in shallow breaths she tries to remember
the silky sponge of a lost mother tongue
born from a sanguine paradise
she is cut from the formidable beginning of an end
in quiet solitude
she sits upon the fruits of the land
durian and jackfruit
like the lotus flower bursting from the mud
she is not hindered by the earthly world
nor its fables and stories
as one who became a protector of her own
she hunts and forages
for the bounty of which to sustain herself
a phoenix from the ashes
she rises yet again.
Carina's mother's family at Camp Pendleton refugee camp in San Diego in 1975. The image depicts four generations of women in her family, her great grandmother, her great great grandmother, grandmother and mother.
In a general sense, this piece is about the process of acculturation that many Vietnamese refugees go through upon immigrating to the United States, and the ongoing struggle to preserve their culture and homeland. However, it is also about finding one's way as a Vietnamese-American woman in society while also trying to preserve our heritage, and what this intersectionality of femininity and cultural identity means to us. In this poem, and in my writing in general, I am inspired by the vivid imagery of the Vietnamese homeland as a motherland and bounty of nature.
I'd like to provide many thanks to fellow poet Kimberly Nguyen, whose writing I have admired for many years, for her helpful feedback and guidance in the process of drafting this piece.