One of Winthrop’s greatest exports is its artists, especially its female artists. In honor of Women’s History Month, I sat down with Jammie Hyunh to discuss her current accomplishments and future as a poet.
Hyunh is a senior English and Spanish major and Political Science and Sociology minor. While she has attended Winthrop, she has composed around twenty different poems on a variety of topics, two of which have been published in the Anthology.
Hyunh is no stranger to performing her poetry in front of a crowd, joking that she “has a little practice in.” Recently, she performed at the Student Reading at the end of February. She has also performed at the creative writing showcase last year, SOURCE (Winthrop’s Showcase of Undergraduate Research and creative endeavors), food conference (a showcase that had pieces based around food), multiple open mic nights, and a local event for W.A.M.A. (Collective Artists’ Organization in Rock Hill).
As for the topics Hyunh writes about, she said, “A lot of my topics have to do with dealing with the trauma left by my father, trying to understand what I went through as a child…uplifting my mom, but also showing what she has gone through. Kind of just like my heritage as a Vietnamese person, my identities and how I struggled with those identities.”
Hyunh continued, “For a long time, I stopped writing poetry. I loved it as a child, but I just never thought I was good at it. Like in high school, teachers told me I was good and I didn’t really trust myself, but then I came here.” She went on to explain that she writes because “in Asian culture, you don’t really speak. It’s very closed off affectionately and emotionally. So, I haven’t processed a lot of the trauma I went through and poetry is a way for me to get it out and talk about it in a constructive way. And also I think it is important to have representation. I don’t see a lot of Asian American poems…especially from the south.”
Hyunh’s favorite pieces she has written are “I wish I was a boy” and “I don’t speak Vietnamese.” The first is a spoken word poem that focuses on how her father didn’t want daughters and hard her and her sisters’ lives were because of this. Hyunh said, “It was one of my first real emotional pieces. I think I cried my first time reading it through out loud…I think it was one of my emotionally dense poems.”
The second one is one of her newest. This one is more about her culture, and according to her, “It really got to the root of why I feel so disconnected with my family and other Vietnamese people. It goes through that and how I feel bad a lot of the times because I don’t speak Vietnamese.
After Winthrop, Hyunh plans to work a lot and is still deciding if she should do a MFA program for poetry or go to law school. She is also thinking of trying to do a college advising role in under serviced communities and other volunteer work. When it comes to her poetry, she wants to publish a book or at least get some of the poems published on their own. Spoken word is another thing she is really hoping to do more of in the future.
Hyunh’s last remarks were “Our English department is great and are the reason I’ve been able to further myself as a writer.”
Photo provided by Jammie Hyunh
