Support Viet Mom and Twin Cities Trailblazer

We have a chance to help a Twin Cities Trailblazer, Tammy Thanh Nguyen, protect her home from foreclosure and reunite with her late mother in Viet Nam, within the first 100 days of her mother’s transition into the ancestral realm.

Let us help you remember the impact of Tammy’s presence in the Twin Cities. Tammy is a viet mother who opened her home to young people in the Twin Cities underground music scene, and nurtured the emergence of some of the first local production companies, like Mode One and Family Werks. Tammy and her children provided a safe space for young people in the 90s, when there were not many safe spaces for us to grow into ourselves and with each other. The kids regularly hosted house parties, where young people practiced dance, music, poetry, flirting and falling in love for the first time. She would let young people remove the furniture to lay out linoleum for breakdancing. She would let young people gut the basement and transform it into a DJ practice hub and gaming center. While the family had little means, there was always food. Before her shifts at the multiple jobs she worked at to make ends meet, she would cook food for the people who stopped by to eat. Tammy helped raise a village of artists and musicians who have shown love and care to theTwin Cities.

In 2005, Tammy met the love of her life, Wayne Wagner. Before Wayne, Tammy experienced life as a giver of love and care. She worked to the bone, multiple low-wage jobs to piece together enough means for young people to make life and culture in her home. After Wayne, Tammy got to experience what it felt like to be loved and cared for. Wayne moved in and became a beloved member of the family. He was warm, funny, sincere, outgoing, and clearly loooooooooooooooved Tammy. Wayne and Tammy spent every moment they could together. They would sit on the couch or church pews and just hold each other in arms and giggles. Wayne helped the house transform from a defacto youth center for artists and musicians to an actual sanctuary that Tammy could come home to. He shared in the cost it took to keep the home. As the economy grows increasingly unkind to aging Viet mothers, Wayne helped Tammy secure a job cleaning offices a few times a week. They made a home together.

On May 25th, Tammy’s mother died in Vietnam. Then, just weeks later on June 9, Wayne died from a collapsed lung at the hospital. Shockwaves ruptured through Tammy’s home as she experienced the loss of her mother and the love of her life, in span of two weeks.

Now, we are raising funds to help Tammy complete two sacred missions: protect her home from foreclosure and return to Vietnam to help her mother transition well into the ancestral realm within the first 100 days of passing.