Beyond the Expected: Why My Pen Finds Its Freedom Away from My Vietnamese Identity

It’s funny, isn't it? The questions we get asked, the narratives people expect us to produce. For me, a writer, the unspoken—and often, spoken—expectation has always been: “So, when are you going to write about being Vietnamese?” And honestly, it’s a heavy question, loaded with assumptions, with history, with a whole culture I’m supposed to distill onto a page.

You see, I am Vietnamese. That much is undeniable, woven into my very being, my family's stories, the food I grew up with. But is that all I am? Is it the only story I have to tell? For a long time, the pressure felt immense, like a giant, invisible hand pushing me towards a very specific kind of narrative. You’re a minority writer, so you must write about the minority experience. It's a trope, a niche, a box people seem eager to fit you into, and it feels... limiting, somehow.

And here’s the truth, for once: I don't write about being Vietnamese. Or, at least, not explicitly, not as the singular focus, not as the primary lens through which I view all my creative endeavors. Why? Well, it’s complicated, as most things are. Part of it, I think, stems from a deeply personal fear of not being ‘Vietnamese enough’ for the task. My experience, while genuine, is so distinctly American-born, so steeped in a different reality than that of my parents or grandparents. Who am I to speak for an entire culture, when my understanding is filtered through second-hand stories and fragmented memories?

But it's more than that, too. There’s a quiet rebellion in it, a stubborn refusal to be defined by a single descriptor. My identity is a tapestry, not a single thread. It’s made up of my love for sci-fi, my fascination with urban planning, my obsession with obscure historical footnotes, my anxieties, my joys—and yes, my Vietnamese heritage is absolutely a part of that, but it's not the whole of it. To reduce my entire artistic output to just one aspect feels almost like an erasure of everything else that makes me, me.

Moreover, there's a delicate line between sharing one's truth and commodifying one's identity. I've watched as stories of 'the immigrant experience' or 'the second-generation struggle' become marketable commodities, often flattened and simplified for broader consumption. And I worry, genuinely, that if I were to approach my own heritage in that way, it would lose its intimacy, its rawness, its very soul. It would become less about me, and more about what others expect from a writer like me.

So, my pen drifts elsewhere, exploring universal themes of love, loss, connection, ambition, and the sheer messy beauty of being human. Sometimes, undoubtedly, my Vietnamese-ness will subtly infuse those stories, coloring a character's background or a setting's detail—because it's inherently a part of my worldview. But it won't be the headline. It won't be the grand statement.

And perhaps, that’s okay. Perhaps, in choosing to write beyond the expected, I’m actually honoring my heritage in a deeper, more authentic way. I'm demonstrating that our stories, as Vietnamese people, as children of immigrants, are as vast and varied as any other. We are not just one story, one experience, one expectation. We are everything, and for a writer, that boundless freedom is, well, everything.