ZM: This is Zoë Maughan and Mei Bailey and it is May 25, 2022. I am in the Watzek Library and am meeting with Lillyanne Pham via Zoom today. Lillyanne, we are really glad you are here to share some of your story. I am wondering if you could begin by stating your name and telling us just a little bit about yourself.
LP: Yes. Hi, my name is Lillyanne Pham, I also go by LP. I especially go by LP—just with the youth I work with because they call me Miss Lilly, or Miss Anne, or they call me Pham, I don't know, just never Lillyanne [laughs]. So I go by LP, and my pronouns are they/she, and yes, I am a Portland transplant from Columbus, Indiana. I went to Reed College in 2016 and that's how I ended up here. And then after I graduated in 2020, I moved around Portland, lived in different neighborhoods, and ended up in Montavilla and I live right behind Hong Phat, 80th and Burnside. I'm currently in the MFA Program for art and social practice at Portland State University. I'm a first-year, and a lot of my work just focuses on empowering teens of color, especially in the Parkrose district, which is 99th to 121st on Sandy Boulevard. I specifically work with a lot of youth at Parkrose High School, which is the most diverse high school in Oregon. And I invest a lot of my time there and that's also part of my art practice, just being in community with these teens and asking them how they would design their neighborhood. I'm dabbling in different parts of Portland, but it all connects back to East Portland, and yeah, that's a little bit about me [laughs].
ZM: Great, thank you. We can get into the details on some of those things as we continue on. So we touched on this question a little bit: can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like?
LP: Yeah, my mom came here in 1988-ish, and she was part of the wave of the Vietnamese boat people, and basically—I can get into my mom's whole story—but, she got sponsored there, they were located in—the typical Vietnamese story—they got relocated into a Thai refugee camp, and then her other half of the family got located in a camp in Australia, because China wasn't taking refugees at that time. Basically, when they were at the refugee camp, they got sponsored by a Catholic Church in Indiana, and that's how they ended up there. In the whole process, my mom got captured by Thai pirates, and faced a lot of hardships, she had to take care of two younger siblings and another younger sibling who was handicapped. And then my mom was also pregnant with my sister; she was sixteen/seventeen at the time. So when she came to the US, she didn't have any money, and her mom and the rest of her family were in Australia, so she also became the mom. Anyways, so when she got sponsored by family in Columbus, Indiana, it was a huge culture shock, obviously, but we hit poverty pretty quick there, and I lived in a trailer park. Most of my life has just been with my single mom, my dad left us when we were younger—they met in Thailand—but he ended up… he was undocumented, I think, and he ended up somewhere in the US elsewhere with a new family. But yeah, so ended up there, there wasn't very many Vietnamese/Asian enclaves nearby, and so my mom mostly got her resources through talking with her family members over the phone, meeting with some Vietnamese folks, like there's two, I think, near her. She made those connections, but it wasn't until I moved out to Reed College in Portland, Oregon where I got another cultural shock of just like, "Oh! There's actually other Asian people, there's also other Vietnamese kids that went through the same thing I went through!" I mean, not exactly, because they grew up in predominantly Vietnamese areas. So, I definitely felt like I was very white-leaning, my first year in Portland, because I really didn't understand my history, because my family was from Saigon, and my mom's dad fought for the US side, and that's how she could easily get a visa here, or whatever. So I also didn't know the whole politics between the Vietnamese history, because as my mom grew up in Saigon, they didn't really talk about what happened. It was very traumatic, especially with communism. I went to Reed, and the slogan is like: "Free love, atheism, communism." And I thought it was so cool! And then I tried to talk to my mom about it, and it's really triggering for her. There's a lot of things I don't know about myself, that I found out through Portland and through community here, that I wouldn't perhaps talk with my mom and my family, because of the tense-ness that you have all probably heard through your interviews. But that is just a little bit about my childhood: it's just not knowing much about my history, growing up in a really white town, really poor, living through domestic violence and homelessness, and then ending up here, and my life shifting because of community organizing.
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ZM: Thank you for sharing that. Jumping off of that, as a child, did anyone encourage you to learn about Vietnamese language, culture, or tradition? And if so, how was that encouraged?
