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ChendaWrites: My Name (Original Vignette)

“A las Mujeres (To the Women)”

-Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)

My Name: Chenda

In Khmer, Chenda means wisdom. It means knowledge. It means intelligence.  

In Cambodia, to be Chenda is to be a CHENDA. Which is kinda like being a Mary. Or a Patricia. Or a Jennifer. Or a Linda. Or an Elizabeth, if you’re fancy. 

(My cousins understand because they are also “Chendas,” although, technically, they are really Chanda, Cheanda, and Chinda.)

In Cambodia, Chenda is the most popular girl in school. She is the girl every boy sings about…the girl every boy wants to talk to, or take out, or dance with at the festival. 

She has black hair and dark eyes like me, but she wears a sarong by the Mekong and turns her face bashfully away as the crowd strolls by. In Cambodia, Chenda is a rose by any other name but still smelling as sweet as jasmine flowers.

In English, Chenda is just a word – just letters and vowels, syllables and sound parts. 

In English, Chenda is a name that my childhood classmates made fun of and that most Americans can’t pronounce or understand the beauty of, although the polite ones twist their tongues into knots trying.

Sometimes laughing at the joke of it.

Or, if they’re a little self-conscious like me, turning bright red and stammering through. 

In America, Chenda is rarely Chenda…because she is mostly Chandra or Kendra or Chendy (if you are a friend). Sometimes Chen for short (to make it easier for all involved).

But, in my family, Chenda is really Mome – a nickname my parents gave to me when I was born.

In Khmer, Mome means “precious, baby girl” because I was their first baby girl and therefore the most precious in everyone’s eyes. 

(Although afterwards, they had three more baby girls and everything changed for me then.) 

But, I didn’t mind.

I never minded not being the littlest or most precious in my parents’ eyes because not being “Mome” anymore meant that I had SISTERS now. And Sister means Family. It means Friend. It means never having to be Alone. 

So, when it’s just me and my Sistas, as we like to say, and they tease me and call me by my real name. Not Chenda or CHENDA…but, MOME (or Momy, if you’re Dana the Baby and raised by me), it doesn’t feel like a joke at all. 

In fact, being Mome is my secret. It is my superpower. 

And, luckily for me, being Mome finally feels like coming home.

My Name: Chenda ©2022 Chenda Duong

Note: I wrote this vignette as a teacher example for a culturally sustaining class assignment for my Reading 1 students. This vignette is inspired by the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, which was first published in 1984, the year I was born.