“Maybe it’s okay to not be anything. To not have to label yourself as anything. You can be both Vietnamese and American.” It hadn’t occurred to me that I could be both before. That I shouldn’t force myself to fit into one definition of what it means to be Vietnamese, or what being an American looks like. It feels validating to know I shouldn’t—can’t—be put in a box, that it’s okay to float in this in-betweenness … to be everything at once. I don’t have to compromise my identity. I can be so many different things.
