nhiều chuyện, by angel lin

  • love, leisure, & gluttony

    here it is, folks. the inevitable, predictable, and (what I’m hoping is) highly anticipated blog post reflecting on the entirety of my semester in paris. after four months of wining and dining accompanied by the finest companions and cheese the world has to offer, I can only hope that I’ve learned a little bit of something close to wisdom during my first journey abroad.

    four months ago, as I boarded what was about to be the longest 10 hours of my life trapped in a metal tin can catapulted through the sky across the atlantic ocean, I had some intensely ambivalent feelings about coming to paris. as I left my family, friends, classmates, coworkers,  roles, and responsibilities back home, I couldn’t help but feel a nagging sensation at the pit of my stomach. I wrote about this feeling some time ago, identifying it as a sort of homesickness i got from being detached from the communities that had grown to play such a fundamental part of my life. and while I do still think this is partially the case, I’ve come to realize that this feeling that stuck with me throughout all my museum visits between class, afternoons spent lounging in cafes, and whirlwind weekend trips hopping from country to country was actually quite a familiar one. in fact, it is one that I had grown accustomed to for much of my adult life. 

    the best word I can use to describe the feeling is gluttony. not a very pretty word, I know. but I think it gets the job done a little more accurately than simply “guilt” or “selfishness.” gluttonous is how I felt when I when I went on a vacation in hawaii for the first time with my best friends from school for spring break. gluttonous is how I felt when I decided to visit new york instead of going home to see my family for thanksgiving. gluttonous is how I felt when I left home for college in an entirely new state thousands of miles away from my mom and little sister. I’m being wasteful. I’m being greedy. I’m being gluttonous.

    it’s a feeling that sticks with me every time I make a major life decision that involves me spending time and resources on myself, taking away from my perceived attachments to my family or spending my time more productively. as if I’m abandoning them for my own selfish desires. it’s one that I suspect a lot of other oldest siblings, first-generation students, low-income children, and immigrant daughters, women, and women of color might be able to identify with.

    it’s as though, in choosing to enjoy luxuries that I know my mother and the rest of my family have never been able to experience, I am committing an affront. it’s an insult to them. if I’m being honest, there have been times where I have experienced it as an almost crippling guilt that makes it difficult to fully enjoy any new life experience. I can’t sip on mimosas, watch the waves crash along the shores of the mediterranean sea, and dig my feet into the warm sand without remembering that my mother’s feet are probably aching from another shift in heels running back and forth between the kitchen and the storefront.

    and what’s tricky about this feeling of gluttony is that it feels rational. while, of course, one can rationalize the benefits of moving away from home to go to college, one can also come to the rational conclusion that these indulgences are a waste of resources. and, well, that’s because that’s what they are—really. I didn’t need that new purse or that concert ticket or to go to school all the way in california. time spent away means time spent not helping out around the house or watching the younger cousins grow up. what have I done to deserve these pretty and shiny things I have in my life? the hard work of it all was being born—and even that wasn’t me.

    a certain level of self-awareness, of course, is healthy. it’s important to remember how lucky you are to be where you are. it’s when it gets to become a paralyzing self-awareness, however, that we approach a dangerous territory. it’s when you begin to punish yourself for these thoughts. in these cases, you become your own worst enemy, filling your head with thoughts of self-doubt and self-pity. you force yourself to live a life of piety and and create your own circumstances of suffering in order to justify any enjoyment of luxuries. saving money that doesn’t need to be saved. spending nights staying in and working instead of going out to the bars with friends. overworking and overextending yourself for the sake of pleasing others. these are all symptoms of this gluttony. people can tell you over and over again that you deserve a break or that you do so much. nevertheless, those words will land upon restless, deaf ears.

    this self-awareness and self-punishment becomes an even more frustrating experience when you come to find that men rarely impose these same disciplines on themselves. of course, you’ll find hard-working and ambitious men who are constantly busying themselves with projects and productivity. rarely, however, will you find a man who thinks that he does not deserve all of his life’s pleasures. nor will you find men who are crippled by attachments to their home. men are socialized from a young age to feel entitled to leisure and reward. women are taught to accept these things with gratitude and humility. to receive them with the entitlement of a man would be shameless gluttony.

