Writing

Essays, memoir, and a few poems.

I write about inheritance, language, food and the people who feed us — most of it from somewhere between Vietnamese and English.

2026
Essay
What my mother kept in the rice tin
On inheritance, rice, and the things we didn’t say out loud.

Lantern Quarterly · 1 min read
2026
Poem
Noon, the lantern still on
A small poem about Hội An and the habit of waiting.

The Long Table Review
2025
Essay
Salt, in three languages ↗
Muối, sel, salt — and the words I don’t have in any of them.

Sample Journal · 11 min read
2025
Essay
The long table ↗
Why I started setting out more chairs than I had friends.

Sample Magazine · 9 min read
2024
Poem
Inventory for a kitchen in Garden Grove ↗
Fish sauce, a calendar from 1998, my grandmother’s patience.

Sample Review
2024
Essay
Learning to say no in my mother’s tongue ↗
A short history of politeness, and the cost of it.

Sample Quarterly · 12 min read

In progress

A memoir-in-essays

I’m at work on a book of linked essays about the women in my family, the restaurants and kitchens they ran, and what a family passes down when it doesn’t pass down its language.

For agents, editors and residency committees: a sample chapter and CV are available on request. Write to me.

Letters from the tea house

A letter every now and then: a friendly music, the next gathering before it’s announced, and something I’ve been reading.

What my mother kept in the rice tin

Noon, the lantern still on

Salt, in three languages ↗

The long table ↗

Inventory for a kitchen in Garden Grove ↗

Learning to say no in my mother’s tongue ↗

In progress

A memoir-in-essays

Letters from the tea house