Biography

           
I was born in Vietnam and raised in Marin County, California. For the past 10 years, after I left home for college, I've lived in Maine, Sri Lanka, Alaska, Michigan, Vietnam and Nebraska. My educational background has been in Women's Studies and Creative Writing, while my work experiences were focused on domestic violence and sexual assault. Retrospectively, it feels like every program, experience, and job I sought out was an attempt to fuse the two vitally important aspects of my life: the struggles of social justice and the art of creative writing. This UCSC Social Documentation program has been, in many ways, a discovery of homecoming. It has been a brief return to California, which is so much more lovely than I ever appreciated before, and a crystallization of my responsibilities as a socially active writer.

My thesis project centers around the subject of gender and sexuality within the modern day U.S. military. The traditional culture of the military is dependent upon its public image of masculinity, dominance, and power, all of which are complicated and potentially threatened by the inclusion of women into the military community. Therefore, the military's success in controlling, and thus marginalizing, women, both as servicemembers and family members, is essential to sustaining its culture of hegemonic masculinity. I will be examining these gendered themes as they are reflected in the military's current policies and actions regarding women's reproductive rights, the combat ban for female soldiers, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, civilian husbands married to female servicemembers, and the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy. To convey these stories, I am attempting to explore a new medium of creative nonfiction, which has been simultaneously challenging and exciting. The final project is anticipated to be a novella-length collection of narratives that will take the form of creative nonfiction essays, excerpts, and experimental short stories, based upon interviews, participant observation, and scholarly research.