    ironically enough, it was the recognition of this distinction that granted me a false sense of moral superiority to the men in my life. as if, because I was just as hard-working and just as ambitious as them, but I was also happened to be self-punishing, disciplined, and pious, I was somehow better than them. as women, we are taught that our time must be spent with purpose; that our time is not ours, but something that must contribute somehow to the bettering of society (whether that be by actually giving our time to others or by constantly working on self-improvement so that we can be better actors in society for the sake of others). after all, we only have so much time before our beauty fades and the one asset that once rendered us useful is no longer there to keep us relevant in the hearts of admirers. our time is constantly slipping away from us.

    coming into this semester, it was hard to justify in my head what exactly I did to deserve to spend four months in one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world. I found myself slipping into this habit of self-punishment, forcing myself to find projects to work on during my semester abroad in order to justify some greater purpose for my travel. I stayed committed to my leadership roles back home and had the enterprise to kickstart my senior research thesis. if I was going to be in paris, I was going to make my time worth it.

    equally stubborn and hard-headed in her ways, paris very quickly showed me that these frivolous undertakings were all for naught. with a refreshing rudeness, I came to learn an unflappable dogma: one does not bring their lifestyle to paris—one comes to paris to learn a new lifestyle. and the certain lifestyle, you see, is what is so interesting. the city has a certain way of sharing with people a finer way of living. a certain standard of luxury. for everyone, not just the rich and elite. and not only that, but paris has a particular ability of showing people that they deserve this way of living.

    one thing any wayward traveler who has the fortune of visiting paris will tell you is that the city is one marked by beauty. the cobblestone roads are paved with meticulous care, towering sandstone apartments impose a feeling of refinement, the metro stops are adorned with iron vines and glass illusions that make you feel as though you are about to enter a fantasy rollercoaster ride. youth have free access to all art museums and are given a stipend of 300 euros per year to spend on all things culture: concerts, exhibitions, comic books, novels, ballets, and more. 

    paris’ history has always been characterized by this emphasis on beauty; on a necessity for beauty and the arts. during the industrial revolution, when people moved to cities for the first time, urban designers understood the necessity of creating living conditions in these cities that were aesthetically pleasing. it was important that people lived their lives in environments that were conducive to human happiness and, therefore, productivity (this is a super interesting concept to think about if you’ve ever studied the research on environmental sociology that’s been conducted in the united states. researchers have described how poor, unkept conditions without greenery in urban cities that house lower-income families lead to more violence and criminal activity due to feelings of collective neglect and lack of agency).

    but what’s particularly interesting is that the city’s commitment to creating these coveted environments—a commitment to stimulating human happiness—is a sentiment apparent throughout the entirety of french history. I mean, this is a country that has undergone revolution after revolution. this is a country that has rewritten their constitution and restructured their government five times since the 18th century. time and time again, the people have asked for more from their government: more suffrage, more pay, more benefits, more welfare, more art, and more leisure. this is a country that is accustomed to asking for more for themselves (one of the most interesting things that one of my sociology professors in paris taught me is that one of the main conditions that differentiated the lore of the united states and that of france was in the availability of space. in america, whenever the settlers were upset with the living conditions imposed upon them by their government, they would simply move westward; westward expansion became an easier and more convenient solution than sticking around and trying to create change within an existing government. no need to fight for change when you have 800,000 square miles of potential where you can settle down and create your own government with your own rules. the french, however, were confined by their physical limitations. therefore, in a city of great philosophers and revolutionaries, protest became a part of the french dna. to stay and demand that your government does you better, rather than packing up your bags and moving onto the next settlement. this distinction actually serves as a fascinating explanation for the existence of such egregious inequality and poor conditions in our own american cities and states).

