A letter to ... my immigrant mother, a girl in Vietnam
A letter to … my immigrant mother, a girl in Vietnam
It took a long time for me to understand the pain you felt leaving Vietnam and the emotional cost of becoming American.
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[Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]
By Kim O'Connell
Published On 29 Sep 202229 Sep 2022
To the pre-teen girl selling ducks on the side of the road in Bien Hoa, I see you. You are sitting there in your too-small dress with your stepfather, the only father you have really known. You spent the morning with him, walking through the wetlands near your home to set the traps. You felt important and big, being taught grown-up things. What a thrill to find the ducks in the cage later, knowing the whole scheme worked. Now you sit with him, patient and quiet, as the ducks squawk and protest in their large woven basket, waiting to be chosen, plucked, cooked, and eaten. You are waiting, too. You know the larger world is out there. It comes closer by the day. You have seen the people building the airbase nearby, the one that the French Air Force will use to fight the North Vietnamese in the ongoing Indochina War, the war they will later call the “first” because there are more conflicts to come. They picked the site because it was flat and accessible, and less than 40km (25 miles) from Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. You do not know yet that, 10 years from now, you will be on a different military base in Okinawa, Japan, teaching Vietnamese to American soldiers, and that one of those soldiers will be my father. For now, you are content to spend your days selling ducks for cash, helping your mother cook in the kitchen of your small house, and teaching your younger sister to read.
. . . . .
To the young woman in a traditional Vietnamese dress, standing in front of the class, I see you. You are away from home for the first time, a newly minted graduate of the University of Saigon. There, foreign languages came easily to you – you studied English, of course, but also French and Japanese. It is no wonder that, when the US Army came looking for someone to teach in its Vietnamese language school, they chose you. Now you are standing in front of a nondescript classroom on base in Okinawa, facing down a group of wide-eyed, wisecracking men, all of them even further from home than you are. You take a new name – Rosette – one that is feminine, you think, and easy to pronounce, an identity you can put on and take off like a cloak.
. . . .
One day, a couple of years after the wedding, you will stand on the steps of a big American courthouse, waving a tiny American flag while a photographer takes your picture. A neighbour is at home, watching your infant daughter, born just six months before, while you are naturalised as a US citizen. It will take a long time for that little girl to understand the pain you experienced leaving Vietnam and the emotional costs of becoming American. You watch your homeland crumple in defeat from a great distance, helpless to do anything. You feel something like survivor’s guilt. When I ask you, years later, if you would ever go back, you shake your head and say, “Too sad.”
‘The future is not promised’
To the woman who helped raise me, I see you, tucking grey hair behind your ears, walking more slowly, but still making your favourite chicken curry or lemon grass beef whenever we get together. When I was younger and understood less, we did not get along so well. Now, it is better. I am aware that the time grows shorter, and that the future is not promised, something you I call you on the Lunar New Year to see how you are celebrating. You tell me you were pleased with the price of the duck you got at your favourite Asian market, and that you made duck soup, for good luck.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/9/29/to-my-immigrant-mother-a-girl-in-vietnam