March 26, 2025 – Shout-Outs

Dear Jade!

Congratulations on the publication of your book! I’ve just started to read Hair: A Lai Mȳ Memoir, and I am already moved by your writing as much as I knew I would be.

I want all of the LG gossips who love good writing to get themselves a copy of your book not just because you’re my badass friend and colleague, but because your work is so worth reading. From the book jacket:

Jade Hidle grew up tweezing her mother's hairs. As the distance between them grew, she began pulling her own.

Born in the shadow of mixed-race Vietnamese children deemed "bụi đời" ("dust of life"), she struggled to find belonging in her family's cultures. Her yearning for acceptance propelled her to search for her identity in ghosts, Hollywood stars, punk music, teachers and students, tattoo artists, and a string of therapists. Through these fluctuating relationships that dented and defined her mixed Vietnamese American identity, Jade wrestled with her cultural inheritance.

After two decades of compulsive hairpulling and a turbulent relationship with her Vietnamese mother, it was not until she became a mother herself that healing began.

A mix of poems, essays, and letters, this memoir testifies to trauma recovery as reparenting our younger selves. It details how various mental illnesses are compounded by histories of racism, from the Vietnam War to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, this book unveils the shame, guilt, and tragic archetypes shrouding mental health for Vietnamese Americans. With honesty and humor, Hair: A Lai Mỹ Memoir is a story of how breaking cycles is an ongoing process of becoming a daughter and mother. It is a story that tells us that healing is possible.

Jade - I am proud to know you and learn from you as a fellow teacher, writer, mother, and person living and struggling in this dumpster fire world. Thank you for showing me that I could be myself in the classroom and for having my back in plenty of meetings (and for inspiring me to dance in the middle of one). Thank you for writing your story, and for being an inspiration for me to continue to write mine. 

-Violeta

You can buy Jade’s book on paperback or as an ebook from her publisher, Bookshop, and other places where badass books are sold! 

Per Jade’s request, here is Olivia Munn, whose likeness plays a humorous role in Jade’s moving memoir.