I am reviewing in writing.

A few months ago, I made a promise that I would write everyday.  Inevitably, after about a week of consistency, I became caught in a cycle of finals and procrastinating for finals by doing things like frying chicken, figuring out a way to wash my giant growler and fill it with more beer, and watching the Spanish version of Dora the Explorer in laundromats.  However, I have been writing extensively for various other outlets and occasions — a review of two months below.

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Something Short:  The Writing Life

I decided to go back to Georgetown in large part because of one professor — someone who has been my teacher, my thesis advisor, the professor who I am now a Teaching Assistant for, and one of my closest friends and colleagues.  Every end of the semester for each class I have been a part of, all students are expected to write about their “Writing Life” in less than 250 words and sign it with their names and their hometown.  On the last class, the “Writing Lives” are read aloud.  This is my third Writing Life assignment:

So the girl you love lives in San Francisco and you have to convince her to pick up the phone for one more day, sit through another two hour conversation about the things you ate, the people you saw, and the items on the to-do list of your distant, separate life.  You can’t hold her and you can’t see her, but you need her to feel like she did during that one July sunset, when you kissed her on a rowboat floating along the California Delta.  The edges of the memory – the color of her dress, the dryness of the heat, the sounds of the boat against water – begin to singe with every passing day.  You’ve got a postcard fastened to a 46-cent stamp that will push it across the Mississippi River and the Colorado Rockies.  You write carefully because “I love you” just won’t do.

– Jennifer Nguyen, Houston, TX

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Something Longer:  “A Reeducation”

I am working (ever so slowly) on a collection of short stories tentatively titled “Southern States,” an exploration of what it means to be from “The South” in the broadest possible sense of the label.  This includes the designation “Southern Vietnamese,” an identity that was formed after the country was split at the 17th parallel in the 1950s.  This semester, I finally finished, “A Reeducation,” my first story in the collection about Vietnamese reeducation camps, historical memory, and sexual identity.  The first page of the 15-page story below:

He received the letter in the mail, enveloped between the week’s full-colored grocery ads and bank statements for previous tenants named James, Robert, and Marina.  The letter was addressed from Ho Chi Minh City, written in a reluctant blue crawl where, under normal circumstances, the word “Saigon” would have been.  The message was neatly printed on the lines of a sheet of paper with frayed edges – probably a quick rip from a spiral notebook he had also left behind.

The words covered less than half a page, an anomaly for his mother who could write pages upon hand-written pages about the pork she had caramelized on a Monday, how someone had stolen the tire of his brother’s bike, what the hair dresser said about the sexuality of the rumored father of the neighbor’s baby, and all the metaphors she could summon about mountains, oceans, wind, rain, mothers, sons, and fathers.

Instead, the Vietnamese was brief:

Your father is dead.  The Viet Cong sent a letter.  I’m going to Hanoi to get his body before they burn it.  I think I can get his things before they burn it too.  Can you send 300 dollars USD to help pay for my train ticket and the burial?  Please add extra stamps to the envelope so it will get here faster.  Thank you.

At “thank you,” he folded the letter, shoved it into the back pocket of his black slacks, and decided to go to work.

It was a 6-hour evening shift at the Café Du Monde.  He stood alone at the large industrial sink in the kitchen’s back corner, the sleeves of his white button down rolled up to the biceps, washing the lipstick, loose coffee grinds, and powdered sugar off of porcelain mugs and plates.  He was allotted one smoke break and one coffee break, both of which he took at the sink – five or so minutes with his cigarette, ten sips of chicory coffee to stay awake.  He poured the rest of the Café Du Monde coffee and whole milk concoction down the sink, where it swirled with the already muddied water.  By then, a stack of cups, dozens of plates, and three pans coated in frying grease had already begun to clutter the sink.

“Where’s your hat?” his supervisor asked three times, breaking the consistent hum of tourist chatter about their visits to the Garden District, Bourbon Street, and shrimp po’ boys at Mother’s just down the street.  He hated the white paper forage hat that he was required to wear despite being hidden away from entranced customers in the café’s main covered patio.  The hat fell off when he had to maneuver large pans into the sink and it became limp on his head from the steam of near-scalding water.

This hat makes me feel fucking stupid, he wanted to say.

“Sorry,” he chose from his vocabulary of “thank you,” “bathroom,” “hello,” and “how much.”

At midnight, he walked to the nearest ATM on Decatur Street – a small machine with faded buttons inside an over-priced liquor store.  He was hoping for a mental calculation mistake, a delay in cashing a rent check, or a windfall, but instead he was right:  10 dollars overdrawn, 15 dollars in savings.  Not even enough to withdraw the 20-dollar minimum.

