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352 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28, 2023
When I don’t know what I want her to say to me in return? Is there a word in Vietnamese for someone like me? Stubbornoverachiever. A stereotype. There’s one in English, but it catches on my tongue. Bisexual. Needy. Neither of us has the language or time to figure it out yet, and there’s a power in never being known because no one can use you against you.
I don’t look at Đà Lạt, at Vietnam, and think Europe. What I see is a version of the place Mom and Ba left behind, and also where I could’ve grown up, with a language that I would know fluently, paternal family to possibly love me, and a history that would finally be known. All these things were taken from me, before I was even born.
“I'm lost for words over the million little ways we can hurt for family we hardly know.”