LP: Yeah, so I spoke Vietnamese until I was in third grade, I think. And I was in a Catholic school, so they were going to hold me back a grade because I couldn't catch up with the rest of my peers. So my mom stopped teaching me it, and then they had to reteach me English, and then my mom also had to learn English as well, to be able to fully immerse me and for me not to be held back. So, I actually lost my language growing up. And then, I got older, and I'm a heritage speaker, I understand what people are saying to an extent, but my Vietnamese is very broken. And then I came to Portland, went to Reed, went to an Asian/Asian American history class my senior year of college, did my thesis on Asian American feminisms on Instagram, and then afterwards, I got linked up with SEASSI (Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute) at University of Wisconsin where I did a full on Vietnamese immersion language program on a scholarship. It was last summer, and yeah, it's four hours of Vietnamese everyday. That was very intense for me because a lot of people who weren't Vietnamese were doing ten times better than I was. And it was kind of this tackle of me and my language, and my culture, and my history, and trying to find histories that aren't US based, and that doesn't start with the Vietnam war—trying to find histories beyond that has been really hard for me. It's been mostly through my community that I met through in Portland, and people who are around my age that understand there's information out there, and our best resources are ourselves. And it's OK if you don't know the language, and it's OK if you suck at it. And I still want to learn it, but I tried to find a Vietnamese tutor in Portland, and tried to do it at PSU, but as a grad student, they won't let me take a… because it's not part of my requirements, I have to pay extra, and they don't have it integrated in my MFA program. And then tutors are pretty hard to come by. Yeah, most of the tutors aren't good at English, so they can't translate that well or help with the pronunciations. And I'd want to go back to the Vietnamese program online at Wisconsin, but that was four hours a day and it was really intense. I think I'm at this point where I'm kind of floating and working with one of my herbalism cohort members, Thuy Ann ,and she's a native to Portland, and grew up in Montavilla Jade District. And me and her will be talking next week on working with Vietnamese herbs and audios, and stuff, and that's how I've been connecting back to my culture, and it's really cool meeting a native Portland Vietnamese person who… their family owns property on Jade District, and they went through the whole thing, and you know, it's been really cool that way. But that's basically… my journey in a nutshell [laughs].
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ZM: That's great. If you want to, could you tell us a little more about this project with Vietnamese herbs that you're going to be working on?
LP: Yeah, it's not that detailed yet. I'm currently in the Atabey BIPOC Medicine Apprenticeship, which is run by Lara, who also founded Brown Girl Rise, was one of the co-founders. But they ended up founding this thing and basically we work with medicines in a way where we connect to our ancestral histories, and our inner ways of knowing with connecting with nature. So then I've been really interested in getting—since I'm not really good at language—I've been trying to get through to Vietnamese through food, and spices. And working with anise and cardamom, and mint leaves. And then Thuy Ann is starting a Vietnamese garden. Specifically a Vietnamese herb garden. And I was like, "Oh, let's connect, I really want to do something where heritage speakers like me can connect to their culture without feeling the weight of not being able to pronounce their language.” So hopefully maybe it's like an audio emersion with the herbs, and you eat the herbs, smell the herbs, and you listen to this audio of me trying to talk Vietnamese with my mom, but it's really shitty. But we'll see where it goes! We're having a picnic next week to talk more about it but, Thuy Ann already has the garden growing, I think. So that will be exciting.
ZM: That sounds so cool. For this next section, we're going to talk a little about college and career, and I'm gonna turn it over to Mei to ask these ones.
MB: Yeah, so shifting gears just a little bit. I'm curious how you came to be at Reed, how you found out about it, and why Portland specifically? What drew you here?
LP: I was facing domestic violence when I was seventeen or so, and so then I ended up couch surfing at a lot of my friends' places, and just talking to my teachers at my high school, and just trying to get out of Columbus, Indiana. And then one teacher, Laurie Pfaffenberger, who also ended up kind of adopting my whole family by taking care of us and her husband, Jim Pfaffenberger. They ended up just suggesting me to apply to Reed College because they knew one person applied to there, and they're like, "It's this liberal utopia and you're super liberal for Columbus, Indiana!" And were like, "You should apply! They offer full need-based scholarships, XYZ, and they will fly me out there to tour the campus, XYZ." So then I applied, I didn't look at the college website or anything. It was through the general college app portal. And then I got in, and I still didn't read up about Reed. I didn't know what a liberal arts college was. I thought I could major in business and marketing, and you know, whatever. And I didn't know that college cost $64,000 a year. I didn't know what a trust fund baby was at the time. So anyways, they fly me out here, and then I find out all of that my year one, and I almost failed a lot of my classes my first year at Reed. It was a huge culture shock. But yeah, it's not that interesting, I didn't even know the classes were conference style, and I didn't know it was a private school until I got here. But, it was mostly just to get out of Indiana.
