Dear Starry Souls,
It has been almost a month now since my time in Vietnam. Many have asked how it was—to which I could only reply: “Very hot.”
Those two words certainly do not reflect the entirety of my experience there. I mean, it is my parent’s home country, a place that I have only been to once as a little girl and have little memory of. It is a land across the world from the American soil I was born in yet it holds closely onto all the things that make me who I am. It is the other half of me—the “Vietnamese” part of my being.
Yet despite its obvious importance, I can’t bring myself up to put it into words yet. It still all sits within me as a feeling and I can only describe that feeling as being turned inside out and back again.
That is the title of the first book I read where I saw myself, my Vietnamese self, reflected back at me. The first time I would even read a story that wasn’t my Mom’s memories of Vietnam. Inside Out and Back Again. Written by Thanhha Lai, it is a story told through a collection of poems about a young girl named Hà whose family is uprooted from her life in Saigon due to the war. It all happens within one year, starting with the first poem being titled “The Year of The Cat - 1975,” when Hà and her family welcomed the new year during the midst of war, to the last poem, where she spends the Year of The Dragon in her new home in Alabama.
I remember finding this book at my elementary school’s book fair. I was in fifth grade, having just turned ten like Hà, and eager to buy at least two books (and maybe the iPod-shaped erasers if I had extra money.) It surprised me to see any book that simply had the word “Vietnam” on it. Mainly because I would only hear it when my parents and grandparents were sharing tiny stories from there. And the only time I would even mention it was when my teachers asked where my parents were from.
Yet on the gray display shelf was a book with a Vietnamese author on it, holding a story that would show me what Vietnam was like four decades ago. The cover was of a tall papaya tree, with a little girl standing next to it while staring at a purple-pink sunset. A beautiful image that seemed almost too intimate to be looking at.
I remember reading those pages with the small lines and big spaces, feeling like I was trying to connect to something that was beyond me. I was born on American soil and had been raised around beech, oak, and maple trees. I didn’t know a life of tropical heat and having to flee.
So it was a given that I didn’t fully understand the weight of Hà story at the time. I didn’t fully grasp what she meant when she wrote “It’s over, Saigon is gone.” And I didn’t fully comprehend the grief she had when she had to leave her beloved papaya tree, only to be left to dream in a faraway land of its ripeness.
But it is the year of the cat now and today, I flip through the now-yellow pages of Ha’s story, re-reading those simple words, feeling the weight of everything it carries.
Now I know what she meant when she wrote “Someone should be kissed for having the heart to send cases of fish sauce to Guam.” Because I tasted the savory love in it when I ate cơm tấm while sitting under the morning sun, surrounded by the noise of motorbikes and grilling meat.
I know what she felt when she looked for her mother’s sad eyes when she spoke about how North and South Vietnam became. Because I looked for mine as she walked along the path of teak trees to her grandfather’s old and worn home, now overgrown with wild hibiscus and baby calves.
And I know the feeling she had when she dreamed about tasting ripe papaya in a town of cut grass and empty, quiet roads. Because I could tell you what it’s like to long for the scent of lemongrass in the city the people still call Saigon. But I won’t just yet.
I believe in time, as I get older, my trip to Vietnam will become aged and tattered. The memories will be yellowed and it will carry more weight than it did at the time. The same way Thanhha Lai’s own memories had to be in order for her to tell the world.
My own will be stored and kept within my heart for maybe months, years, or even decades down the line. Maybe it’ll be the next time the year of the cat returns. That I’ll look back on the faded words of the memories and only then will I understand just what it all meant. All that I write now could only be an attempt.
For now, I will leave you with a message my ten-year-old self left on the last page of the book: “Now I can fly high and dream high.”
With love,
Leah K. Tran