In hopes of finding a way to keep her language alive, Windy Pham took on a personal mission through bilingual children’s books…
During her freshman year at Colby Sawyer College in New Hampshire, Windy Pham, Class of ’15, frequently hopped on a bus with an empty suitcase in hand and headed down to Dorchester. There, some 8,000 miles from her family, she spoke her native language and filled her luggage with ingredients and foods that she rarely encountered in the US and, in doing so, she found a piece of home in Fields Corner.
After graduation, Pham moved to Boston and immediately became an active member of Dorchester’s Vietnamese community. Six years later, the birth of her daughter Alyssa inspired her to boost that activity toward increasing the visibility of Vietnamese traditions and language.
“I had my first daughter in 2021. I wanted her to get the feeling of what it means to be Vietnamese, and I realized that there’s not a lot of resources here,” said Pham, who is expecting her second child next month.
“What our community has been doing really well is we have a lot of celebrations, events, and traditions. But I noticed that the kids prefer to speak English to their parents instead of Vietnamese. They understand [Vietnamese], but they don’t know how to say it.”
In hopes of finding a way to keep her language alive, Pham took on a personal mission.
“I was like okay, I’m going to teach her the basic stuff: food and the alphabet,” Pham said. “I started creating something on Canva, then I printed it out on my printer at home, laminated it, and tested it out on my daughter.”
What she created wasn’t just a simple book; it was a bilingual book that would teach Alyssa about culturally relevant foods and the Vietnamese alphabet while strengthening her language skills in both English and Vietnamese.
When other mothers in the community heard about Pham’s work, they encouraged her to keep going. “I started creating the second book and the third book. I felt overwhelmingly supported from the moms’ group around not just Dorchester but online and globally,” she said. “People were saying they wish there were books like this when they were growing up, so I really saw a demand there.”
What had begun as something for her daughter and then as a tool for the kids in her community grew even larger after Pham won a “Shark Tank” -styled forum co-sponsored by VietAID, Boston Little Saigon, and ElevAsian in the spring of 2024.
There, she presented her business, Little Ant World, an educational platform and publisher of bilingual Vietnamese and English books, resources, and cultural events for children.
“I was very overwhelmed by the many diverse products in the Asian American community; people had great ideas,” Pham said. But her bilingual books proved to be one of the best ideas when the judges awarded her first place in the New Business track and a $5,000 prize.
Pham said that up until the competition, she had just a few prototypes of her book. The grand prize allowed her to print the first editions of “The ABCs of Vietnamese Food,” and reach a broader audience with more distribution.
Over the last two years, she has sold more than 20,000 books on Amazon alone and has acquired nearly 17,000 followers on Instagram. She also hosts cultural workshops and events all around the city.
When asked about her success to date, Pham said she just wants to keep the Vietnamese heritage, tradition, and language alive for generations to come.
But it’s also about reminding her daughter and other Vietnamese kids to follow their dreams. “If you have a dream, you can make it happen,” she said. “I was working in corporate, and people mocked me for my accent for a very long time. I felt ashamed of my accent and like I had to hide it. I tried to fit in, but once I had my daughter, I realized that maybe it’s time for me to do some change here. Why am I trying to fit in? Why am I hiding my tradition here? If I do that, then I’m ashamed about my children’s tradition, and I’m passing that down to my daughter, so I have to do something here.”
Alyssa, now five, speaks fluent English and multiple Vietnamese dialects. “In Vietnamese, there are three different dialects: the north, central, and south. I am from the north, so I speak the northern dialects, and my husband is from the south, so he speaks the southern dialect. My daughter is able to learn both, which I’m very happy about.”
Pham added: “The books that I find here, a lot of times they are in a southern dialect, or the books I found in Vietnam to bring here, a lot of time are in northern dialect. I wanted to get a little more diverse and have a combination of the north and south dialects. A lot of my books are in both.”
So far, Pham has published 13 books and expects to release a few more by the end of the year. “I wanted to make sure that my daughter is able to learn all this culture, and I know there are a lot of Vietnamese families out there with needs like mine,” she said.
“The generation before me, they did really good with passing down traditions. It’s my job, my generation now, millennials, to continue to carry that forward, and the way to continue to carry that forward is through education.”
Cassidy McNeeley
Source: https://www.dotnews.com/2026/05/20/windy-phams-books-extend-the-reach-of-viet-language-visibility-of-traditions/ May 20, 2026