I am Vietnamese-Australian, yet I speak English better than any other language.  All my reading, writing and thinking is limited to combinations and permutations of the twenty-six lettered Roman alphabet. So do I still have use for another language?
As a little girl, I saw language as a burden.
When I was ten years old, learning Vietnamese was a great big bore. A waste of three hours every Saturday morning at Richmond West Primary School. I didn’t know why I had to learn to speak differently from other people. How did learning …

1989, and the hottest summer on record, at least since I’d been born. Salt ‘n’ Pepa were all over the airways and in our tiny suburb, between crimping fringes and rearranging fluoro bobby socks, all of the other third-grade girls were singing let’s talk about sex. We didn’t  realise the real revolution wasn’t bumping and grinding at eight and a half, but two unbroken young brown women, loud and giving the finger to the world on Video Hits.  I wanted to be as far away from those two condiment shakers …

I get it, I really do. I saw your tv episode about being Jewish and feeling attracted to Asian women. I understand your conflicting feelings.

When the man climbed out of the ute I picked up my backpack, dusted off my shorts and walked over.
‘Meghan?’ His accent was Australian, his eyes green with flecks of yellow.
I stuck out my hand and we shook.
He took my backpack and hauled it into the back.
Town after dusty town whizzed by. In between were paddies of rice, plantations of cassava, fields of buffalo.
The Australian pulled the ute off the highway and it bumped down a dirt road. A large lake stretched out to the left. White birds pulled fish …

My grandfather saw devils, right before he died. “They’re here, they’re here!” he exclaimed to my mum and cousins, who were in the room at the time. His fearful eyes were wide open. My cousins splashed holy water in the corner where he saw the devils. My grandfather looked to the right, where a statue of the Virgin Mary stood. It was this image that he took with him. His eyes fluttered, body shaking. And then he was gone.

Falling failing falling.  Failing used to mean: failing an assignment, an exam, a subject.  Falling behind.  Failing chemistry: no matter how hard I tried – I never achieved more than a C.  Not an F, but it may as well have been.  My dad wanted to go and speak with my Chemistry teacher and ‘sort it all out’.  But it wasn’t Mr Jagdeo’s fault – he went over compounds and properties and how oxygen was formed through lunch times and after school with me – but to no avail, I …

According to Ba, my biological imperative is to marry and have children. I was dozing before this, but his words shake me up. His voice travels far: he and Ma are having their morning conversation with condensed-milk coffee at the back of the house while I’m in the front, but it sounds like he’s shouting in my ear. Quit writing. Get married. Have babies. That’s an order, Daughter.