“Goodbye Vietnam. My mom cry, but I don’t. My heart is crying. How long till I come back to my country? I try to zoom the image of Vietnam as many as I could. I arrive to a new country, left behind all my childhood in this tropical country and start a new chapter of my life.  Goodbye my tears, my family, and good bye Vietnam.”

“When I first came to the U.S., my speaking was unexplainable to people around me. They don’t even know what I talk. But changing is never ending, and I met The AjA Project. They teach me how to use photography to express myself. I was afraid to talk but I was not scared to take picture. (In AjA) we involve, we communicate, we create new ideas through our pictures.”

Cuc has been a student of The AjA Project for five years and currently serves as an alumnus in AjA's Youth Advisory Council. Cuc is a published photographer and poet, and has been the recipient of numerous academic awards and scholarships, and several paid internships at AjA. She is currently enrolled at UC Berkley in San Francisco, studying Math and Molecular Cell Biology.