WASHINGTON, DC, June 24, 2025—The American Immigration Council honored Luu Ly, an 11-year-old attending the Chapin College in New York Metropolis, with its twenty eighth annual Rejoice America Artistic Writing Contest award, which honors the immigrant expertise.
Luu’s poem, “American Poem,” narrates her grandparents’ escape from Vietnam throughout the battle, describing how they settled down as refugees in a small city in Louisiana. Whereas they initially encountered hostility and suspicion, her grandmother went to change into one of many first Vietnamese American lecturers in the neighborhood, and helped construct up a better sense of belonging amongst their neighbors by sharing her household spring roll recipe. Luu nonetheless makes her grandmother’s spring rolls at the moment, remembering her grandmother’s motto: “roll ahead, at all times ahead.” Learn the poem right here.
Luu continues to uphold her grandmother’s love for sharing and bonding round meals, describing herself as a “proud New Yorker with a foodie’s coronary heart,” at all times desirous to discover new cuisines and share culinary adventures with household and associates.
The Rejoice America Artistic Writing Contest challenges fifth graders throughout the nation to mirror on and write about immigration and what it means to be a welcoming nation. At a time when rising numbers of Individuals are expressing disapproval over insurance policies that emphasize mass deportation and detention of immigrants, the American Immigration Council is actively advancing academic packages that promote a extra inclusive and welcoming imaginative and prescient for the USA.
Luu obtained her award on the 2025 Immigration Impression Reception, hosted by the American Immigration Council on June 20, in Aurora, Colorado.
The Rejoice America Artistic Writing Contest is made attainable because of the beneficiant help of the MurthyNAYAK Basis.
Luu, her household, and representatives from the Council can be found to talk about the competition.
