Achieving Whiteness

As I'm cleaning my place, I found a college paper I wrote a few years ago about Vietnamese Americans and the Achievement of Whiteness.  I still haven't found the paper that followed this, but thought I'd share since this topic was brought up in recent random conversations I've had.

Broken - Coolie/Kuli/Quli

Definition
Coolie: A contemporary racial slur or ethnic nickname for people of Asian descent, including people from India, Central Asia, etc.<sup>[1]


term describing a low-status class of workers</sup>




With my head bent down, I stared at my plastic bowl of rice.  Remnants of chicken bones with slivers of meat I could not finish laid on top of the soy stained rice.  Around me, I could hear my parents' voice crescendo outside of the kitchen where I sat still.  Barely making out what they were saying, I knew that time would stand still before the discord subsided. 


I held my breath, but my heart still raced.  


And suddenly the kitchen door swung open and I turned to look at the two people I loved yet feared the most attack one another with animal like rage.  My Mother was sobbing, her eyes red. She ran over to the kitchen sink to get back her balance and composure.  My Father crossed over her to the cabinets, opened it with force and grabbed a porcelain dish in each hand.  With all his might, he threw each one in front of my Mother cursing at his existence.  They shattered into shards across our laminate flooring.  All I could do was stare at my Father while a surge of emotion that I knew so well started stirring in me. 


He turned around and walked up to me with his eyes fixed on mine.  I did not know what to do, so I stared back.  My Father was shaking, his demeanor cracked, and I could see his eyes filled with guilt, regret, and rage.  With his fist clenched he pounded his chest and wailed in agony, "I, your Father, am only a coolie!  And that is what I will always be.  Nothing more. Nothing."


And with those piercing words, my eyes welled up with tears, and finally in the wake of silence we cried together. 


----


That was the summer I realized how heavy the baggages were, and I constructed a position for myself to be in where I could change what was dealt.  I carefully molded it the best way I knew how in my young mind.  The structure was seemingly flawless for an eight year old.  Who knew that this moment would be the catalyst to what would take years to undo.






To be continued...

Soul in a Perishing Body

In a room full of people the other day, I noticed a figure that sat down right behind me.  I turned around to see who it was, and for a moment, caught myself staring and instantly turned back around.

His face was tout and shiny, his right ear lobe was missing, a few fingers were gone, and his lips were barely noticeable. A burn victim from an auto accident, and all I could think of was the unbearable life he must have.  But as he stood up,  introduced himself, and explained his story it became apparent that he was not the one who was suffering.  He didn't see his life the way we assumed it to be.  


Instead of victimizing himself, he took another approach to life and used his experience as a vehicle to educate others on the way they see themselves in this little realm we call life.  It's not about the material and superficial things that makes us happy, but the experiences we have through seeing our purpose in life a little differently because in the end, we are nothing more than a soul in a perishing body.


I wanted to cry as I heard his story, and as selfish as this may sound, I wanted to cry for myself.

Fall of Saigon - Our life in America

April 30th marks the day where we were exiled from Vietnam.  

With only a few weeks left until she was due with her first born, my Mother and Father found a small 10 person boat to escape to the nearest country - Thailand.  Three days after they have gotten on the boat, they were no where near the destination but were within a few miles away from the border of the country that spat them out and swore to kill them if found... days later, out in the ocean while giving birth, my eldest brother was born, and a few days later it was the same place in which he died.

Looted from everything they've ever had and threatened to be raped and pillaged, they survived.

The Philippines was their sanctuary and a place where they recovered, and then it was finalized that the land of opportunity awaited them.

While America was better than what we could've had in Vietnam being the children of the enemy, life here in America wasn't always too grand.  But when you had nothing, you had everything.

To this day, I know that my siblings and I still can't flinch when we see roaches while we eat. I feel too privileged with owning more than 3 pairs of shoes....and I'm afraid, I'm afraid to get to a point where I forget what it's like to have nothing but the most important things in life.

And the funniest part of my life so far, is that a man would leave me because I couldn't appreciate the material  and superficial things in life the way he did.