4th WORLD PRESS presents The Day I Woke Up Different
For two long years, my cousins, Thi and Phuong Nam, and I hid away in our own personal creative laboratories across three cities (Oakland, Portland, Seattle) between three state lines (California, Oregon, Washington), meeting periodically together primarily through virtual conferences, and on rare occasions when the stars aligned with the three of us, in-person.
We voltron’d our talents collaboratively and created an illustrated children’s book about our experiences growing up as a Vietnamese-American. I, as the writer, Thi, as the illustrator, and Phuong Nam, as the piano composer (to the song in the video below). But in order to publish the story, we needed to find a publisher. Would we have to sacrifice parts of our story that may make others uncomfortable? Would we have to sacrifice monetary reward? How long would it take to get our story published? Would publishers even entertain our story?
So instead of taking the chance of being denied a seat at the table, we decided to bring the table. Thi, Phuong Nam, and myself, created 4th WORLD PRESS, a family publishing company.
The Day I Woke Up Different is a story about living between cultures of the traditional Asian-American household and outside American society, identity, and self-acceptance through the eyes of a Vietnamese-American child.
Though the three of us worked tirelessly, it was also through the help of our beloved community that helped us bring this dream into reality. We’d like to thank our community form the bottom of our hearts. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that we could produce such a meaningful book with a message we are so proud to share with the world.