WEBVTT

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Thank you, Aria.

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That was so beautiful,
except you demoted me.

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I'm the editor in chief now.

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[LAUGHS] That was wonderful.

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Thank you so much to the
University of Arizona

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for bringing me and Andrew out.

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Thank you, Andrew, for
the beautiful reading.

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Excited to spend some time
in poetry with you tonight.

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And also thank you to
the students I spoke to

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earlier this morning.

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I see some of y'all.

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So thank you for your questions.

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So, "Dear Diaspora."

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What do I even say.

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This was my attempt to--

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ooh, no-- come to terms
with and interrogate

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my own familial history.

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My parents came here and the
rest of my family came here

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as refugees after
the war in Vietnam,

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between the mid-'70s to '90s.

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It wasn't something that
was really talked about,

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at least to me growing up.

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And it was a part of my identity
I just didn't spend time with,

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kind of pushed away.

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And then finally,
when I started my MFA,

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I realized that was where
my writing need to go,

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where all my exploration,
interrogation, need to go.

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And I spent two
years not doing that.

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But my last year, I was
like, all right, it's time.

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I need to write my thesis.

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And it's time to get into this.

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So I interviewed family members.

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And that was one
way into this book.

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The other way into
this book was just

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writing through a third person,
through a character named Suzi,

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with an I, who is kind of a
fictionalized version of myself.

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It just gave me more distance
to be able to write and ask

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some of these questions that
I think through first person.

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I just didn't have
enough distance to do.

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So you'll hear some Suzi poems.

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You'll hear some
other poems as well.

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And I'm hoping to end
with some new poems

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because you inspired me.

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So we'll see how that goes.

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