    I was coming from a country where—aside from the carrot-on-a-stick that is the fateful american dream—the national psyche can be generally summed up by “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” in france, however, I felt the embrace of a country that actively encouraged you to enjoy life and revel in the beauty of it all. to love yourself enough to expect more for yourself.

    this concept is one that closely resembles that of a love ethic of care. it’s a philosophy that I first learned about in the writings of black womanist bell hooks in her book all about love: new visions. in it, she talks about how an ethic of care characterized by love—love for your neighbor, for your family, for your community—can be the impetus for radical action. when we love our neighbors, we expect better for them: oppressive conditions that limit our joy and growth suddenly become unacceptable when we realize that these policies affect our loved ones. when you advocate to defund the police, increase investments in welfare, or create systems of mutual aid, these intentions ought to be rooted in love for others. to love your neighbor is to want to create a better society for us all to live in.

    I bring this seemingly tangential point to our conversation because of one particular point bell hooks makes when she outlines this ethic of care: above all else, one must love herself. love for oneself—love for one’s curves, one’s flaws, one’s smile, one’s livelihood, one’s passions, one’s laugh—these are the things that help us to understand that we deserve more. that our beautiful selves ought to be entitled to better conditions. that we are entitled to enjoying the finer things in life.

    I know that I, along with many other fellow older sisters, activists, and young women, are guilty of living lifestyles statistically predicted to result in burnout. we grind twice as hard in order to compensate for the disadvantages that our demographics plague us with. we work extra shifts because we feel as though we don’t have the privilege of slacking. we deny ourselves the finer things in life for the sake of imposing a certain outwards display of suffering: fighting the good fight so that we can die as a beloved martyr for the cause.

    if there’s one thing to take away from what both bell hooks and my short rendezvous to paris had to teach me, however, is that a little gluttony every once in a while is good. in fact, it’s healthy. I should feel entitled to feeling gluttonous. if we want to be able to have the power to live in communion with others—if we want to be powerful advocates for our communities, if we want to be kind children to our families, if we want to be empathetic lovers to our partners—we need to let ourselves enjoy the finer things in life. it’s what makes us into fuller human beings. if they really love us, our neighbors should want us to experience the freedom of living like this (my mom used to always say to me, “I get full just watching you eat”). to love your own life is the best way to honor those who gave you the opportunity to live it.

    giving yourself the chance to revel in beauty, art, pleasure, pastries, and self love is vital to human existence. women of color shouldn’t have to spend every waking breath fighting and pushing against destructive systems that tell us to hate ourselves. we should want more for ourselves. more than just a second to catch our breaths after a long sprint—we should feel entitled to leisure. conjuring up your own self-imposed punishments (like feelings of guilt or an urgency to be productive) is the last thing that we should be focusing our energies on. we should be living lives with joy in abundance and excess.

    while this may be premature (and, admittedly, a bit dramatic), I think that my time abroad has been the beginning of a new era in my life. entering adulthood and beginning to contemplate the terrible, horrible, treacherous thing known as a post-grad life has been weighing heavy on my mind. I am grateful, then, for having had the opportunity to step away from the endearing mundanity of it my regular life for a sneak peek at what is to come. and this sneak peek has been fabulous. I’ve had the luxury of spending my afternoons wandering the city and slipping into little bookshops hidden away on street corners, perusing the same museums three times over just to look at that one monet painting one more time, and sharing sloppy drinks with my friends at our beloved jazz bar on rue de rivoli on wednesday nights. I’ve stopped punishing myself for things that deserve no punishment and started letting myself love myself in material, social, and emotional ways.

    these are the types of joys I want to be able to relish as I go forward in my life. there will always be more than enough time in the day to work. but I want a life where I am entitled to enjoying luxuries with ease and without hesitation. joy should be effortless and unadulterated. these moments of beauty are things that I shouldn’t have to work for. isha, one of my dear friends I made while abroad, put it poignantly when she described the pure delight of stumbling upon a brilliant view of the eiffel tower at the most unexpected moment. whether it be out the window of a warm coffee shop or a brief glimpse of the tower on the metro ride on the way to school, there was a certain magic about being able to see something so beautiful in the most spontaneous of moments without even trying. an unplanned moment of joy.

    I have come to learn that, if you let beauty into your life—if you break the cycle of discipline and guilt and shame—you open the door to the moments of serendipity that make life worth it. life shouldn’t have to be hard. and, in fact, it becomes really beautiful if you just let it. paris has shown me that I deserve these things; not because I worked hard for them, but because I exist. to love yourself is to allow these moments of abundance and excess into your life. to be thankful for the opportunity of leisure, to accept it greedily, and to revel in the gluttony.

