Reflections on the VBP Story Slam 2025 When I stepped onto the stage for the Vietnamese Boat People Story Slam 2025, I knew I wasn’t just telling a story. I was carrying a home with me. This year’s theme was My Journey , and while many journeys begin with movement, mine began somewhere quieter: memory, lineage, and the places that raised me. This piece didn’t start on a stage. It started in my class. Originally, I wrote this for a class assignment exploring the “Where I’m Fro

As a family of six, everyone had a seat at the dinner table. My three older sisters filled the right side, while my parents and I sat on the left. I always took the end seat, and to my left, my Bố  (dad). He was my left-hand man — the one who scooped rice from the cooker into everyone’s bowls, who fed me bits of history between bites, and who relished in teaching me about whatever he had just learned: world affairs, Vietnamese idioms, or stock market patterns. Over time, his