Lac Su at UCI: I Love Yous are for White People

One of the VAOHP’s co-sponsored events happened on February 23, 2012–the speaking engagement of Lac Su at UCI, author of the memoir I Love Yous are for White People (2009). Professor Linda Vo brought Lac Su to speak in her Introduction to Asian American Studies class. The lecture hall was filled with not only Professor Vo’s students, but students from Professor Tu-Uyen Nguyen’s Cal State Fullerton class and several representatives of local nonprofit organizations such as Project MotiVATe, a peer mentoring program for at-risk Vietnamese American teens.

Lac Su began his UCI day meeting up with VAOHP Project Coordinator, Thuy Vo Dang, who took him for a tour of the Department of Asian American Studies and then Langson Library. Lac looked about the campus with some nostalgia, but was mostly surprised at how different it felt to be back again. Having graduated from UCI in 1996, Lac’s memory of the campus is larger-than-life. But on this visit, the place doesn’t seem as intimidating or as big.

His tour of the Southeast Asian Archive and Special Collections at UCI was a special arrangement facilitated by Research Librarian, Christina Woo and Head of Special Collections, Michelle Light. After this tour, Lac spoke to a crowded lecture hall about his experience writing the memoir about his childhood in a refugee family.

After the talk, the UCI Bookstore assisted with the book signing that generated a winding line rarely seen at book signing events on campus.

Lac Su’s story seems to resonate with students who hear versions of themselves in the pages of his book. This story is his own, but how many other gripping untold stories exist in the Vietnamese American community? The response to Lac Su’s talk and book signing may be one indication of this generation’s hunger for stories of survival, perseverance, and the search for a place to call home.