|Stumbling with words| Recommendation N.14
- Thao Pham
- Apr 5
- 4 min read
I disappeared from this corner of the internet again. Life became crowded in the usual ways: research, deadlines, reading, domestic routines, travels, and the endless effort of trying to build a life that feels both meaningful and livable. I used to think I should only return to writing when I had something polished to show for my absence. But perhaps the nicest thing about this series is that it allows me to return in fragments. So here is one small collection of what has stayed with me lately.
Things I read
My 2026 reading so far has been a little academic, a little historical, and quietly intimate in the way only certain books can be.
Derron Wallace's The Culture Trap stayed with me because it refuses lazy explanations. I loved its insistence that what people call "culture" is never fixed or biological, but shaped by migration, institutions, history, and power. It reminded me that the easiest explanation is often the least truthful one.
Robin Cohen's Global Diasporas and Edward T. Chang's Korean Americans: A Concise History also sat beside me this year. Both, in different ways, made me think about movement, belonging, and how identities are built across borders rather than inside neat containers. I think I am increasingly drawn to books that complicate identity instead of simplifying it. Then there was The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt by Michael G. Vann, which I found darkly funny, precise, and slightly horrifying in the best way. It reads almost like a caricature of colonial confidence, except it really happened. Books like this remind me how absurd power can look once history has had enough time to expose it. Reading these books together, I realized something about myself: I am no longer interested only in "important" books. I am interested in books that sharpen the way I see. The best reading seasons are not always the ones where I finish the most. Sometimes they are the ones that rearrange my thinking quietly.
Things I listened to
Today I listened to an older episode of Not Overthinking on the importance of history. Taimur Abdaal argues that many human problems are shaped by deep cultural and historical forces. I do not fully agree with every part of his claim, but it stayed with me. Without historical context, we risk losing the roots of meaning and misunderstanding not only events but the logic that produces them.
I also spent time listening to Ocean Vuong talk about writing. He speaks with such tenderness and precision that even when he discusses craft, it never feels merely technical. Writing, for him, becomes an ethical practice. It is a way of paying attention, of handling language with care, of entering a sentence without violence.
But this time, I noticed something different. There is also a quiet resistance in his approach. To write in a way that is not easily digestible, not optimized, not predictable. If we all begin writing in ways that are agreeable to AI, smooth, standardized, expected, then we risk losing the very conditions that made figures like William Shakespeare or Ocean Vuong possible in the first place.
Things I Watched
My watching lately has been scattered, which is perhaps the best description of my mind this year.
Sinners stayed with me for its blurring of good and bad. That ambiguity, rooted in histories like Irish famine migration and the American South, made me rethink morality. What do we call evil? Is the vampire truly evil, or simply an escape from something more brutal?
In One Battle After Another, the figure you are describing sits in the space of the anti hero, but not in the cynical sense. This is someone who may not be recognized as a hero by society, may not follow clean moral codes, and may even appear compromised. Yet in specific moments, through endurance or small acts of care, they embody something closer to a “true” heroism.
And then there is One Piece, which continues to give me something many serious works fail to. It offers an uncomplicated belief in loyalty, adventure, and sincerity. Monkey D. Luffy reminds me that kindness itself can be a form of strength.
Kokuho moved me differently. Discipline, beauty, and the cost of devoting one’s life to an art form stay with me. It also reminds me that public greatness and private failure can coexist. One can be a national treasure and still be a flawed human being.
Things That Stayed With Me
The most important thing I have learned since my last post is also the quietest: not every valuable season produces a visible trophy.
Lessons arrive without warning, but staying open is what lets them in. A wellness coach found through a recommendation. A new app called Finch. A small shift in how I'm moving through the days. None of it looks like much from the outside, but that openness itself has started to feel like a form of progress.
I've also been relearning something I keep forgetting. Consistency outlasts intensity. Showing up, even imperfectly, is what moves things. I'm learning to ice skate right now. Bend the knees. Stay parallel. Find the courage to push forward anyway. It is a small thing and also, somehow, not a small thing at all.
And I've been noticing the people around me. The ones waking up early, preparing quietly, asking questions in rooms where no one is watching. That kind of invisible work is usually what makes someone suddenly visible later. It is not luck. It is accumulated mornings.
Writing this feels both small and necessary. A reminder that I haven't disappeared from myself, only from posting.
And if you've also stepped away from something you love, maybe you don't need to return brilliantly. Maybe you just need to return honestly.
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