  • vietnamese iced coffee in paris

    as I lean back into my seat and gaze through the restaurant patio windows to fulfill my daily quota of people watching, I swirl in my hand what—to most americans who find themselves in europe—feels like a glass of liquid gold. a delicacy sought after far and wide in coffee shops, restaurants, and brasseries. a coveted elixir second only to that of the fountain of life: iced coffee. 

    and not just any iced coffee. oh no—this rarity is an expert concoction crafted with the perfect ratio of condensed milk and espresso coffee that has been mastered throughout the centuries. Generations of fine tuning just so that a wayward traveler such as myself could one day find herself lucky enough to be gifted by the taste of cà phê sữa đá. 

    as I savor every sip of this ambrosia and suck the drink dry until my straw starts to echo with gurgling noises from deep in my cup, I take a moment to absorb my surroundings. my seat sits low against a table covered in plastic, surely to provide impermeable protection from incidents of spilled broth and fish sauce. offerings to buddha are displayed on the bar’s countertop alongside menus offering bánh bột chiên, rau muống, and bún riêu. dim lights reflect upon the walls painted a spotted bright green—a stark contrast to the neutrals and muted shades characterizing the cultural landscape of french interior design. in a country that has yet to come to a satisfying reconciliation with its violent colonial history, this pho restaurant stands proudly on Avenue d’Ivry with a name that practically sneers at the faces of parisians: Pho Saigon.

    I’m having lunch at this restaurant for what must be at least the twelfth time in my twelve weeks studying abroad in paris. my first time visiting, I had only been living in france for about three weeks. already exhausted by the stunted sentences and mutilated pronunciations I could barely muster up in the french language, I sought out the relief of a more familiar tongue. I made my way to the thirteenth arrondisement—paris’ very own “chinatown”—and warily walked into the very first restaurant I saw that suggested the presence of some vietnamese people like my own (you see, I had already been traumatized once before when I ate at a pho restaurant in a more touristy part of town, shocked to find that the workers were not vietnamese after all when they looked at me with bewilderment after I asked, “cho em thêm giá?”).

    the moment I walked through those doors, the waiter looked at me with a certain look of recognition. it’s a look that’s become quite familiar to me here in paris. a look shared with anyone displaying asian phenotypes on the metro or on the street—asking with our eyes, “are you like me?” we silently sized each other up, as if by assessing the jacket on one’s shoulders or the jewelry sitting around one’s neck could tell you if this was a friend or a foe. I broke first: by offering a quick bow and greeting the older man with an enthusiastic “chào chú,” a flood of tension was released. I was one of them. a world of understanding burst open. all the formalities and charades were dropped. although I was not from their country, nor was I from their home, I was one of them. I was one of their vietnamese daughters. from that point on, I was graciously adopted into the family of Pho Saigon. 

    my decision to study in paris was, admittedly, a careless one. my first choice of studying in vietnam had been cancelled due to covid and I had listed paris as my second choice on a whim simply because I had taken a few years of french in high school (if you’re wondering why I took it, I could lie to you and tell you it was because I wanted to learn about vietnam’s historical colonial roots. in reality, it was because I was a pretentious teenager who didn’t want to take spanish because all the other kids were taking it). to be completely honest, I wasn’t even thinking about studying in a country where I would be able to find other vietnamese people or slurp up a bowl of steaming pho. I wasn’t looking for any familiarity at all. but when I told everyone at the vietnamese american service center I worked at over the summer that I was going to study in paris, their eyes lit with excitement for me. “go to the thirteenth district!” they instructed with the fervor of a mother telling her child to put on a jacket before going out into the cold. “you will find vietnamese people there.” and indeed they were correct. at the thirteenth, I was greeted with a menagerie of grocery stores, restaurants, travel agencies, clothing stores, and nail salons—all similar to the ones I knew at home, but just a little more french.

