This Sunday is April 30, an infamous day in Vietnamese American history. It marks the day we fled our homes and the beginning of the Vietnamese Diaspora.

But if “Every exit is an entrance,” then it is also the beginning of our community, our birth date so to speak. My unique birth perfectly captures the transnational Vietnamese American identity: I was conceived in Sài Gòn and then born in Alabama in 1975.

I like to think Vietnamese America and I are growing up together. The burgeoning enclave and the emerging writer.

So on our 31st birthday, I’d like to make five wishes as we head into our 30s — a time where we are supposed to mature, find ourselves, and settle down.

Happy birthday, Vietnamese America! Here’s wishing you:

1. Political maturation
You know the stereotype of “new money” and the people who have it? They tend to act flashy or irresponsibly, eager to flaunt their new success and power.

Well, that’s my concern for the Vietnamese American political scene and our “new influence.” We have made huge strides to elect Vietnamese officials and to affect elections in heavily Vietnamese-populated districts.

With that influence, I hope elected officials use their positions for real change and not just their own political advancement. They will need to be proactive and politically savvy to manage the diverse needs of Vietnamese America, from wealthy real-estate developers to struggling immigrants.

I also hope that they sit at the table as equals and not as puppets to any lobbyist, party, corporation or high-powered incumbent.

As constituents, I hope we have realistic goals for our representatives and not ones that stand outside their political jurisdiction. City council members are supposed to fix potholes and assembly members are supposed to work on freeways. Foreign policy is for the feds.

I also know that voting is not enough. The real game is played before elections: making districts, raising money, choosing candidates. And outside of electoral politics, there is always the old-school model for change: protest marches, sit-ins, civil disobedience.

2. Artistic maturation
If you look at other ethnic communities, a lot of their early art is cheesy, reactionary and overly righteous. It usually tries to counter stereotypes and portrays the group as noble and heroic. Or it can go the “exploitation route” and make caricatures of people.

Since the advent of ethnic studies, art has also been obsessed with identity, acknowledging it, transgressing it, angsting over it.

It feels good to the artist, but it makes horrible art. Usually boring and insular.

So I’m going to go out on a limb here: No more war movies, refugee movies, boat-escape tales, homecoming documentaries and poorly written memoirs. No more “I wasn’t proud to be Vietnamese, but now I am,” books.

(And please don’t get me wrong, I’m as guilty as any other Vietnamese artist. I think I need a 12-step program. Call it Identity Anonymous.)

We’ve had 30 years of that, and I think we have so much more to offer. We’ve led real, difficult, complex lives in the past 31 years, and it’s time to make art about that. Period.

3. Acknowledgment of the LGBT community
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community. That’s right. There are Vietnamese Americans who fit into that marginalized group.

Notice how I wrote acknowledgment and not acceptance? One step at a time, I figure.

When I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area — the gay Mecca of America —  I knew many gay and lesbian Vietnamese Americans. In college, I interned with the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team and met Vietnamese Americans who were transgender, transsexual and homosexual who were suffering from AIDS-related illnesses.

And from those experiences, I have walked away with a profound sadness. Many of my friends were hiding their identity from their parents, and some had run away after coming out and being ostracized by their families.

There was a Vietnamese man in a support group, withering away and dying. Because of his gay identity, he died estranged from his loved ones. That is wrong, both morally and culturally. We already have too much of a history of family estrangement to let our own prejudices cause even more.

So yeah, acknowledgement, then one day tolerance, then finally, acceptance.

Yes, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Vietnamese Americans are Vietnamese Americans, too.

4. Elimination of bourgeois tendencies
OK, this is more of a pet peeve than anything. What, you ask, are bourgeois tendencies?

It’s when some Vietnamese American in your life — say your cousin or your aunt — bluntly asks your salary and then casually tells you that his or hers is double.

When your uncle just happens to show off his new Rolex or when your neighbor kisses his Mercedes on its hood emblem.

My friend Mariam calls it “keeping up with the Nguy?ns.”

It’s an ugly mix of materialism and hierarchy, and I can’t stand it and refuse to play it. (It existed long before we came here, but mixed with the available opportunities here, it grows like mold.)

Look, I like nice stuff as much as the next person, but I don’t try to jam it into people’s faces to demean them and make myself feel better. Plus, who’s going to be impressed that I have a first edition, Indian copy of “The God of Small Things”? Or original Robotech toys? Or Air Jordan XI’s?

See it’s an unwinnable arms race, marketing and capitalism and Confucian hierarchy at its worst. And frankly, I think possession contests just get in the way of the good stuff anyway: good conversation, good dining, and good travel. (If it came down to it, how could you even compare a luxury car or fancy career with my running the bulls in Pamplona or watching back-to-back sunsets atop Angkor Wat?)

So please, please help me eliminate bourgeois tendencies, or at least drastically reduce them. Be on the lookout for fake English accents, those who love to claim French ancestry, and words like upscale, high-class, premiere, or worst of all, cosmopolitan.  Anything with the word fine before it as well.  It’s all snobbery and social division and it sneaks into the language itself. 

How do you do it? Refuse to play or just get down on your hands and knees and pretend to worship them. That one always quiets them down.

5. A strategy for Vi?t Nam relations
This one is tricky, I know that for sure. It is an emotional topic, loaded in history, anger, resentment, and most of all, loss.

Trust me, for all my loose opinions and “radical” ideas, I would never do anything to dishonor our parents and what they have suffered through.

And for the sake of posterity (and personal safety), let me put this in print: I am not a Communist or a sympathizer.

I am however, a free thinker and I believe that the many exiled Vietnamese communities of the world, especially the Vietnamese American ones, should strive for a strategy to engage with Vi?t Nam.

I don’t have specific suggestions; I just know that it is important. I guess it’s a lot like the family estrangement issue I brought up earlier, and I don’t want to be separated from Vi?t Nam anymore.

And how we do it is going to take place on many levels: individually and as families, economically and politically.

I’m no foreign policy expert. But I do know that I went to Vi?t Nam three years ago and that it was important for me to know where my family and culture came from. So a strategy that is realistic, comprehensive, could help make Vi?t Nam a better place for its residents and its overseas community.

The United States is our nation, but Vi?t Nam is our motherland and that is too precious a resource to have to lose.