Suff(e)rage

Suff(e)rage explores all places I've called home since immigrating to the United States following the Fall of Saigon: Vietnam, Virginia, Washington D.C., and now Texas. This piece chronicles my family's journey from persecution (where my father was a POW who fought with South Vietnamese forces) to a promised land of freedom, only to confront the bitter irony of witnessing similar rights being eroded in our adopted homeland. The title of this work is taken from an original poem I wrote with the same name. It merges the words “suffering” with “suffrage,” to signify transforming personal grief into collective resilience while embodying the poem's defiant declaration: "I will never let them dim my light."