    consciously or unconsciously, it seems that my life has always gravitated towards the pull of vietnamese communities. despite not being able to identify or sort through the memories of the one time I went to visit vietnam when i was seven, my childhood was permeated by the day-old odors of pho that stubbornly refused to leave my jackets, the flurry of the crowd fighting over fresh produce under fluorescent lights at ranch 99, and the droning hymns of vietnamese masses that lulled me to sleep on sunday afternoons. my aunties at the nail salon by my university in california have seen all the broken nails, chipped acrylics, and polished manicures that characterized my college career. whether it be in seattle, washington or san jose, california, deep in des moines, iowa or across the sea to paris, france—I always found myself surrounded by people who also knew the smell of fish sauce staining your skin with familiarity.

    it wasn’t until I came to europe that I realized I had practically been spoiled by this proximity to culture my whole life. indulged to the point of taking it for granted. france, you see, is quite similar and, yet, quite different from the united states. the two democratic nations founded on revolution and freedom are like two fraternal twins (and I think studying one reveals a lot about the other). and on the matter of race, these differences run even deeper. paris, in particular, is an entirely multicultural city. the streets are outlined with kebab stands, the district of montmartre has wig stores than downtown san jose, and gourmet ramen is served on nearly every block. the city teems with diversity, religion, culture, and race. truly a product of the country’s colonial history. and yet, here in paris, “race” is a bad word. people cringe when I tell them I am an ethnic studies major. according to the french republic, no one here is french-arab, french-algerian, french-morroccan, or french-vietnamese. we are all frenchmen.

    in a way, the french make explicit what the united states makes implicit. we tell our folks that multiculturalism is good in our country’s melting pot of identities—all the while waging a war on black communities on the basis of drugs and building walls to keep out mexican immigrants on the basis of socioeconomic concerns. at least the french tell us to our faces that they don’t like colored people. they discourage the creation of communities, citing fears of tribalism and the fractioning of the republic. places like the thirteenth’s ‘chinatown,’ technically, should not even exist. places like the thirteenth’s ‘chinatown,’ technically, are a threat to the republic.

    and you can see it when you walk down the streets of point d’italie. in san jose’s little saigon or orange county’s phước lộc thọ, one can see vietnamese street signs, asian art, and historical monuments clearly delineating this territory as the vietnamese part of town. chinatown is lined with red paper lanterns and giant dragon gates in san francisco. streets are named after revolutionary figures in latino history at the mexican heritage plaza of san jose. these physical signs of legitimization and territory are all but absent from paris’ thirteenth. the buildings, street lights, and sandstone walls match the same 20th century aesthetic as the rest of paris, making the neon signs brandishing franco-vietnamese storefronts stick out even more sorely. they are not supposed to be here. they were supposed to assimilate. they were not supposed to create a space for themselves. with this context, the chinese, vietnamese, cambodian, and thai residents that live here have engaged in a process of place-making that is, indeed, radically countercultural.

    I think this counterculturalism is inherent to our natural states it’s a survival method. a coping mechanism. we’re drawn to one another because we need one another to survive. it’s an undeniable, almost primal pull. we want to create spaces and be in communion with one another. I’ve been doing it my entire life and I didn’t even realize it. 

    don’t mistake this for me trying to claim that there’s some mystical otherworldly connection that vietnamese people have for one another. no—much more mundane. I think, rather, that this the nature of diaspora. in this entirely new and globalized world of transportation, immigration, communication, and deportation, we have more people living away from their lands of origin than ever before in history. up until the last two centuries, it was assumed that you would be living on the same land that your ancestors lived on for the entirety of human history. we had familial ties and community relationships that spanned over generations. and suddenly, out of nowhere, a certain generation decided that they wanted a new adventure and permanently changed the course of history for the rest of their family line.

    our histories were written before us. so many of us today were born in countries we call our home, and yet, we still hold a certain attachment to a place that we may not even personally know. we are living in an era of peruvian-americans, korean-russians, filipino-italians, african-americans, and french-syrians. we are a generation of hyphens. while I can only speak for myself, I don’t think this attachment is necessarily to the explicit country your parents or grandparents or great (great) grandparents came from. rather, the attachment is tied to a certain feeling. a certain feeling of identity and familiarity and culture and love.