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MB: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And you spoke to this a little bit with the culture shock, but what were some of your other first impressions of Portland? And being in this new area and going to this kind of school?
LP: Well, when people talk about East Portland, it's kind of funny because, you know, Reed's technically East Portland. But on that side of East Portland I don't see that many Asian people. And, it's all over on 82nd. But, within that little small bubble, the Reed bubble, I did see a lot of Asians compared to my year now. This is different, but at that moment, I was like, "I've never seen Vietnamese people! I've never met people with Vietnamese parents, and refugees, XYZ." That was a huge culture shock. But then, I also met people that were like, "This is a hella white school." And I'm like, "Are you sure? I see a lot of brown people here." And they were like, "No. This is hella white compared to the Bay Area, or Orange County." And I'm like, "Oh, I've never been there. I feel like this is a lot, maybe you should give this space a chance." That's what I would tell my student of color peers, and then you know, a year later, I was like, "Oh shit." I was being white-leaning, as someone who wasn't aware of it being super white, and I kind of felt that as I kept going through Reed. And to kind of unlearn the stuff, coming from Indiana, was a huge step that I had to do. But yeah, that's about it [laughs].
MB: So on your website, it mentions that you are interested in this question, this research question: what is a neighborhood? And we were both super curious about that, and kind of how you came to that research. Was it through Reed or through your current MFA at PSU? Could you speak a little bit about that?
LP: Yeah, I started that research question I think in 2020. I got an Americorps position through Mercy Corps, got located at a Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative, they're funded by Prosper Portland. For example, Jade District is a Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative. I do the one at Historic Parkrose, and so there, I got into neighborhood organizing. And then I kind of realized this is what I want to do, as someone who didn't have a neighborhood, of a Vietnamese enclave. My neighborhood was the internet, my neighborhood was Tumblr—a lot of things to qualify as a neighborhood. There's community versus neighborhood, and just the idea there are these boundaries, and containers that wouldn't be considered community because you don't know that many people. But it is a neighborhood because you can reach them. So I started working with teens of color and founded my youth program called Youth for Parkrose, for youth ages fourteen to twenty. They can either live in Parkrose or go to school in Parkrose. That was with the help of Jackie Santa Lucia who founded her program called Your Street, Your Voice, which is also for teens of color, for fourteen to twenty. And she's been working in Portland for awhile and is an architect, and she helped build the founding blocks for my youth program. And in there we worked with ODOT, PBOT, BPS, a lot of these city organizations to figure out how is gentrification going on, how is displacement going on, and how can we stop it with youth of color decision making. I've been working with a lot of my teens using creative tools. For example, the five senses, as in, "What do you feel, see, smell in Parkrose?" And they're like, "Oh I smell weed, I smell gas. I don't see green spaces." And it's using their own inner knowledges to make what it is a neighborhood, what's a neighborhood that they want, and what's going on here. And why is this a concrete jungle in Parkrose versus other neighborhoods in Portland? I can get super detailed in that area, but I don't wanna take up too much time, I know it's 1:52 [laughs].
MB: What was the process of starting that youth organization like? How did you become interested in those questions? Was it coming from a very personal position or something you've learned about through PSU or Reed?
LP: I think through Reed, when I got connected to the multicultural resource center. I just found the importance of community and then realizing back in my days in Indiana, I really relied on other people in the community to help me apply to colleges, couch surf. So I've been really interested in neighborhood organizing/community organizing at a young age. And then coming to a Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative and learning the concept that Prosper Portland is funding these neighborhood hubs, and no one really knows about them. And they have this money to help neighborhoods, and help them feel like a neighborhood. As a Portland transplant, I've also been floating around Portland and thinking, "That would be nice if I knew about these neighborhood hubs." And there's neighborhood associations too, and all of this bureaucracy stuff that would've helped me when I was younger navigate dominant cultural systems. So yeah, it definitely came from a personal place. After graduating, being exposed to neighborhood politics in Portland—that helped me use the tools to formulate what I want to focus on for my MFA and even beyond.
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MB: So as a community organizer and youth organizer, what does a typical day in the life look like for you at Parkrose, or at PSU, or any of those spaces you're involved in?
