As I am writing this beginning line, my mind is flooded with memories of Pham Doan Trang. I also realize that it has been almost seven years since I said goodbye to her before she left the United States to return to Vietnam. We had become friends and spent seven months together in the United States, and I have not seen her since December 2014. I also have not been able to contact her or speak with her on the phone since October 6, 2020. Vietnamese police arrested her near midnight that day in Saigon. My last text message to her was “Trang, answer me,” which I sent the night she was detained.

Doan Trang can be classified as many things, depending on the person you speak with. She is a journalist, an activist, a teacher, a political person who opposes the Vietnamese Communist Party, a prominent figure of the democracy movement in Vietnam, and more. Yet, for me, Doan Trang is a friend, a very close friend, and that’s it. My only hope is to help set my friend free because she has not done anything wrong. She deserves to be free so that she can continue to write.