All over the country, there are efforts to ban books featuring the stories of marginalized and historically underrepresented minorities such as LGBTQ+ and Black, Asian, Hispanic and Latinx, and Indigenous people and youth.

I wanted to do something special for LGBTQ+ pride month so here's a short reading from my memoir "Moon in Full: A Modern-Day Coming-of-Age Story" and brief soapbox of why we celebrate pride.

I hope this is helpful and sorry that it’s coming to you late in the day. It may be #GivingTuesday, but I know many of you care about our communities well beyond just one day of the year.

Now, over two decades since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, my biological mother and yeay hold in their hands a new memoir written by their son and grandson.

I have always thought, in all my lived experiences and interactions with others, that the cruelest thing one can do is to deny someone closure.

It really boils down to two issues, which helped to bolster and grow Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and the evangelical movement: LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive rights.

I had the honor of giving a short speech at the Maine Democratic convention a few weeks ago in Maine, of special significance because it also happened to be National Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander heritage month. This is a critical time in Maine and across the country, especially as racial and social justice, women and reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ rights are under attack. We need elect Democrats up and down the ballot to secure a brighter future for all.

When writing about trauma, self-care is important. My memoir "Moon in Full" took me eight full years to write. Partly because I kept myself busy finishing law school, trying to make ends meet, and engaging in political and community organizing.

In a time of great division and anger nationwide, how do we go about changing hearts and minds when it comes to issues like LGBTQ+ rights? In a 40 minute presentation followed by Q+A discussion, Maine politician, author and civil rights advocate Marpheen Chann shares his personal story of growing up in Maine, coming out to his religious adoptive family, and the lessons he’s learned about how change can happen.

This program is provided in partnership with the Maine Humanities Council Maine Speaks program.

That is why if we are to do justice for all the Black lives lost, especially for brown and white allies, than we must not only speak truth to power—we must speak the whole truth to power. And sometimes the truth does hurt but it is the truth and nothing but the truth that will set us free.

A new U.N. study on the treatment of children released today ranks the United States #1 on the list of countries with the highest child incarceration rate in the world.

We keep fighting. That’s how. We keep fighting for our loved ones, for the things we love about this country. We keep fighting for country we want and dream of. We keep fighting for the America we believe in and the America we believe we can be.

And here I am celebrating the 9th Pride Month since coming out and the enormity of it all is still sinking in. All the people I met and all of the things I’ve done and, yes, the mistakes I’ve made.

This means devoting more resources to hire more asylum officers and immigration judges to reduce administrative backlog. It also means putting an end to family separations and indefinite detentions. In the long term, we need compassionate, comprehensive immigration reform and a foreign policy that doesn’t contribute to the global refugee crisis.

A companion makes the seas less of a daunting and fearful endeavor. With someone by you, those monsters on the edge of the map become the outlines of new continents, new oceans, and new experiences. With a companion, those uncharted seas become blank pages with which to create a new world – to write a new story.