What Etta means to me...

When I first immigrated to America from Vietnam, I lived for many years inside a tiny apartment in Hartford, Connecticut. There were seven of us cramped inside a one bed-room tenement. Literally fresh off the boat--or in our case, the plane--we had nothing: no radio, no TV, no furniture, nothing but a sack of clothes donated to us from the Salvation Army, a few dozen loaves of Wonder Bread and 2 or 3 jars of mayo. What we did have however, and what turned out to be the most substantial inheritance, was song.

Inside that spare living room, we used to gather around my grandmother after dinner to listen to her sing. It was as if pain could not exit the body in any other way. The songs were always old Vietnamese folk lullabies and ballads. What I found most striking was the immense sadness emanating from the way they sounded, regardless of the lyrics. In fact, sometimes, the songs would begin for 2 or 3 minutes with just an elongated crooning, which slowly crecendoed into a wail, a cry. Even before any words were sung, before any sense could be made out of it, the pain and loss embedded in the song has already seeped into our bones.  Little did I know, I have been listening to these songs even before I received consciousness, inside my mother's womb. So when I heard it sung in that little apartment, it seemed so natural, to sway like that, the New England blizzard crackling on the window, the tea cups filed and re-filled as we all started to hum along.

The apartment we lived in was in a black and hispanic neighborhood. There was one other Asian family (Chinese) who we would rarely see leave their house. As the years wore on, the America I knew and started to call home, was a Black America. In fact, with no TV and a family entirely illiterate, I didn't really think there was an America outside the projects. The first English I spoke was the black vernacular, ebonics. It seemed natural to me: the cadence, the rich and intricate inflections, the diction, all of it so similar to my native tongue. I used to sleep over my friend's house and his family would take me to Baptist mass the next day. wearing his borrowed church clothes. The Baptist church--this was where I had first contact with Etta James. I remember it very clearly: half-way through the sermon, there was what's called a "praise break", where anyone from the audience would come up and simply dance. Now I don't mean just shimmy and slide, I'm talking dance--with the whole body, every cell vibrating--it looked, well, crazy and yet electrifying, it made you want to believe in something, in anything. With the encouragement of my friend's father, I joined in on a few and it was was some of the fondest memories of my childhood. Then, the organs calmed and the drums and cymbals quieted. One of the youth pastors put on a record, and there she was: Ms. Etta James coming through the church speakers. Her voice something like velvet cigarettes, if there ever was such a thing.

The song was "I'd Rather go Blind" but not that that mattered. It was the sound of it that caught me off guard, terrified me in a sharper, deeper place. The runs, the wailing, the almost unintelligible cry for "Baaaaby, baaaaaby, baaarrrghhhbaay" suddenly started to lift into what I did know: the Vietnamese folk song, that pain articulated through sound, that low groan humming into a shout. This was a universal music, this was the music of the subdued, the oppressed. It's no wonder almost all Vietnamese folk songs are sung like this: Vietnam is country tarnished with war even beyond its infamous American conflict. Ever since 200 B.C. the country lived on a history of loss and violence, until loss and violence became part of its culture, its art. And for some reason, Etta James echoed this culture, she made sense to me. But she was only the beginning.

I remember coming over my friend's house for Thanksgiving. His mother invited me over since she knew our family did not know what the holiday was about, not to mention celebrated it. After we ate a plentiful meal of candied yams, turkey, mashed potatoes, collard greens, and chitlins, his father put on a tape of Luther Vandross. I knew I was swaying because his mother laughed and asked me "What [I] knew about Mr. Vandross!" I knew nothing, and yet--I knew everything all at once. Again, that warm wailing, that cry soon replaced with Mavin Gaye's voice, Chaka Kahn's, Same Cooke's, and then, Whitney Houston's, my all time favorite even to this day. Nothing blessed my little immigrant ears like that menagerie of soul and duende.

When I heard that Etta James passed away and my facebook feed showed song after song, I sat and listened to one after another. I swayed and cried, not necessarily for her passing, I didn't know her personally. I wept for being blessed with knowing her gift of music and passion, which helped me find pride in who I was and who I have become: a poet who, like the great soul singers who defined my America, only seeks to hammer this pain into joy, into song.

Thank you Etta James.