The Quiet Knowing
- Benjamin Hoàng
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
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 From” poem, to examine identity, environment, and the systems that shape us. On the page, the poem functioned as a grounding tool. It helped me hold together family history, migration, and grief, all without needing resolution.
At the time, it was meant to be read quietly. Privately.
Adapting it for the Story Slam meant asking a different question: What does it mean to speak this out loud?
From Page to Performance: Shaping the Story for Impact
Through coaching with Tracey Nguyễn Mang, Founder of Vietnamese Boat People and Chief Storyteller, I learned that effective storytelling isn’t about saying everything. It’s about choosing what needs space.
Tracey guided me to think about emphasis, silence, and clarity: where a pause could do more work than a sentence, and where specificity could anchor the audience emotionally.
One of the first things we focused on was repetition, highlighting the pride and grounding embedded in the phrase “I’m from.” Saying it again and again wasn’t redundant; it was declarative. It was permission:
“I’m from the wooden cabinet in my living room, full of fine china that never gets used. From a Yamaha grand piano and thịt kho, caramelized pork simmering through Sunday afternoons.”
These details weren’t just descriptive, they were portals to my Vietnamese American experience. A way for the audience to enter the story through texture, smell, and sound.
Another major shift was learning to trust silence. In early practices, I rushed past moments that carried weight. On stage, I slowed down, especially when naming loss.
"I am from a family of six, [pause] now five."
That pause mattered. It gave me room for grief without explanation. It allowed the audience to feel it instead of being told what it meant.
Similarly, saying my ancestors’ names out loud, and letting each one land, transformed the story from memory into invocation. Naming became an act of honoring.
Not everything that works on the page works on a stage. Some lines needed to be cut; others needed breath. I shaped the piece so it could be carried by voice and body, not just language.
The final version became less about recounting a history and more about inhabiting it, standing inside the diaspora rather than describing it from afar:
"I am from the moments of diaspora—first my family’s, and now my siblings’,as we search for community beyond home."
What began as reflection, now became embodiment.
Carrying It Forward
This Story Slam reminded me that journeys don’t only move forward, they can spiral outward. The fruit from my parents’ backyard, the names of the matriarchs who held my family together, and the dead ends and one-ways I grew up on—all of it comes with me into every new space I enter.
Sharing this story was an act of courage, but also of care. Care for my family. Care for community memory. Care for the power of stories told with intention.
If you’d like to watch the full performance, you can view the video here.
Thank you to Vietnamese Boat People for creating a container that honors not just stories, but the people who carry them.
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.
📺 Watch full video episodes and moments on YouTube.
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✨ Individual journeys, shared roots:@huong.kong | @karinflair | @heddahustle | @its_benguinooo
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