History

"I lost my mind; I think it's somewhere out there stranded." -Lil Wayne
"Everything I'm not made me everything I am." - Kanye West

Growing up, I always heard stories in passing about the impoverishment which shaped my parents' childhoods. Ironically, the stories were usually told as they ate and reminisced over barbecue ribs and a few beers inside a garage that was now their own. I always knew of this past "life" of mine but I never really stopped to take it in. It was only after I became a first generation college student (realizing, of course, that even when my family gave me everything, I was still intensely different from other college students), that I began to consider WHO gave me what I had and HOW they managed/ still manage it.

Millions of people died during the war but millions more suffered or died during its aftermath. There are stories my family circulates about owning only 2 pairs of clothing, and one pair of sandals, and feeling lucky when you have meat with rice... Or about not having the money to treat sick family members, many of whom died way too young and weren't given the proper burial.

And there were stories, of course, about racism. Both because they were peasants and poor, and thus, were looked down upon by people who had more and because propaganda and society circulates an idea that being mixed and especially being black is inferior. My parents usually now just shake their heads and laugh about how sad yet funny/ludicrous these things are when they tell their childhood stories to other southern Vietnamese/ Amerasian friends here in Portland and afterward they proceed to talk about their spoiled kids, drink more beer, discuss nail colors, and watch football. And my parents' kids either grow up wearing pretty dresses, and make-up with high heals starting at age four to resemble her gorgeous grandmother, or playing every single sport in the backyard just like most American boys do.

Mom, Dad and friends: Philippines circa 1990.

So I guess, because I'm that spoiled kid, who wobbled around like a duck and was so adorable that people in the Philippines used to give me coconuts..., I justified the prejudice and racism and suffering that my parents faced as a sign of a time that has passed and a different "culture" that wants to hold onto it's ethnic purity. There were always racial undertones when I visited but it wasn't until Ha Noi, nearly twenty years later, that I, as a person who works relatively hard, and who feels like she tries to be a decent person, felt inferior. I suppose it triggered the thought about how my father, my aunt, the Amerasian people I see here in Portland, some who were literally abandoned and given away because of their skin color, must have felt, growing up surrounded by that.

I'm like most people in that I that have a tendency to label things as history as though history doesn't somehow connect to the present. It's extremely easy to label my Amerasian project and oral "histories" as such as well. I find it intriguing, though, that Viet Nam or certain parts of Viet Nam in 2011, as a growing part of a global economy, hasn't allowed itself to move toward acceptance and understanding of difference. When people sit and honestly talk about their experiences as Amerasian in the present day and how there's still a sadness and void in their heart about their connection or lack there of to their motherland, that affects the future as well. Amerasian people are either denied a history in Vietnamese textbooks or wrongfully portrayed as enemies. At the end of the day, most may be in their "fatherland" but what does it say, when a country that gave birth to all different children, isn't open to mending its relationship with its abandoned children?

The resilience is certainly more obvious. I don't wish to dwell on the sadness, because first generation Amerasians certainly don't. But it's probably time to acknowledge that they exist in history and we need to reverse the silencing and paint a fuller, more complicated picture. It's isn't simply north, south, east, west; there are people, and relationships, and interconnections and messiness that's left behind that people may want to blame and "subjugate" others for in order to compensate for their own subjugation by Americans or fellow countrymen. And there are a multitude of other reasons as well. Either way, not only hearing, but actually listening to these stories has opened up my mind as an Amerasian descendant.