Le 1

Evey Le
Miss Eaker
UWRT 1103-036
29 September 2014
Nurturing the Bonsai Tree
Around this time last year, the humid, barren state of North Carolina was the last place I
thought I would find myself in. From the culture to the little social cues everything was different.
To call Charlotte a city would be an overstatement of what I perceive to be either a growing city,
or a large town compared to the massive skyscrapers of New York City. It was almost luck that I
was accepted to UNC Charlotte due to the fact that I sent everything in after the deadline. Yet
here I am; a pre-nursing student bustling from building to building. I often have to remind myself
that college is a business trip with the goal to graduate with some sort of degree. At the end of
the day, I feel like Im stranded on an island with my only companion named One Line A Day.
The pastel blue book with golden edged pages and silk orange book mark is essentially a 5-year
record of single sentences that would sum up the day. I brought it specifically for college
because I thought it would be interesting to see how I progress and grow as both a person and a
writer in college. Reading and writing is a spiritual journey to find oneself and that is the only
thing that is keeping me sane in such a lonely place under constant construction.
I am a first generation student who had to self-teach myself many things because my
parents never got an education past high school. They were refugees from the Vietnam War and
came to America with no knowledge of the English language or American culture. It was
through watching films and daily interaction with the American people that they were able to

Le 2
read some of and speak the language. Because of their educational background, they wanted me
to succeed in my studies and even though they didnt get much of an education, they learned a
lot from reading various books and newspapers which enforced their belief that reading was the
foundation of learning; if you can read, you can teach yourself any new topic. Their English
wasnt perfect though and so to communicate with me with more ease, they taught me how to
speak Vietnamese. That, in fact, was the first language that I learned and it was enforced with the
arrival of my grandparents who came over from Vietnam. Communication was extremely
difficult because I was already exposed to English but eventually, I spoke Vietnamese more
fluently than ever. I never learned how to read it though and it was by listening to my
grandparents pray and following the words that I started to learn how to read Vietnamese on my
own. I remember the hard wood floor turning my bottom numb as I sat cross-legged behind my
grandparents as they prayed; their pitch rising and dropping like a Chinese opera. I did this often
and stayed as still as an energetic eight-year-old could. The flurry of words suddenly clicked and
became clear one day after constantly listening; following. It was through reading that I later on
started learning how to write and to this day, I am still learning through the use of texting.
Because of this, I understood the process of learning a language and unlocked a deeper
understanding of my roots.
Similarly, how I learned how to read Vietnamese was also how I learned to read English
outside of the dull classroom. As a child, my mom would read bed time stories to me every
night. They were the kinder version of the traditional fairytales with a happy ending, some sort of
moral to be learned, illustrations that matched the tale, and golden paged edges that simply made
the entire reading experience magical. I would curl up in a blanket hugging my favorite stuffed
animal and follow the words my mom read but after a while, I read them along with her. Looking

Le 3
back on it, my parents were pretty smart about how they wanted to mold me. Instead of forcing
books and writing tasks on me which would result in a dislike of such things, they surrounded
me in old books and limited the time that I had with the computer and television. There was
literally nothing else to do in the house. I often kept to myself so I read as a means to free my
mind and have a moment of fun and adventure from the stresses of school.
It was because of reading that I was able to figure out what I liked to write about as well.
My earliest writing started on whatever pieces of paper I could get my hands on. From napkins to
intricately embroidered table cloths, it took me a while to conform to writing on lined paper. The
stories reflected the books that I read like The Magic Tree House and Nancy Drew. Despite the
never ending flow of my creativity, I never finished any of the stories I wrote. The introductions
would extend for pages on end and the plots were far too intricate for my little self to keep track
of. It was also around this time that my mom got me a journal to keep my thoughts in. As
beautiful as the water colored blue-green cover was, I still to this day have not finished my first
journal. My writing very much reflected my thoughts; scattered. At the ripe age of eight
however, there was no teenage angst, broken hearts, or destroyed dreams, so there were no
entries written.
The angst inevitably appeared as the teenage years coupled with an identity crisis came
around. School had made me despise writing, and the journal that my mom got me a couple
years earlier was not even half way filled. No matter what the debate may be about whether high
school or college is part of the best years of your life, middle school will probably be the worst
years across the board. People are trying to figure out where they fit in, puberty happens, and
everyone is awkward no matter how pretty or awesome they may be. Despite what I consider to
be a black hole in my life, I had an English teacher who made everything seem better. Mr.

Le 4
Frascella wasnt too old, but all the hair on his head had already turned a transparent white. He
liked to talk a lot and always encouraged students in whatever writing they did. By this time, I
had already sunken deep into my little shell and sat in the back corner where the light bulb had
ominously flickered to its death several days after class started. Our assignments consisted of
boring vocabulary, painful writing processes, interesting short stories, and poems. I had always
thought my work was below par and did not like to share what I wrote yet this teacher often
praised my work. He would critique when it was needed, but it was with a lot of encouragement
as well. You should polish this story up and submit it into the scholastic competition! he told
me at the end of the year. Theres no reason why you couldnt win this thing. Of course, I did
not do it because I still was not confident in my ability, but it only went up from there. I started
writing stories based on the TV shows I watched; books I read. This was the start of my creative
writing. While I had fun with this, it helped me reflect on the situations that were presented to me
in a fictional setting and get other peoples input as well. My writing was also improved due to
the community that I immersed myself in and I had made some long distance friends along the
way as well.
Middle school ended with a bang and then entered the mediocre high school years. If
middle school was a black hole in life, high school was probably this never ending pit into the
depths of oblivion; you just kept falling. I simply got by on good enough grades to get into
college and writing was incredibly structured. I lost interest in writing and somehow convinced
myself that the dry books we read in class were my cup of tea. It wasnt until my senior year that
I had started to enjoy both read and writing at the same time again. It wasnt anything like my
middle school experience. Mrs. Mammen simply was so out-of-the-box and passionate about
what she did. On top of that, she was an absolutely adorable old woman who was no taller than

Le 5
me and had a bed time of 8 pm. Before that, we were writing to impress other people we didnt
know and to get a good score on tests that did not truly reflect who we were. The kids who were
good at lying and spewing complicated words out of their mouths were the ones who got the
good grades but could care less about the art that is writing.
My life was always filled with reading or writing, or both for a majority of my life and
the small period of time without it was very clustered, messy, and emotional. The way I view
reading and writing is like nurturing a bonsai tree. In Zen Buddhism, the way the individual
shaped a bonsai plant was a reflection of himself. I had neglected my tree and everything
became jumbled. Being able to write was definitely something that helped organize my thoughts
and that reflected in the work that I did. The act of reading or writing is a spiritual journey to find
oneself. To hate or not do either would mean losing a part of you. Some people may be okay
with that, and others may not. It is a simple little thing that makes life beautiful and creates the
connections that others never would have thought to be possible.