Notes I Never Learned

(Here is a music playlist I created as an accompaniment to this piece. Enjoy while reading or listen to it separately!)

I have a purple monster that lives in my chest.

It isn’t monstrous and doesn’t have sharp teeth in the traditional sense. It’s soft, formless—an amoeba that shifts and swells whenever I start questioning who I am or what I’m worth. It creeps up my throat, sticky and slow, until it coats my vocal cords and makes it harder for my voice to pass through.

Growing up, I learned to sing in the “right” way: clean vowels, the lifted soft palate, the polished tone that Western choral traditions prize. I could sing in Finnish and Estonian long before I could grasp my own Vietnamese language or even understand my family’s Vietnamese refugee history. My vocal education taught discipline and beauty, but it also taught erasure. It trained me to blend and assimilate, never to break form. To follow, not question. To reproduce a sound that was never truly mine.

Then, silence layered itself with shame.

At home, shame had its own fluency. Vietnamese families speak it without needing to name it. Every Tết performance ended with critiques from my mom about pitch, posture, and presence. Yet the white parishioners praised me for being a “beautiful singer,” as if that straight, delicate tone belonged to me, to these Vietnamese songs. When I look back at the videos, I still feel the disconnect: the sound coming out of my mouth didn’t match the cultural color I knew should’ve been there. Eventually, it became easier not to sing at all. If no one heard me, no one could judge.

Somewhere in that silence, the purple monster formed.

College gave me more tools, but still no home for my voice. The French diction, German technique, and Italian phrasing I learned was too far from the Paris by Night songs I grew up hearing; the Vietnamese songs were too far from the training drilled into me. I existed somewhere in between, suspended in a place where no sound was fully mine.

When I moved to New York for my first semester of social work school, I imagined the usual fantasy: new city, new me. Maybe I could outrun the old stories about my voice. Maybe I could start fresh. 

So I auditioned for acapella groups, my first small act of hope. A chance to choose myself.

The audition was chaotic in the warmest way: fast directions, friendly faces, nerves buzzing like fluorescent lights. I walked out thinking, “Maybe there’s finally a space for me.”

Then callbacks came. I practiced until 1 a.m., voice cracking, eyes burning. And the next day, the results: nothing. Not a single callback turned into a yes.

The rational part of me whispered, "There are hundreds of reasons why this could’ve happened."

But the purple monster had already wrapped itself around my ribs:

"What if you’re good, just never good enough? What if your voice doesn’t belong anywhere?"

The sting deepened when someone I’d done callbacks with got into all the groups. The monster squeezed harder.

In the past, I would’ve buried the rejection. Let my lack of belonging harden inside me. Let shame do its quiet work on my Vietnamese American voice. But this time, I didn’t hide.

“I auditioned for acapella groups,” I told people. “…and I didn’t get in.”

Every time I said it, something unlatched. The monster loosened. Air returned. Speaking the truth out loud felt like its own kind of rebellion.

When I started school, the purple monster followed me, manifesting as imposter syndrome. Everyone around me seemed so skilled, so composed, so ready. I felt like I was pretending.

But as the semester moved forward, things shifted. I learned how socialization shapes belonging; how family, school, and community teach us who we’re allowed to be. For so long, my environment rewarded compliance and left no room for variation. I moved through spaces where no one spoke my language or carried my history. No wonder my voice felt directionless. 

The purple monster was teaching me to fear myself, my own voice.

At Columbia, I learned how to say those fears out loud. Naming the monster made it shrink.

The more I stumbled through the semester, the more pieces of myself I wanted to bring forward: a son, a brother, an actor, a dancer, a podcaster, a child of Vietnamese refugees. A person who sings, even when he’s unsure what that means.

I no longer feel the need to compete to split myself into different versions. The reactions I feared weren’t reflections of my worth, they were reflections of whoever was listening.

I started trusting the roots I already had: my family’s story, my community work, the years I spent navigating identity through listening to other artists. My voice may not always feel steady, but it’s grounded.

I’m still learning.

I still freeze when facilitating with my high school students.

Still shrink during large class discussions.

Still wonder whether my voice sounds like me.

But I also see the power in showing up imperfectly.

Letting my voice crack.

Letting my story stay unfinished.

The purple monster hasn’t vanished, but it’s gentler now. It’s become more like a bit of phlegm in my throat. A small interruption I can clear with breath and patience.

And maybe that’s what this semester taught me:

Finding my voice—in social work school, in getting back in touch with music, in this life I’m building in New York—isn’t about achieving some perfect, polished sound.It’s about trusting the shaky, strained, honest parts too.

Learning to sing through the messiness.

Allowing myself to sound like me.

And with every stumble, every class, every moment of speaking aloud, my voice grows a little freer.

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Growing Up Nguyễn is a sibling-led podcast about navigating identity, grief, food, and tradition as Vietnamese Americans, while honoring our parents’ dreams and writing our own.

🎧 Listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or on your favorite podcast platform.

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📲 Follow along on Instagram & Facebook: @growing.up.nguyen

✨ Individual journeys, shared roots:@huong.kong | @karinflair | @heddahustle | @its_benguinooo