Growing up in her Vietnamese community in Westminster, Emily Diem Tran remembers her mom enlisting her and her siblings in an assembly line to help make sticky rice cakes during the Lunar New Year celebration. Later, in a committed exploration and embrace of her culture, she’d learn a bit of history related to Bánh Chưng and Bánh Tét, the names of those sticky rice cakes.
“I never knew why there were two different shapes,” she says of the cakes that come in either a large cylinder shape or a large square shape. “From what I’ve learned, it stems from war and convenience from a king who wanted to make a longer, skinnier one for carrying.”
Tran is a community organizer with Viet Vote San Diego, a group of Vietnamese activists and organizers working to share resources to educate and engage their community in voting and civic engagement. As part of their effort to build a stronger community voice, leadership, and relationships, they are presenting “Sharing Our Roots: Healing through Asian-American Storytelling” from 6 to 9 p.m. Monday at the Mingei International Museum, in partnership with Karen Organization of San Diego (focused on ethnic minority groups from Myanmar, also known as Burma, who are living in San Diego), Asian Solidarity Collective, and Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans. The event will include videos of people from different Asian ethnic groups sharing stories about their own identities, as well as cultural folklore, along with various foods, and a panel discussion. It was during the post-production process of editing the videos that she learned about some of the history behind Bánh Chưng and Bánh Tét. That process of being able to connect a childhood memory with the culture of food that her family brought with them as refugees after the Vietnam War, helps strengthen the sense of pride in who she is and where her family comes from.
Tran is also a nurse who does advocacy work in aging and disability groups and credits…
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