Alma

Favorite quote:

"As a girl, you watched, from a banana grove, your schoolhouse collapse after an American napalm raid. At five, you never stepped into a classroom again. Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all—but an orphan. Our Vietnamese a time capsule, a mark of where your education ended, ashed.

Ma, to speak in our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese,

but entirely in war.

That night I promised myself I’d never be wordless when you needed me to speak for you. So began my career as our family’s official interpreter.

From then on, I would fill in our blanks, our silences, stutters, whenever I could. I code switched. I took off our language and wore my English, like a mask, so that others would see my face, and therefore yours."