- What I told her--I was like,
"Hey, you know, I'm supporting Black Lives Matter."
I'm paraphrasing a lot.
But immediately my mom goes straight to, like...
[shouting gibberish]
- I see this a lot with the Vietnamese community,
especially older generations--
is that with the Black Lives Matter movement,
it's highly traumatic and triggering.
The moment she heard the words "Black Lives Matter,"
that's probably where her mind went,
'cause that's the extreme that she's hearing from the news,
and that's what she's scared of.
- I'm doing something good.
I'm doing something to help other people.
- Yeah.
- Why can't you see that?
- Okay, you got your plate. I got my plate.
Let's roll some spring rolls.
- Masterpiece. - Oh.
That looks so good.
- No, it's a masterpiece of sloppy.
- My name is Christine.
I was born and raised on the Westbank of New Orleans.
I'm Vietnamese American. I'm a child of refugees.
"Interior, various homes in New Orleans, night."
The musical that I'm writing, "Romeo and Katrina,"
is centered on an Asian and Black love story.
It's an all-Asian and Black cast.
"Romeo and Katrina,"
it is centered on a love story that I have experienced.
Remember when I was in high school
and I went to the dance with that Black guy
and you were like, "Ugh"?
Remember?
Yeah, but if we got married,
you said my life would be more difficult, right?
- True. - Yeah. True?
Yeah.
It's harder for--
'Cause of the what?
Complexion.
It's harder if you're Black, huh?
I pushed back on her,
and I remember saying that, you know, love wins,
and if we had mixed-race kids,
they would be beautiful because they would be my kids.
There she goes.
I didn't marry someone Black.
Instead, I actually married someone white,
who's a beautiful human being, and I love my husband,
and I love our daughter,
but I realized
that maybe my life is safer
because I married someone white.
And that is so fundamentally wrong.
Disrupting racism one play at a time--
that's my way to hopefully share my vision of the future,
my vision of what the world can be,
and I wanted to share those feelings with my mom.
"Why are you running to problems?" she said.
You know, just like, "Keep your head down.
That's not your problem."
I don't want to ask for problems.
I don't want to break the peace in my family.
I don't want to...
lose what we worked so hard for.
But I do want to try to make the world better
[line trilling]
- Hello.
- Hi, Ma. How are you? - Yeah.
- I just want to share with you, you know.
My first...
my first musical is on Saturday.
I want her to watch the show.
I want her to enjoy it
and show she approves of my choices and my friends.
At the end of the show,
I might ask you a question and pull you up on the camera
and ask you what you think about the show.
- Okay. - Is that good?
- Okay.
- So let's make a show.