LP: Yeah. I work part-time at Historic Parkrose right now, and basically on Mondays I do office hours at Parkrose High School, serving what they want, and if we do a workshop that week, then that week becomes a workshop week. Another part of my time is being a social engagement mural artist for APANO (Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon). So, some of my days are going to APANO down the street, serving their neighborhood/O82—which is a subsidized housing unit. So I'll go there, talk to their residents about art. And then sometimes I'll drive to KSMoCA, which is the King School Museum of Contemporary Arts in Northeast, and hang out with my mentee, Lo, who is in fourth grade and play basketball with him. We're doing a social engagement art project around basketball games and we spell the word 'neighbor.' And after you spell each letter—'N' is: "What is your name?" And Lo chose for 'B'---you shoot a 'B,' you have to ask your partner: "What do you believe in?" So a day-to-day is just going to these sites in East Portland. My school is remote, and my job is technically remote, so I get to choose where I want to be in Portland for the day. And today I spent it at KSMoCA, and yesterday I was at APANO. So, it's really just moving about into these neighborhoods, mini neighborhoods, and working with folks on art, and just hanging out and being in community. Then later tonight I will be going to my herbalism cohort, and we'll be working with I think milky oats. And I'll be with other folks talking about more art, and just East Portland.
MB: That's amazing that you're able to be so mobile and varied in all of these things that you're able to do. I think those are the questions from my section, so I'll pass it back to Zoë now, to talk a little about community in Portland.
ZM: We definitely have already touched on this, but I wonder if you can speak a little bit more to the connection you feel to the Vietnamese community here in Portland.
LP: I think that most of my Vietnamese connections was through the Vietnamese Student Association at Reed College. And through that, I met a lot of folks that were international students, and then a lot of folks from Orange County, and that's where I got a lot of my connections in Portland. After I graduated, a lot of folks went back to Vietnam, or they went back to Orange County, or another city. So then I was kind of left here, and then I started working and organizing more with APANO, and there's actually not that many Vietnamese staff members at APANO, most of them are all East Asians. And sometimes I'll try to find Vietnamese folks there, but most of them are first gen immigrants, so they're older than me and they mostly speak Vietnamese and I can't do that, so it's been hard to find people my age. I'm twenty-four, so folks that are child[ren] of refugees, or a little bit older. So yeah, that's been kind of wishy-washy at APANO. But I've met some cool Asians there! Really nice and amazing, I have learned so much about the word 'Asian.' So then when I tried to find a Vietnamese tutor after the SEASSI program at Wisconsin last summer, I started connecting to the Vietnamese program at PSU. And I don't know, after hearing about the whole assault case at the VSA at PSU—I don't know if you all heard about that, but it's been all over social media this week—I don't know, it's been hard getting in touch with the VSA at PSU because they're also younger than me. But then also there is some weird drama that's going on. I tried to connect with professors there too, and she was like OK. I asked if I could audit her class, and stuff like that, she wasn't sure—I 'd have to be able to put in the work to catch up with the class—it didn't sound like a forgiving space to be in. So then she connected me to a tutor, and I tried to contact this guy on and off, but he was pretty sus. He was an older guy. He tried to connect me to things, he said he was one of the co-founders of APANO—which I found out wasn't true. I just didn't know him that well. He tried to connect me to a temple in Clackamas or something, and they wouldn't allow people there anymore because of COVID or something along the lines of that. And most of the people in these spaces are immigrants, or they speak Vietnamese really well. So it's been really hard, I think overall, for me to connect. I met a group of folks in Portland and we have a group chat. One person is from IRCO (Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization), one person went to PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art)—he's actually from Vietnam, and his family is also in Ireland, which is cool. I sometimes get pho with him. And Thuy Ann is someone else who is my age, who has some interest in connecting with me over this. So I've always found these people in multicultural spaces rather than Vietnamese spaces in Portland.
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ZM: Are there events that bring people together in the community? Or places in particular for gathering?
LP: I know APANO does Vietnamese-specific events. But those are for the elders, and people who speak Vietnamese. I mean there's probably another Vietnamese event that goes on that I don't know about, or some association, but I've never heard anyone talk about them. I know about this archive thing, and I've looked through it before, but I've never met anyone who's worked with the archive, or folks sharing about the archive. Even at APANO, I've never heard anyone mention this, I just know it because my friend works at Lewis & Clark. So, that's about it.
ZM: Do you participate in any religious or community organizations?
LP: Yeah, I did mention I participate in a couple community organizations. And on top of that, I also participate in the Contingent—they help students of color find mentors around Portland. And that's how I got my mentor, Karena Salmond, who's the youth director at Caldera Arts. And she's also Korean American, and that's been really cool. But yeah, that's about it. No religious organization.
ZM: That's great. Thank you for sharing. So next, when have you felt most at home in Portland? And what do you like about the city and the community?
