Recorded in fits and starts on Wednesday March 17th after 9pm CST. Joan, Việt name Thùy Nam, shares how working at her mom's nail salon was more formative to all the work she does now than any formal education could ever give her. We mourn and speak to the forces that may have been active in the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that claimed the lives of eight people, six of whom were women of Northeast Asian descent along with a White man and woman, with one survivor.

Check out The SEAD Project, a Southeast Asian Diaspora focused org that Joan leads Vietnamese language learning programming at, and where Tri currently serves as a digital organizer. Find us at www.theSEADproject.org.

Learn about Taproots Collective, the self-defense training community group that Joan and two fellow Viet co-founders are piloting as a private Facebook group with hopes of healthy and meaningful growth. From their About Us:

"Xin chào các bạn! Taproots formed out of a collaboration between the Viet Healing Network and Viet Solidarity Action Network With sensitivity to personal lived experiences and the inherited traumas from the colonial history of Vietnam, we provide space for Vietnamese in the movements to build strength through self-defense and self care practices. 

By offering collective training and peer support we empower each other to form resilient communities that can adapt, heal, and address systemic issues that lead to interpersonal violence."

Email glammump@gmail.com if you'd like to get in touch with Joan about Taproots Collective or any of the other cool and go-getter things she's building today, owing so much to the nail salon that her má built.

In/outro music is "Stereotype" by Mayda.