Personal Narrative

This message is to high schoolers to assure them that their worth is not defined by what schools they get into, but by the effort they put into things they care about.

I want to explore how moving around all though my life impacted my unique relationship with all the people I love, scattered around the world. I want to write about how I remain emotionally connected to people when I cannot be physically close to them

A letter expressing my endearment to Vietnamese coffee

A letter to my late paternal grandfather, who I only had the chance to meet once when I visited Nepal 10 years ago...

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My grandfather had immigrated to the US in the 1940s, leaving behind his home, his culture, and his mom. Devoting his life to running a Chinese restaurant so that his children could enjoy the American dream he began, my grandfather never had the chance to go back to China to see his mother before she died. My mom recalls seeing him burn the fake money, lamenting her passing. His eyes welling up with guilt as he stared at her photograph he kept on his night stand. Being one of the many female products of the One Child Policy, I understood the importance a Chinese son held, but it wasn't until now that I put two and two together... My grandfather held guilt not only because of his failure to visit his mother, but because his position as an America father removed him from his role as a Chinese son.

I know I’m not the only one who feels like this, as AP Calculus AB tested everyone’s math performance. Kumon set me up for the class quite nicely — I breezed through the course, getting a 4 on the exam. For a lot of my peers who took the class, however, it was a nightmare.

I held his ballot tightly. It was just us outside, but I gripped it so that no one could take it away.
The ballot was thumping in my hand, the heartbeat of democracy. It echoed through both of us, beating a sacred drum.

You will have a conversation with your mother, sitting in between hot-white slats of ladled sunlight, about coming-of-age.

i know nobody. i swear. nobody knows me.

Assimilation was a vocabulary term I’d only read in history books and therefore only used in essays. It was presented as a prehistoric idea. A concept that was long gone– I mean, this is America for goodness sake. I’d been so used to following the latest trends and accepting that that was all I was doing. I hadn’t noticed the limitations I had so quietly placed on myself.

I experienced some sort of moral edification last summer. Sheltered by suburbia, I watched the world around me burn. Spending the days secluded in my room and surrounded by my own thoughts, I never stepped out into hell. I had the privilege of developing beliefs and not being forced to experience the struggles at the root of them.

At six years old, you would’ve seen me playing with Barbies, wearing rainbow shirts and horizontally striped skirts, and enjoying my naivety. Today, I still look the same, despite puberty and a dramatic style change from rainbow shirts. My Vietnamese skin is still pale, and my child-like smile remains the same. I get unicorn ponchos as gifts from my family members, even as a senior in high school, and I often receive things in pink, probably because of the Barbies I used to play with.

Maybe in a year or two from now, I hope to grow out of my naivety and turn into a person that knows what she knows, and learns from her surroundings.