waited until I heard bass gnawing next to me The firecrackers would be wasted snaking around in a tightly wound plastic bag I Wondered if he had prepared firecrackers for my birth and if each fuse wrapped in stocky red paper late forgotten and misshapen Their casings no match for the Mekong humidity. I Laid in bed tossing and turning swatting mosquitoes nipping at my ankles Every time I close my eyes visions of evil spirits coming to our home to take away my baby sister jolted me awake There were parts of our village that were haunted with lost and anguished souls Wandering without a home the ancestors who lived on our altar were supposed to protect Our family and serve as a first line of defense for these evil spirits But I didn't know these people and I couldn't trust them to protect my sister I heard from the aunties in our village that the more beautiful and precious a child The more evil spirits wanted to steal them away That was why parents gave children unattractive nicknames that lowered their desirability Since my didn't have that nickname yet. She was unprotected. Her defense was weak. No fireworks Nutrusting ancestors no nickname, but luckily she had me. I Was the oldest sister the Chi Hai and I wasn't about to let any spirits take away my new baby sister. I Called I quietly rolled out of bed and tiptoe to my father's wooden chest It was dark, but I maneuvered slowly tracing the floor with my feet to find a clear path I felt I felt around the plastic bag and clushed it with my fingers feeling the weight of it tugging my arm towards the ground Following the moonlight. I found my way out of our home and gazed up at the sky What was a peaceful night with only the sounds of crickets and cicadas chirping in the backdrop became an explosive orchestra? Suddenly dogs were barking and I could hear our neighbors cursing out their windows My father ran out still only in his underwear his eyes bulging out of their sockets his mouth agape What are you doing? He yelled yanking me towards him Tears began to well up in my eyes and I yelled back you weren't going to scare away the spirits from my so I did The sound of the firecrackers ended the last bit of gunpowder now just a shell of paper and cardboard Inside our house. I could hear my high-pitched whale. It was a sound. I wasn't yet familiar with Baz fought face softened as he pulled me in with lighter force this time and knelt down so he could fold me into his arms Do you know why we don't like firecrackers for girls he asked Because families want boys I responded He laughed placing his fingers hands on my shoulders No It's because girls are more fierce than anything in this world Spirits are already scared of them. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and gulped for air trying to find my breath again I felt embarrassed at my misunderstanding and the ruckus I had caused in the middle of the night With my head and a shoulder slumped. I broke free from Baz embrace and began cleaning up the remains from the firecrackers Leave it. He said I'll clean it in the morning Let the spirit see the my has an older sister who will light up the night sky to protect her Thank you Concludes our program. Thank you so much to all of our amazing readers to jung to daemon Envy Anika Who am I missing carol and Mina Isabel Julie? You're amazing. Thank you all Sydney. I Introduce Sydney, so I was like, oh wait, who am I missing? Thank you so much. There's some light refreshments in the back. So please feel free to help yourselves If for those of you who registered via event bright, we do have an event survey feedback survey if you could Kindly fill that out. That really helps us with Grants and applications and also to improve our programming. So thank you so much for spending this evening with us And thank you to SFPL and Anisa Wow D-Van is amazing and just the women whoo fierce Thank you all for being here and have a wonderful night. Thank you all