"When a person... has something important they want to protect... that's when they can become truly strong"
(「人は...大切な何かを守りたいと思った時に本当に強くなれるものなんです」, "Hito ha... taisetsuna nanika o mamoritai to omotta toki ni hontō ni tsuyoku nareru mono nan desu")
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Community Show
I would love to write a story for culture show. In fact, I've been thinking of a story for a really long time now, but I'm not Vietnamese so would people see it as a perversion of the Vietnamese voice? ... a Khmer guy talking about Vietnamese history...
And I understand the concept of the privileged and the underprivileged, but I also understand the concept of collaboration and growing together, and making a community that open its doors to anyone despite their color of their skin, economic background, religion, sexual orientation, whatever. I believe that ending racism and ethnic funk, and other forms of hate, starts with ourselves getting rid of such feelings in our own hearts. And I know that we need to be able to identify and address the social injustice that our communities face, but really... what is one non-viet person, to taint the image of culture show in others' eyes, when culture show is made up of an entire community, many faces... many like our own and some not.
Some may be hesitant at supporting our culture show this year, due to such related reasons. My response to that is that my friends, Victor Hoang, Ryan Quan, Michelle Ai-Nhi Ho, and many more, still dedicate hours and hours of acting practice each week... Many others of my friends like Hai Tran, Pauline Luong, Candace Nhung Le, and many more devote themselves to choreographing providing a venue of folks to dance on a world class stage. And many more come to practices multiple times a week to dance and sing with us for that very opportunity. And even more yet, there are others are working to fund raise, make sets, design costumes, go to core meetings, market all over the place, putting themselves in leadership positions with the responsibility of long hours of work and effort, and doing so much more. All in all, many folks in our community are coming together to empower themselves and embrace a culture that is dear to them and dear to me. Please remember that culture show isn't a one man show... its a Community Show.
That in itself makes it such a beautiful thing.
And I understand the concept of the privileged and the underprivileged, but I also understand the concept of collaboration and growing together, and making a community that open its doors to anyone despite their color of their skin, economic background, religion, sexual orientation, whatever. I believe that ending racism and ethnic funk, and other forms of hate, starts with ourselves getting rid of such feelings in our own hearts. And I know that we need to be able to identify and address the social injustice that our communities face, but really... what is one non-viet person, to taint the image of culture show in others' eyes, when culture show is made up of an entire community, many faces... many like our own and some not.
Some may be hesitant at supporting our culture show this year, due to such related reasons. My response to that is that my friends, Victor Hoang, Ryan Quan, Michelle Ai-Nhi Ho, and many more, still dedicate hours and hours of acting practice each week... Many others of my friends like Hai Tran, Pauline Luong, Candace Nhung Le, and many more devote themselves to choreographing providing a venue of folks to dance on a world class stage. And many more come to practices multiple times a week to dance and sing with us for that very opportunity. And even more yet, there are others are working to fund raise, make sets, design costumes, go to core meetings, market all over the place, putting themselves in leadership positions with the responsibility of long hours of work and effort, and doing so much more. All in all, many folks in our community are coming together to empower themselves and embrace a culture that is dear to them and dear to me. Please remember that culture show isn't a one man show... its a Community Show.
That in itself makes it such a beautiful thing.
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