What's with the old family photos?
Bà Nội and I
Howdy! This is Kevin. The marketing & communications guy for Mu. I wanted to take a second to talk about the design concept I came up with for this season. If anyone has been paying any particular attention to the photos used on our brochure, website, social media, and emails, you’ll notice that they aren’t random images I plucked off Google. They’re actually old photos of my family.
This season we’re paying homage to Asian American activist Grace Lee Boggs by choosing “revolutions” as our theme and borrowing her words for the season title: “Towards Something Grander.” In the midst of a societal reconfiguration this summer, I was trying to brainstorm images that express revolution without using the media’s images of tear gas, sit-ins on capitol lawns, and meetings with the mayors. But nothing really seemed tangible enough (maybe because nothing really feels tangible during a pandemic shutdown…). After a Facetime with my mom, I realized—in the most cliche way possible—that the answer was right in front of me the whole time! I started seeing flashes of memory whizz around in my mind. Grainy photos I once saw of my mom, my dad, their siblings and parents. Photos taken before I was born and stashed away in some shoebox. Photos with skinnier legs and permed hair. Photos taken after 1975.
Bà Ngoại, my aunts, and my uncle
It became so clear that as a son of immigrants, the most tangible revolutionary act is fleeing a country you don’t recognize. Memorizing addresses and writing letters to state senators and churches. Traveling by boat and plane to a foreign land of opportunity and exclusion. Encountering pirates. Enduring refugee camps.
It’s surviving. And then thriving.
Dates at Taco Bell before moving into a two-story house are revolutionary. Hands used to butcher chickens that now manicure nails are revolutionary. As are feet that stood in front of a restaurant sink that now deliver mail. Extraordinary, tumultuous, and almost fantastical revolutionary acts so that their potential son could one day be the Marketing & Communications Director of one of the largest Asian American theater companies in the country that brought them together.
Ông Nội, my uncle, and my dad
Bà Ngoại and my aunts.
My parents have just entered their 50s and have endured enough revolution to span multiple lifetimes. Though they may not know it, and though I may not have the language to express it, that pain and struggle lives through me. But so does their joy. The joy captured in these photos. So I offer my family photos to you. As a new American, 5th generation, an adoptee, mixed, some of the above, or none of the above, I hope you are able to reflect on the extraordinary stories of your own family. And may this next revolution around the sun bring joy to you and yours.
With peace,
Kevin Duong