Hong-My Basrai

Hong-My Basrai resides in Los Angeles County and is the author of Behind the Red Curtain: a Memoir (Los Nietos Press, 2020). She has been active with PIVOT since its formation in 2017. During the crucial 2020 Presidential Election, she served as translation Lead and liaison for several activist groups in need of language support, including Viet Fact Check. 

Currently, Hong-My also sits on the Board of Directors of Inlandia Institute, a literary center and a nonprofit organization for the Arts, serving the greater Inland Empire since 2007. She is also an active member of the Writers' Club of Whittier and was formerly its president.

Born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam, Hong-My Basrai (née Lê Thị) is fluent in Vietnamese and French. Transplanted at age twenty-two to Southern California, she picked up enough English to survive her college years. She has continuously improvised upon the borrowed language to make it her very own. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering. 

Her multifaceted identity is her strongest strength. Born in privilege, she grew up to experience poverty and persecution in fallen Saigon. Her first few years as an immigrant in America sharpened her survival skills, and at the same time deepened her awareness of inequalities, and the misfortune of the have-nots, mired in the vicious cycle of poverty in precarious living conditions, and lack of language and politicial power. Hong-My then realized that her love of languages could be used, not only to express herself in the new society through literary endeavors, but also to help others through activism, to demand greater justice and representation for people of color, particularly VietAm from all backgrounds and educational levels.