By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Sah Pham is wise for her age in the way that the up-and-coming generation is wise. A poet, a legal intern, a budding entrepreneur, she knows that it’s not necessary to tie oneself down to one path in life. At the same time, Pham is clear about her identity as a Vietnamese American, which is a lot of who she is, the way poetry is a lot of who she is, but it’s not all of who she is.
She already has accolades and interviews, yet this Urban Word Youth Poet Laureate says that she “fell into” poetry. She was studying Political Science at the University of Washington in pursuit of a future legal career. Now graduated, Pham still has an interest in both, and is returning to school to push herself in new, formative, and interdisciplinary directions. In her last year of college, she published a book and taught herself to design, code, and develop her own website, www.sahpham.com, where you can order her debut book of poems, LOVELIKE.
It’s Pham’s voice as a poet that has caught interest.
So here, floating on salted waters, above shadows
In the places where freedom sails,
I find my mother.
Here, where sea meets shore,
Trauma and resilience converge.
These are the words that end a poem Pham wrote to and about her mother, a refugee from Vietnam. Pham has performed the poem, alongside other poems from her collection, both on air and on stages across the city. The poem speaks of Pham’s family’s decision to leave Vietnam during the war, and the ocean that connects them all still, pertinent to the fact that we live here by the Puget Sound, and that her mother boarded a boat from that distant shore.
“To give me a future is to take that risk and put me on that boat,” Pham’s mother, in her poem, reads.
Mama, how could you still love water after swallowing an ocean of trauma? Pham follows up a few lines later. The poem in its whole is evocative, yet specific of their experience. Her book, LOVELIKE, grew from a conversation Pham was having with herself about the nature of love, mostly the love of friends, and the love between child and mother. But also, love of one’s own identity. “Growing up as an Asian American, it wasn’t always super easy,” Pham told the Northwest Asian Weekly. “I always felt like an outsider, but through writing about my experiences, and diving into poetry, I was able to parse that this wasn’t necessarily something to be ashamed of.”
Instead, through exploring her relationship to her family and self through poems, and by way of connection with other writers, artists, and community change makers that she has met, Pham found a kind of new home for herself and her blossoming art.
“My family made a lot of sacrifices for me to be here,” she acknowledged. Other poets, especially poets of color, she added, “inspired” her, “and made me feel alive and welcome.” This, Pham said, was “what I needed at the time in order to be proud of where I came from and, as a result of that, who I am.” Self-love is something we are all still working on, and it comes late for many of us. In a moment of reflection, Pham shared that she can “be proud of what my mom, the rest of my family, and all the people I admire have done, and so that’s where that love comes from.”
When the pandemic hit, Pham found herself with “time to think.” As she described it, “I experienced a new type of loneliness that I would not recommend, but I made the best of it and I also wrote.” Her parents have been completely supportive of her creative and career choices.
“I write not just for myself, but hopefully for my community and others who resonate and can find refuge in my work,” Pham said. She likes to reach beyond herself to know that others are discovering meaning in her poems.
“That’s really important to me.” While it’s also important to relate with women, people of color, and other Asian Americans, when asked about the relationship between her identity and her audience, she insists that “it doesn’t matter your gender, color, or how you identify to belong in my work—there are no prerequisites to being a reader, because I write about universal themes of love, friendship, and loneliness—human experiences that I believe everyone can peer into and see themselves softly reflected in.”
You learned to swim between fault lines of seawater and soul;
Became courageous girl gazing at the horizon.
Pham’s poem to her mother resonates with compassion and rare insight into a parent’s experience. The poem also speaks to the lasting impact of immigration on more than one generation.
You knew only this: love survives.
“I’m learning to hold multiple identities and be okay with that knowledge,” Pham told the Weekly. “I still feel like I have to choose most days, [but] why not do more than one thing?”
Kai can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.
lumingue says
good Pham’s poem