LP: I've lived and worked in LA, SF, and New York. And also my family is from Texas, and I feel like those are also large populations of Vietnamese people. In general, I feel like it's been easier to connect with Vietnamese people in those areas, than it is in Portland for some reason, even though I live behind Hong Phat, it's not as accessible for people like my generation, and my heritage speaking skills to be connected that easily. But I feel like that's not one of reasons why I'm in Portland, I feel like I'm most at home in Portland when I'm just eating, being with the parks here, and the organizing community here. I feel like since we're so small compared to other cities—the organizing community here—we're pretty tight and people show up for each other. And the food here is so good! The Vietnamese food does not compare to other places. And I can go to Hong Phat and study Vietnamese by just shopping for vegetables, and I'm pretty happy about that, versus Indiana. But yeah, just to mention the relationships I have here are very deep, just because of how small the BIPOC community is in Portland. And I haven't experienced that in any other city, even though other cities and more events, and more people of color. Here it just feels like I'm very embedded in my relationships and I'm willing to invest more time into them, even though the environment is not as ideal as other cities.
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ZM: Would you to share any experiences of racism or discrimination that you have faced in Portland?
LP: I feel like especially since I am just Asian, especially in Portland, I don't have as much experiences of overt racism compared to my brown and Black counterparts. And, I think I mostly experience erasure of being Southeast Asian when I am in Asian spaces in Portland. And I feel like that's also a disconnect. I've been very privileged to be working in predominantly non-white non-cis-male spaces in Portland, because I've purposely made my life easier that way. And thank you, for myself for having the degree and resources to be able to find those opportunities. Obviously I face a lot of shit in institutions like PSU, and Reed was like… yeah. But overt cases like that, I think having more Southeast representation within Asian spaces in Portland I think is very much needed. Yeah, there's not many hardcore ones. The only one I can think of was when I was in the international student office, and there was a white tour guide going around showing these people like, "Oh this is the international student office." But it also shared an office with other departments. And then they pointed at me and were like, "Look, it's an international student." And I looked at them and was like, "No, I'm not. I'm from Indiana!" in my voice. And their faces were just like… And that was probably the most overt case. The other ones I feel like… there's definitely more classism in the spaces that I'm in. And obviously there's microaggressions, but yeah, I think that memory was the only one that was a very overt case.
ZM: So, I think you've spoken to this a little bit already, especially in regards to language. But what differences do you see between older and younger generations of Vietnamese Americans?
LP: I work at Parkrose High School, and I feel like they have a large portion of Vietnamese students compared to other high schools I think. And I have noticed with the younger folks—younger than me, like teenagers—that when I have Vietnamese people in my group I have… for example eight one time for a volunteer event. And two of them were actually from Vietnam and they stuck to themselves and the rest were Vietnamese Americans and they separated. And I was like, "Oh. Interesting." The others ones, I felt like they really held a lot of value with the language and their culture and that makes total sense. I feel like American imperialism is very real, and especially for Vietnamese Americans, they can sometimes forget that. I feel like it's very easy to just break off for younger generations based off if you're from the US or not. I feel like with my generation in general, they're pretty forgiving, I've learned, from people my age. They understand the struggles and have seen children of refugees struggle with getting our culture back and they have been able to process it through college classes or community organizing. And then I feel like the older generation, I felt very welcomed by my elders here, the Vietnamese elders I've met so far. I've tried to speak Vietnamese with them and they're like, "No, just stop." And they'll try to teach me. I went to Kaiser one time, and my nurse was a Vietnamese man, and I was like, "Oh shit! I've never had a Vietnamese nurse." It was really cool. And then he spent my whole appointment, for forty minutes, telling me how important it was to learn my language. And he also practiced how to say “Happy New Year's” in Vietnamese with me in the doctor's office. It was really endearing, I was like, "I can't do it!" And I just kept trying to force myself to do it, and he was like, "That's not how you do it!" And he really, really wanted me to get it right because he was like, "Our culture is in our language." And I'm like, "Of course, of course. I'm not there yet. I'm like tone-deaf or something." But the fact that he took the time to help a stranger during an office appointment and was very forgiving with me and was invested in my wellbeing—it was just really cool. And I think the elders here are really cool, and very welcoming, for the ones I met.
ZM: Thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about today that you would like to discuss?
LP: No, nothing else. I just have questions. That's basically it. Thanks for reaching out to me.
ZM: Yeah, thank you so much, I'll just close us out really quick: Again, this has been Zoë Maughan and Mei Bailey speaking with Lillyanne Pham via Zoom, on May 25, 2022.
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