rice plants don't belong in a land of prairies

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Inspired by Vietnamese language, I create visual poetry that reflects on personal experiences of cultural displacement. My project, rice plants don’t belong in a land of prairies brings together poetry, food, and film as means to assert my identity as a second-generation Vietnamese-Canadian.

This poem is about personal experiences with colourism as a Southeast Asian-Canadian. There is a parallel between the cultural history of rice polishing and skin colour. It reminds us that darkness equates to filth, and this is stems from classism. Brown rice had a history of being cheap pig food. Evidently, it became unfathomable for humans to consider eating something meant for a farm animal.

White rice symbolizes wealth.

Fair skin symbolizes wealth.

It implies that the woman has never had to work hard. An outdated perspective of course, but the notion that fair skin is desirable, is still nevertheless alive and well.

This poem explores the concept of in-betweenness. The beloved street food was invented during the 50's in Saigon (now Hồ Chí Minh city) during the French occupation within Vietnam. After the war, it became popularized in the North Americas through refugees.

Macaronic language is employed in this piece, to articulate the mixture of languages that can be present within works of text. My primary artistic intentions are to create metaphors for the multilingual nature of second-generation Vietnamese-Canadians, and to portray the feeling of in-betweenness that arises from code-switching.

This poem seeks to reflect on my personal and emotional experiences with cultural alterity while growing up. At times, I found myself not eating my lunch at school in order to feel like I belonged. Essentially, this is my way of responding to my mother's concerns of whether I've eaten yet.

Here I am, feeling sorry over the past. I shouldn't have felt embarrassed to eat the food that was made from love. I deprived myself from that. I was hungry.