My poem

It seemed so unfamiliar to me

Getting to know all the colonialism concepts

And how Europeans people came to carry out their civilizing mission

I found it hard

To understand

To feel

To sympathize

With the people who lived in their own countries

But cannot keep their cultures, their ways of living to pass to their grandchildren

…

And I read the poems

“The Bush Kanaka Speaks”

“Kidnapped”

“A book and a pen”

I recalled stories that my Grandma once told me

About the time when she was my age now

And my country was invaded and became a French colony

Yes, I’m a girl who comes from a small country in the Indochina

That’s how those French colonists called our land

They called us yellow

They called us uncivilized 

They made my people work hard till they died

They were just like the ol les man

In Kumalau’s poem

Sitting on a soft chair and doing nothing

They taught French at school

They built houses with French architecture

They brought to my country their French food that they thought one of the best foods in the world

…

And I was woken up

I realized how different my life would be if those white people never came to my country

I would perhaps be wearing different clothes

Maybe our beautiful traditional costumes

I rarely wear them

Only because I think modern dresses are cool and more convenient

I never realized how beautiful my Grandma looked when she was my age and she had her charming traditional dresses on

I would perhaps go to different schools

Where they teach me the old writing script

A book and a pen

People gave me

I may get a piece of paper called a BA

And another piece of paper called an MA

But I would never get to know well

About my country’s literature hundred years ago

…

I realized

That I had missed a lot

That I should have known more about our own culture

That I should have learnt more about our history

That I should have been more proud of our country, our people

I realized

That I’d never want to be a person with no home

No root

No place to come back

I realized

That how much I love my home land

And how much I want to come back

To see all the endless green rice fields

To feel the spring air

To touch my soil

And to find my soul

At last…