chúc mừng năm mới

I have long mourned the life I could have had if my father had not separated us from our Vietnamese heritage. We often cooked Việt food and occasionally visited nearby family, but language, culture, and history were not passed on to us— my dad wanted us to be American American. When I finally “discovered” Tết (Lunar New Year) and Tết Trung Thu (Mid-autumn festival) in my mid-20s, it felt simultaneously like entering a new world and returning home. The holiday has a surreal pureness to me in that the negative associations I have with most Western holidays, due to family difficulties, don’t exist with Tết since my family never celebrated it. It felt as if Tết was waiting for me, giving me the gift of choosing who I make these memories with— my chosen family.

Because Tết lacks a familial connection for me, my initial photos focus on those elements— familial, personal, and community interactions. In the coming years, I plan to capture more of the festival’s effervescent energy and atmosphere, its humbly sacrosanct culture and history, and the mouthwatering food.