![]() This time, it was about her newfound dream to become an executive chef. Just like back in high school, Nguyen mustered up the courage to confront her parents. Thu, who cooked by memory, walked her daughter through their family recipes on the phone. “I stepped into the communal kitchen of my dorm and the rest of the world floated away,” says Nguyen, who spent hours cooking elaborate dishes, like salmon skin hand rolls, miso soup, and pork katsu. She majored in pre-med, pursuing her parents’ dream for her to become a doctor, but quickly found joy in a new hobby. Devastated from the injury, she put her sports dreams on hold and transferred to Western Washington University sophomore year. Nguyen was recruited to play basketball at Clark College, but tore her ACL just weeks before the season started. “She wanted safety and stability for me, and for her that came from fitting in.” “ came to this country, and suffered from a lot of discrimination being different,” she says. With time, Nguyen also became more understanding of her parents’ push to assimilate her as a young girl. One night, determined to speak her truth, she woke up her parents and announced: “I’m gay.” It took nearly a decade, but they have come to “fully embrace who I am,” she says. Off the court, Nguyen was struggling with her identity in more ways than one. “All of your differences… all of that stuff doesn’t matter when you step on the court,” she says. Nguyen was captain of her high school varsity team, and voted MVP by her teammates three years in a row. Her insecurities evaporated the moment she picked up a basketball. “I pushed all of my Vietnamese identity out of my life in my childhood and young adulthood to assimilate, to fit in or to become American.” “I remember feeling like I had to fit in, and to me that meant assimilating to whiteness and letting go of my Vietnamese culture, heritage, and pride,” she says. Nguyen grew up in the predominantly white city of Portland. “I didn’t want her to be so different… I wanted her to be like all the Americans in the country.” “I told my husband, ‘We don’t know any American names, but in this book I think Jennifer sounds like a really beautiful ,’” she says. At the hospital for the birth of their daughter, Thu scrolled through an American baby name book. Tuong and Thu got married in 1979, and moved to Portland where Tuong’s brother lived. Thu’s father had been a colonel in the Vietnamese army. After spending time in a Thai refugee camp, Tuong eventually arrived in Minnesota, where he met Nguyen’s mother, Thu, who left Vietnam one year earlier at the age of 18. The group drifted for days on the South China Sea, before the boat sprang a leak and they flagged down some Thai fishermen who led them ashore. Her father, Tuong Nguyen, fled Vietnam after the war in 1976 at age 17, by secretly boarding a fishing boat with eleven other teenagers and young adults. The menu features nachos, vegan burgers, and wings with a Vietnamese glaze-an ode to Nguyen’s heritage. Everything on tap comes from female-owned breweries. Regulars come for the tight-knit, sports-obsessed community, and stay for the local craft beer. And five enormous TVs play women’s sports, all the time. Signature drinks have names like Title IX and GOAT. StarchefsĪt the Sports Bra, walls are filled with photos of Serena Williams, Sue Bird, and Allyson Felix. Jenny Nguyen, founder of the Sports Bra, pictured at the bar. Women’s wins are becoming louder than ever. “Right now is the beginning-not of a peak, but of an upward trajectory that’s not going to slow down any time soon.” “The timing of the Bra… could not have been more perfect,” Nguyen says. ![]() It’s a shrine to female athletes, a safe space for the queer community, and a brick-and-mortar beacon of the ongoing fight for gender equity in the sports world. In 2022, Nguyen opened one of the only bars in the world devoted entirely to women’s sports. It took four years and a lot of hard work, but she turned that dream into a reality. “I was like, ‘If anybody’s going to give it a shot, I’m going to give it a shot,’” Nguyen tells ELLE. She joked to the group that the only way they would be able to enjoy a game at a bar, is if they opened their own. The rest of the bar stared at them, confused.īy then, Nguyen had become accustomed to watching women’s basketball without sound. When Notre Dame scored a three pointer against Mississippi to break a tie in the final seconds, they all jumped up and started screaming. Jenny Nguyen was drinking pitchers of Fat Tire with friends at a Portland bar, and watching the 2018 women’s basketball championship game on mute on a small TV in the corner. The win would have been better with some volume. ![]()
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