H'Rina
DeTroy
Writer + Instructor
Community Arts Activist

Welcome!
H'Rina
DeTroy
Writer + Instructor
Community Arts Activist

Welcome!
I'm grateful that you're here.
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In case you need an introduction, here's a little something I wrote that might summarize who I am and what I do:
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Writing is my coping device in grappling with an identity that feels like laundry list of exceptions: Asian American but not Chinese, Japanese, Korean or South Asian; technically of Vietnamese heritage but not ethnically; Spanish-speaking but not Hispanic; model minority with an Asian mother who never cared about report cards; lovechild of a Vietnam war bride but with a non-veteran father, etc. I'm a memoirist in the throes of articulating my mother's story -- the greatest enigma in my life. I write because I looked for mirrors in books, and instead found endless windows -- frames framing frames for looking out or in.
The brilliant Toni Morrison said, “if there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Here I am attempting to do just that.
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Truthfully, I could fanatically quote Ms. Morrison, my fellow Aquarian, all day, every day, but her words here resonate specially and specifically:
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"If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else."
This is the ethos behind my work as a writer, instructor, and community arts organizer. Check out my writing & creativity workshops below. As a Montagnard American writer and scholar, I'm thrilled for the upcoming workshop, Apocalypse Never: Writing Our Origin Stories and Imaginative Futures, created for the Montagnard American diaspora -- the first of its kind!
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If you're interested in getting involved, you can always drop me a message in the contact form below.
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Gratitude,
H'Rina
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Classes + Workshops
Apocalypse Never: Writing Our Origin Stories & Imaginative Futures as Montagnard Americans
A special writing workshop designed as a space for exploration of Montagnard American identities and to reclaim part of our history by engaging with it creatively through writing.
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Multi-Verses: Writing Our Immigrant Origin Stories
The immigrant story often expresses shifting identities that transcend nationality, revealing a multidimensional, multiversal origin story. In this writing workshop, we'll read writers who complicate the typical Ellis Island American immigrant story, and glean their techniques for blending the present with the historical, the personal and political, the weighty with the whimsical.
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