This is where my story begins

In Vietnam, every time I tried to write – even a single sentence – I was told I did it wrong.

My notebook is filled with red ink. My confidence filled with silence.

If you told anyone from my childhood that I’d grow up to be a writer – and not just in Vietnamese, but in English – they would’ve laughed… or looked away with pity.

I’ve carried enough silence in my bones.

I write because it frees me.

Rick Rubin once said, “The person who makes something today isn’t the same person who returns to work tomorrow.” That’s how writing feels to me. Every time I sit down to write, I meet a stronger, freer version of myself.

Childhood

I was five—the smallest child in the classroom, with legs that barely reached the floor and eyes that stayed lowered. While the other kids chatted or kicked their feet under their desks, I sat silently, the book on my desk untouched.

Every morning, my mother waited by the school gate. She never left until she saw me settle into my seat. Her presence was like a thread that kept me from unraveling.

After a few days, the thread loosened. One morning, the teacher called my name and gently placed a book in front of me.

“Let’s read aloud today.”

I stared at the paper. The letters blurred. My chest tightened. A beat passed—then I shot up from my chair, heart pounding. Without a word, I leaped over the low window ledge. In one swift motion, I jumped out of the window and ran home without looking back.

Clearly, I was destined for an Olympic career.

I did it again the second time, and even the third, thinking I had found the perfect escape. But eventually, she caught on. She discovered my fear, pinpointed my reluctance, and one day trapped me by calling my name again. My eyes darted nervously across the page, lips forming soundless words, desperate not to be noticed.

But her piercing gaze didn’t miss a thing. She moved swiftly, the wooden ruler as big as my hand and as long as the size of my body tightly clenched in her hand. My heartbeat quickened as she raised the ruler high, striking sharply against my palm. The sting jolted through my fingers, hot and sharp. Around me, my classmates sat silent, eyes wide, watching. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as she lifted my reddened hand high, a silent warning to everyone else. The lesson was clear—etched deeply into everyone’s memory, especially mine. I wouldn’t dare repeat that mistake again. That was exactly what she wanted.

I was in class but my mind was out of the window!

“A childhood label”

I want to begin with a label that chased me through my school years in Vietnam. Teachers would shake their heads and whisper, “Cha làm thầy mà con lại dốt chữ,” which in English means “Her father is a teacher, yet his daughter can’t read.”

My father was a respected elementary school principal. My six older siblings all earned top grades. I was the outlier—the youngest, the “slow” one. My classmates finished high school in 12 years; I needed 14. They finished university in four; I limped across the stage in five. At night, I would ask my mother, “Am I smart enough for school?” She would smile, wipe fish-sauce scent from her hands—she brewed and sold fish sauce after the war to support us—and say, “Do you want to carry heavy jars to market like me, or sit at a desk like your friends? Keep going.”

What nobody knew then was my brain didn’t process words the way others did. Letters slid across the page and out the window like a mischievous child.

I felt ashamed, and I made myself small. I avoided friends, afraid they’d find out I couldn’t read like them. I kept quiet in class, not because I had nothing to say, but because I didn’t believe my voice belonged there.

A second life in America

After marrying my husband Lucas in 2007, I moved from Vietnam to the United States. I became a mother of two beautiful daughters, and in 2013, we returned to Vietnam so they could grow close to their roots. But in 2022, we came back to Portland to rebuild our lives once again.

That’s when I started working in a local bakery.

I loved that job more than most people might expect. To me, it wasn’t just about baking. It was art. Watching dough transform into the golden croissants felt like magic – how flour, butter, and yeast came together in layers, rising slowly into something beautiful. There’s a kind of poetry in lamination that most people never notice.

My main job was pushing hand pies - repetitive, physical labor that used my dominant side constantly. I’m right handed, and for two years, I used the same shoulder and wrist for long hours without rest. Eventually, I developed a frozen shoulder. Then, when the lamination machine broke down and stayed broken for months, I had to manually pull and guide the heavy sheets through the broken lamination machine - until it pushed my body past its limits. That’s when the pain in my wrist became unbearable. Carpal tunnel syndrome crept in.

I wasn’t alone. One of my co-workers, a friend I admired, had to quit because of the same condition. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t keep going. That shook me.

I looked at her – and I looked myself – and I asked:

“How is this the American dream? Where is the freedom in a system that breaks workers but doesn’t protect them?”

When I finally filed a worker’s compensation claim, I thought I was standing up for myself. But instead of receiving compassion, I was treated like a criminal - questioned, doubted, and pushed aside by both my employer and the insurance system. I wasn’t trying to cheat anyone. I was trying to survive.

It broke my heart. Baking was my passion – but I realized I needed to find a new one. One that wouldn’t injure my body. One that couldn’t be taken from me so easily. One that could turn my pain into purpose.

That’s why I went back to school with the goal of becoming a Physical Therapist Assistant. I want to help people like me heal and keep going.

Back to school

Going back to school felt like jumping into a storm of old memories. It was one of craziest decisions I’ve ever made - not because learning scared me, but because school used to be a place of shame, struggle, and silence for me. But I remember what my dad told me:

“A teacher’s belief shapes different students.”

Last year, I sat in a classroom at PCC’s Cascade Campus, clutching a slim storybook in my hands. The chairs around me creaked as students flipped pages. Joanna Sullivan, our ESOL reading teacher, asked us to read and share our thoughts. My heart pounded as I raised my hand—for the first time.

“Chan,” she said, pausing with a thoughtful smile, “do you know you have a unique voice?”

That moment glowed like a candle inside me.

Later, in my writing class, Catherina Thomas leaned over my essay, her eyes misty. “Your stories,” she whispered, “they feel like movies. I laughed, I cried—you made me feel it all. You’re a natural writer.”

By the end of fall term, after diving deep into Reading Level 8 with Lara Mendicino, her words landed like gentle thunder: “Chan, you are a writer.”

And just like the Klamath River when the dams came down, something inside me broke free. I had never written stories in my own language—yet here I was, writing in English, pouring out feelings I had once buried. Now, I let them flow freely onto the page. I rushed forward with quiet, unstoppable belief: I am smart, I am unique, I am a writer.