This film demonstrates the power of words through spoken word poetry.

It’s an intimate conversation between two people, you and me, that reveals how a word can translate into real world consequences. First with visual evidence, then data, and finally, a plea from a daughter to her mother.

The film is intentionally reductive: a few stark words on a black screen, choreographed with flashes of imagery, either actual crime scene footage or photography by Asian photographers. The VO was recorded on a cell phone, in the poet’s bedroom. The underproduced nature of the film is both a product of a nonexistent budget, and creative concept. It’s meant to be raw. Vulnerable.

Ultimately, it asks you to consider your words.

If we recognize the power of words to hurt, we can also recognize their ability to heal. It started with a word; it can end with a word. Call it Covid-19.

This work was inspired by the poet’s background as a daughter of Vietnamese refugees.

The English in this spoken word piece is not the English taught in schools. It is born from the experience of growing up with refugees and immigrants. In a community where everyone has a different first language, we learn to communicate through the only language we share: broken English. Short words. Fragmented. Action-oriented. Limited to immediate subjects, simply: you and me.

The idea of the power of a single word is one that children of refugees and immigrants are profoundly familiar with. We have always understood the importance of words. Because our non-English speaking parents have always needed our words. To help them order food, to translate bills, to decipher legal jargon. This film is a natural extension of that. At its heart, it’s the voice of a daughter, using her words to help her parents.