He went through the recent purchases in his head: a dozen eggs that had fried every morning and eaten with day-old beignets.  A six-pack of Bud Light split with the friend he had accosted for Thursday night company.  Three dollars worth of quarters to wash and dry his uniform.  A pack of Marlboros, a bar of soap, a roll of toilet paper, and a small black pocket comb from the drug store.  The rent of apartment that was split six ways with every Vietnamese man he could befriend in the city.

He took the bus the back to New Orleans East.  In the two-bedroom apartment he walked past unfolded shirts, a tray of cigarette butts, and a half-drunken bottle of Remy Martin on a glass coffee table they had hauled from a corner two blocks away.  Under the couch, he had hid a yellow, rusted biscuit tin.  This time, it would have to be the silver Seiko watch.

At the 24-hour pawnshop, he showed the pawnbroker the watch.  The pawnbroker eyed the Seiko for a moment and turned back to an episode of Cops on his handheld television.

“60 dollars,” the pawnbroker muttered impatiently watching two police officers on the screen run dart toward a dilapidated house.

“No,” he responded.  Writhing for words, he began tracing numbers with his fingers in the air.  The pawnbroker, irritated by the sight of Vietnamese man gesturing widely in his store, relented and gave him a pen.  The “500” he wrote elicited a verbal “No,” the “450” a strikethrough with a pen.  He wrote and wrote.

A rejected “350.”

A shrug of a “225” on the paper.

Finally, he relinquished a “125.”

With a nod, the pawnbroker opened a drawer, licked his fingers, counted six bills, and pushed it across the counter.  He wrapped the bills in the paper riddled with numbers and refusals and placed carefully placed it in the envelope from Ho Chi Minh City.

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Something I Am Proud of:  Intro to Dr. Daniel Porterfield at the 5th Annual Georgetown University Lavender Graduation

In late April, I was afforded the opportunity to introduce a person I came to really respect during my undergraduate years at Georgetown — Dr. Daniel Porterfield.  This particular event was incredibly important to me since I participated in one of the first Lavender Graduations in Georgetown’s history just four years ago.  I still think that the university has a significant amount of work to do in regards to LGBTQ support, particularly for young women and people of color on campus, yet the Center is doing admirable work given how young it is (and how fixed it is to the oldest Catholic university in the nation) .  I tried to capture my memories of Georgetown, both wonderful and tumultuous, in about four minutes.  The speech below:

I have the wonderful, yet difficult honor of introducing a man who, for many here, literally does not need an introduction.  His accomplishments and accolades are prolific:  the current President of Franklin and Marshall College, the former Vice President of Strategic Affairs here on the Hilltop, a Rhodes Scholar, the founder of two bedrock programs in our social justice community – the DC Schools Project and the After School Kids Program – and, most importantly, a Hoya.  And many of us have our own personal introductions to this evening’s keynote speaker.  Here is mine:

Four years ago, I attended the first Lavender Graduation hosted in Copley Formal by the then-newly established LGBTQ Center.  A few days later, I wore my rainbow tassel at commencement – sidestepping my family’s questions on why my regalia was more colorful than everyone else’s.  As I walked across the stage, I reached out to hug Dr. Daniel Porterfield.  It was a moment that did not take him by surprise because so many students before me – in that graduation and in many others prior – had reached out to do the same.

Leading up to that moment was a nuanced and unique Georgetown experience.  I remember seeing Dr. Porterfield’s daughters in Healy Circle ride their bikes and play tag as I enviously darted towards Lauinger to write a paper.  I remember the rumors circulating among curious and famished undergraduates of an ice cream freezer in Dr. Porterfield’s office.  I remember the Fall of 2007, when two hate crimes targeted Hoyas because of their sexual orientation, spurring a movement – a movement of outrage, petitions, protests, and endless late-night meetings.  From the working groups that resulted from that historic “Out for Change Campaign,” I worked with Dr. Porterfield on an initiative that helped establish the LGBTQ Center.  I wondered, amid our meetings, why a man of such stature with a wife and three daughters would care so much about an issue that appeared remote from his own life – and I remember pushing my thoughts aside upon hearing his words of deep concern for all Hoyas, regardless of their sexual expression.

And, I remember Dr. Porterfield’s own coming out:  one afternoon on Copley Lawn during a DC Schools Project field day, we revealed to each other the difficulty of being an introvert in an extro-normative society.

I remembered it all so vividly that I carried it with me when I graduated and moved to California.  Today, in the College Center at Jefferson High School in Daly City, California, two Georgetown pennants are pinned to the wall.  Both of these pennants were sent directly from Georgetown the moment I told Dr. Porterfield that I had become a College Counselor.

This introduction is merely one part of a tapestry of stories about Dr. P.  I present Dr. Daniel Porterfield, an advocate, an ally, and a Hoya.

Tags: American, Identity, LGBTQ, Sexuality, Short Fiction, Speeches, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Writing Life