    in vietnamese, there is no real way to say “I,” “me,” or “you.” Rather, we refer to ourselves and one another using the words for “aunt,” “uncle,” “grandma,” “uncle of my father,” “cousin,” or “sister.” every single interaction is characterized by a certain familial connection. a certain feeling. there is no way to see a stranger as simply just a stranger. and I think that, because of this, I have been able to find love in every pocket of vietnamese people that I have had the fortune of stumbling upon. diaspora is a separated family waiting to be reunited. it is no wonder we experience joy when we find one another again. no wonder we watch some tv shows simply because “did you know the main actress is argentine, too?” no wonder that we wave mexican flags instead of warriors flags at juan toscano-anderson. no wonder that the moroccan team held the palestinian flag with pride after their historic win in the world cup. we have been able to create families for ourselves in every pocket of the world, thanks to diaspora.

    I am more than grateful to the nail technicians, restaurant staff, professeurs, coworkers, and strangers who have welcomed me into their lives as another vietnamese daughter. I am even more grateful to the french-vietnamese who have made this cold and foreign country much easier to warm up to. whether it be helping me with my thesis research by giving up an hour of their time to let me prod them with interview questions or letting me in on all of the gossip while I pampering my nails, thank you for letting me into your lives. thank you for the iced coffee.

    here are some spots that I highly recommend to any other wayward travelers who find themselves in paris
    Pho Saigon
    104 Avenue d’Ivry, 75013 Paris, France
    Eva Beauté
    233 Rue d’Alésia, 75014 Paris, France
    Phở Bánh Cuốn 14
    129 Avenue de Choisy, 75013 Paris, France
    Pho Bom
    71 Avenue de Choisy, 75013 Paris

    enjoyed your time? how about a like and subscribe 😉

  • a postcard: from paris, to my beloved communities

    last wednesday marked one month since I packed my bags and took off on a 12 hour plane ride for my semester abroad in paris. at this point, I’ve frequented the sufficient amount of art museums in order to convincingly feign a certain pretentiousness in my conversations about art nouveau and impressionism, I’ve consumed enough pastries and baguettes to appall any american diet’s recommended serving of carbs, and I’ve hit an 16,800 step-count monthly average on my health app walking to and from the metro each day.

    my first time abroad has been an absolute dream and I cannot be more grateful. my only regret, at this point, is not having carved enough time to continue any personal writing (darned this cursed, incessant, youthful condition that is constantly keeping me more occupied than I need to be: fomo). I’ve learned so much that I want to share about french society, culture, history, coloniality, etiquette, race, fashion, coffee, language, architecture, and the list goes on, of course. most of it, I’ve loved. much of it, I’ve adored. and some of it, admittedly, has made me miss home quite a bit.

    after spending quite a bit of time reflecting on it, I think I’ve pinpointed the source of this unfamiliar feeling of homesickness: I miss my communities.

    I decided to study abroad way back at the beginning of my junior year. for those of you who know me personally, you’ll know that this past year was one that pushed me close to my limits. I was student body vice president of a campus undergoing multiple and concurrent crises relating to sexual violence, racial profiling, covid safety, and mental health; I was getting out of a year-long relationship that left me piecing together the scraps of a person I didn’t know I had given up; I was a student coming back from two years of a pandemic and online learning unprepared for the stamina and vigor that was required for in-person classes. I know that this past year took a lot from all of us.

    so when the opportunity arose to flee the country and, with it, all of my commitments, I jumped headfirst. I signed myself away to a semester abroad, knowing fully well that I would commence my senior year relinquishing all of the positions I held in the countless committees, councils, boards, branches, and taskforces that I prided myself on at the end of my email signature. this, I thought, would be my chance to finally prioritize myself.

    and prioritizing yourself halfway across the globe sipping on an espresso at a sun-lit cafe enjoying the fall breeze with a view of the eiffel tower isn’t a bad place to do it. after all, what is consuming leisure and art if not allowing yourself to enjoy the fullness of your individual emotional humanity? (more on this in a later blog post)

    paris, however, is not exactly a place where this experience of life and leisure and art happens in communion. you may have heard the stereotype about french people being rude. well, I’m happy to attest that this isn’t completely true. but it’s also not completely false; I have to admit, it’s been difficult to build relationships or join communities with the other french people here. and much of this has to do with a certain (perceived?) pressure to be parisian.

