Mango Melon

Illustration by Angelique Flores.

My parents moved to Canada as teenagers fleeing the Vietnam war in the 70s for a better life without a single dollar in hand. I grew up in a predominantly white suburban town in Ontario, which shaped a lot of my complex relationship about being Asian. 

My last name, Nguyen, is one that would often elicit a sigh from supply teachers when I’d come up on the attendance sheet—a reaction that would never happen to the three Smith surnames at the bottom of the list. I deeply resented this name that inconvenienced others, in a world I so desperately tried to fit into. 

It wasn’t until I went to Vietnam in my early 20s that I realized just how much of a disservice that was. People walked the streets and looked like me, talked like me, proudly held the same name as me, like a flag planted in the ground itself. Who was I to butcher a name given to me from generations beyond me, my parents, my ancestors, just so that others would feel comfortable?

This poem is evidence of that epiphany, and an apology to the decades of life that I thought I could alter for someone else’s sake.