It’s early in the summer, chilly enough to wear leggings and a sweater at night. I’m heading to Brothers to say hi to some friends after work when two men walk in my direction. I can barely make out their faces when one of them starts talking to me. Babe, you’re SO gorgeous. Can I please please PLEASE have your number? as if he is … Continue reading “Smile Bitch”: Notes on Sexual Harrassment
I usually end up writing on New Years Eve, somehow, somewhere. I think it’s the nostalgic, sentimental me emerging from the depths of my cynical, sarcastic self. I do this on my birthday, too. New year, new me… after I reflect, reclining on my couch swirling a glass of mulled wine, minus the mulled wine because I’m a loser and drink Martinelli’s. Usually, it’s … Continue reading Last Year’s Resolutions
Originally published on Medium. I am Vietnamese-American, a child of refugees who came to America partially for better opportunities but mostly out of necessity. If you’re interested, you can google Vietnam. You will mainly find war stories and phở recipes and Full Metal Jacket references, but that’s not really who I am. My dad would criticize how I can’t seem to describe my Vietnamese-ness in words … Continue reading A Brief Memoir of a Vietnamese-American Girl
Ever since a single-celled organism decided to be more complex in a world of single-celled organisms, rebellion has been alive and kicking, even in our very own biological make-up. It is spoon-fed to us from a young age that the right decision might not be the popular decision and that extraordinary is better than ordinary and we are all special in our own way and … Continue reading Rebellion
Today is April 30th, 2015 — forty years after the fall of Saigon under communist rule. I’ve always commemorated Black April, at least after I learned about it, but I’ve also had very mixed feelings about this day and how people went about celebrating/commemorating it. As someone born in America to parents who successfully fled Vietnam during the mass exodus, I grew up hearing stories … Continue reading Black April
There are many ways people leave us. Friends drift apart. Significant others fall out of love. Fathers and mothers run away. Brothers and sisters stop talking. Our loved ones die. Even if people don’t leave, relationships change and the people who you thought would be there forever are insignificant before you realize anything has changed. Even if people don’t die, you are attached to the … Continue reading The People Who Leave You
When I was 6, I realized that I wasn’t very pretty. I remember feeling kind of bummed out, and I know I asked my mom if I could possibly have blonde hair one day since all the princesses on TV had blonde hair. And I wasn’t just missing the hair, I was missing the big blue eyes and the all-American freckles. One time I cried … Continue reading On Beauty
“Learn to speak English.” It’s a common phrase — no, really, I swear. Ask five Asian-Americans, five international students, five people with parents who weren’t born here and I promise you, chances are they’ve heard it in one form or another. As for me, I was in second grade. I was in a heated argument with a boy whose initials are literally BS, I kid you … Continue reading “Learn to speak English.”
There’s a stigma against solitude and — believe me — I can see why. The old man eating alone in the diner, the guy sitting alone at the movie theaters, the one awkward sober girl at the party (me) — all depictions of loneliness, people who would love to have company and simply can’t. The kid in the news who committed suicide: had no friends. … Continue reading The Art of Being Alone
I was looking back at some of my old writing recently and I found my college application essay for UChicago (newflash: waitlisted), with the prompt of “So where is Waldo, really?” Rereading, I am surprised at how applicable this essay is to what I’m going through right now, along with a lot of other college students I know. In such a fast-paced world, it doesn’t … Continue reading So where is Waldo, really?
My mom is an… interesting person. Having a wild time in Mexico Now that I think about it, that is definitely the most appropriate word. Not because she isn’t deserving of many other rich descriptors that are attuned to human nature — she is. It’s just that if I call her caring (which she is) it’ll make her seem unconditionally sweet (which she isn’t). I … Continue reading My Mom.
If you live in the Midwest, you’ll always have something to complain about with your fellow Midwesterners: the weather. All of us know what it’s like to go through four season in one day, making it impossible to know how to dress. Discomfort becomes commonplace, not to mention the brutal winters that only seem to be getting worse by the year (in case you’ve forgotten … Continue reading In Defense of Midwest Weather
Here are some golden nuggets of sagely wisdom I’ve received in the past few months that have helped me along. “You’re smart if you enjoy what you do, and you do it passionately.” At the beginning of the year I was stressing about what major to declare. There was the pressure of picking a field with a fruitful job market; I sat through Intro … Continue reading Some Advice I’ve Gotten This Month:
Ever since I was in the 4th grade, I’ve wanted to be a writer. In fact, if you look in my 4th grade yearbook, you will see “future author” underneath my picture — though you probably wouldn’t look too far, those were the unfortunate haircut years. As a kid, I didn’t have many friends so obviously the most efficient way of gaining companionship was by … Continue reading Fulfilling Childhood Dreams
ViVien Bui 