    in fact, it’s a place where, politically, the formation of communities is actually discouraged. in france, one is a frenchman first, and a whatever-else second. this applies to race, religion, ethnicity, origin, orientation, and any other distinguishing factor that we americans love to pride ourselves on in our games of identity-politics. this form of secularism—known as laïcité—and france’s colorblind policy actually forbids the government from conducting any census that marks race as an identifier. in paris, ‘identity’ is a bad word. (there are a variety of reasons for this, including the preservation of history and culture, a legacy of collective action as a people united against monarchy during the revolution, france’s national political response to the november 2015 terrorist attack in paris, and an attempted erasure of france’s colonial violence in algeria. more on this also in a later blog post, I promise.)

    as you could probably predict, coming to learn these realities (as an ethnic studies and sociology major, nonetheless) left me in utter shock. I mean, all my life in the united states, I had been made to be hyper-aware of the factors that differentiated me from my peers in the predominantly white institutions in which I came of age. at the same time, I have been given the opportunity to create loving bonds with the people who shared lived experiences similar to my own.

    I have always existed in community. I can identify patterns throughout my life’s history of times where I have unconsciously gravitated to spaces where I could be in communion with others. my life consists of both de facto and de jure fictive kinships. my unversity’s vietnamese student association gave me a beautiful line in which I can claim a big chị and a little em to celebrate my vietnamese heritage. my childhood was characterized by rowdy visits to my cousins’ houses so my mom could gossip with all the other aunts while the all the children ran off to play. student government offered me a network of other student leaders and activists who passionately sought progress in the same inititatives that invigorated me. the vietnamese american service center became a home away from home where I could sing karaoke with the seniors who reminded me of my grandparents. my first-generation program blessed me with an the introduction to the most incredible group of inspiring women who I am proud to call my beloved friends.

    these groups have played foundational roles in allowing me to find comfort, rest easy, and develop my own understanding of self. communities where young people are able to find affinity and shared identity are vital to healthy development (there’s data to back this up). these are the spaces where young girls of color are able to build confidence and imagine greater things for themselves. it was these people who actually encouraged me to take time off to go abroad and take care of myself in the first place.

    I’ll be honest, I am missing community quite a bit here.

    when I decided I wanted to go abroad, I thought it was because I needed to cut myself off from all ties to these communities. the only way for me to find internal satisfaction was if I eliminated all my obligations and responsibilities to external forces. but, if I’m being truthful, there was a certain element of impatience with myself that also contributed to this decision: it was almost as if, because I was so tied to all of these institutions and organizations, I wanted to see if I could suvive without them. I wanted to test myself and see if I could truly be the strong, independent figure that I sold myself as without the crutch of a community behind me.

    I’m coming to enjoy my own company a lot more here in paris. and I’m coming to discover some of my own versions of community here, too (the girls in my study abroad program are lovely and I’m conducting interviews for my thesis on the vietnamese diaspora community here in paris).

    but I think that this time away has really made me realize how significant these families that I have created back home really are to me as a person. I don’t think we’re meant to be alone; our obligations to one another are an essential and rewarding aspect of the mutually supportive relationships that we need as human beings. it takes a village to make one person. sometimes, loving yourself can mean allowing yourself to be loved by the people around you.

    I am the last person who would have predicted this level of enthusiastic patriotism coming from myself. what can I say? distance makes the heart grow fonder. please don’t get me wrong—I am having an incredible time traveling europe. I have had the privilege of having my eyes opened to more cultures, ideas, and people than I ever imagined. but I did want to take a moment to write this piece. I’ve been sitting on a ridiculous amount of drafts that I have been hesitant to publish. partly because I have not had the discipline to sit down and do the work of research, revision, etc. partly because I knew that the pieces would feel dishonest if I glossed over this aspect of my study abroad experience. I hope that now I can share more of my honest reflections with you.

    I will write home more often, I promise. I want to hear from you all more often. text me if anything comes up. tell the wife and kids I say hello. all my love.