Three Decades in America
Reflections on living in one of the most complex yet beautiful countries on earth
Imagine yourself as a ten-year-old. (It’s hard, I know). You live in what you think is a “normal” family—a mother, a father, two siblings. You have lots of cousins—some of them are better than others. You live really close to your relatives. Your paternal grandparents are just down the street, and many aunts and uncles are within a short walk. You never run out of things to do. Even though you are one of three, you’re by yourself a lot, mainly because a) your mom works a lot, and your dad just goes to places, and b) there’s a large age gap between you and your brothers.
But no matter. Life is good. Religion is a big part of your life. It seems like every other month, someone is getting baptized, engaged, married or having a funeral. That means there’s always food or a gathering of some kind.
Your entire world is wrapped up within 2 kilometers. You go to school, you do well. You go to church on Sundays and holidays. With the exception of one or two random trips, you’ve never gone anywhere else.
So imagine your surprise when one day, your parents tell you that you’re going to America! America, an ENORMOUS land filled with lots of people, independence and hamburgers. You have no idea what hamburgers are but it sure sounds good! Immediately, you think in small, granular terms—that America is just one big piece of land. You have no idea that it’s divided up into 50 states, that each state has their own government and rules and culture.
Before you can go to America, your parents said, all four of you have to pass medical exams and get vaccinated. But why four, not five? There are five members in your family. Sadly, your oldest brother has to stay behind, unable to be sponsored because at 26 years old, he’s considered an adult. And besides, he’s already married and had his first child, a boy barely a year old. (Yes, you were a very young aunt).
Getting medical exams and vaccinations means that you’ll have to go to Ho Chi Minh City (HCM), a place that southerners like yourself generally call Saigon. You’ve never been to HCM and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t that far away. It’s about an hour or so, maybe less. You get poked and prodded, and you remember none of it. Only years later, when you discover the old, yellowed slips of parchment-like paper containing the results of those exams did you realize that it happened at all.
Days before you left, your relatives throw a huge party in your family’s honor. Again, so much food, good food. You wonder if the same foods can be found in America. Probably not, you thought. But maybe your mom can make it at home.
You get on a plane with your second brother and your parents, and twenty five hours and two more plane changes, you arrive in a city called Portland, Oregon. You’re greeted at the airport by your uncle’s entire family—the same one who sponsored your family. You spend the next month or so living at your uncle's house feeling like a guest before your family moves out to an apartment fifteen minutes away in southeast Portland. The street you lived on—82nd Avenue—will be forever ingrained in your history. Decades later, you will find yourself driving down that street, feeling a mix of nostalgia and disdain. But you can’t leave. At least not yet.
This is my immigration story.
It’s not super exciting—at least not to me—because it does not involve harrowing journeys by boat, dangerous waters, or refugee camps. It was long, yes, but about as simple as getting on a plane one day and never going back…not until 14 years later, that is.
I arrived in Portland with my family on May 4, 1995, when I was 10 years old. In the past 29 years, many changes have occurred. For one, I grew up. I went to college, got married, had kids. I feel as much of an American as anybody else in America. Thanks to my parents, I have the privilege of being a U.S. citizen, a privilege that allows me to work for any employer, to vote, to run for office if I want to (will never happen, though). Immigrating to America exposed me to a world I never would have known otherwise. It opened my eyes and helped me see just what a small world I lived in and why it’s important to step out of your comfort zone and visit more places.
But even after living here for this long, there are things I’m still flummoxed about. Things that confuse me in terms of cultural norms and expectations.
Take, for example, Americans’ propensity to say thank you. It’s not that we don’t say ‘thank you’ in Vietnam; it’s just…we say thank you when we really mean it. When I first came to America, I noticed everyone was saying “thank you” even when they didn’t seem to mean it. I thought, why? I could tell on their faces that they weren’t actually thankful. And yet, they said it anyway. They said it for the simplest reasons—someone opened a door for them, someone gave them change, someone pressed the pedestrian walk button. Of course, these are all very valid reasons to say thank you, but at the time I heard more “thank you’s” in a single day than I’d heard in a single week living in my Vietnamese village.
The same could be said for saying sorry. Apologies, it seemed, were dished out just as quickly as thank you’s. People said “sorry” so often, even when they didn’t mean it. In Vietnam, we don’t say ‘I’m sorry’ that much, unless someone is on their deathbed and they’re begging God for mercy. Not to say that Vietnamese people aren’t sorry; we certainly feel bad when we do something wrong, but even when we are sorry, we still don’t say it.
Then there’s the thing about idioms, which I still don’t understand even to this day. In Vietnamese, there are turns of phrases and certain words with underlying meanings, but to me it seemed as though Americans took idioms to the next level. There were so many! Things like, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” and “Looks like the cat’s out of the bag,” and “That costs an arm and a leg!” I thought, jeez I can never eat an entire horse. In fact, we don’t eat horses around here…also, there are no cats inside of any bags that I can see…and, why I feel bad for the person who has to sell their arms and legs to pay for that thing.
Another thing that confused me (still does) is Americans’ propensity to spend hours watching sports and playing video games. I remember watching my male cousins hunch in front of this giant box they call a TV hooked up to another device that somehow projected, where images and things flickered across the screen. I thought, “How cool is that?” but also, “Isn’t it better to spend time playing outside?”
At least, that’s what I did in my childhood in Vietnam. I never had the privilege of video games or Saturday morning cartoons, so I spent a lot of time playing outside, usually with random objects like marbles, matches, sticks, chalk and jump ropes. I played a pretend game called “house” with the neighborhood kids, where we pretended to be mommies and daddies and kids and divvied up the household responsibilities as best as we knew them from observing our own parents. And when I wasn’t playing outside, I was inside reading or drawing or sewing clothes for my dolls. I never watched TV, even though we had one, because it was staticky and had practically no channels.
Do I feel like I missed out? No, not at all.
I was supposed to be born in America. The sponsorship thing was delayed by ten years. But during those ten years, I was born and raised in a country with a rich, if not violent, history. I’m proud to be Vietnamese, and to have the chance to grow up and be surrounded by such beauty is an honor to me. I come from a line of people who’s incredibly resilient and powerful and resourceful.
And let’s not forget about the food.
Vietnamese food, in my biased opinion, is one of the best foods in the world. I grew up surrounded by fruit trees—bananas, guava, lychee, jackfruit, durian, coconut, and more—and so, I was never tired of it. Vietnamese food has a strong French influence, but it’s also unique in its own way due to the marriage of different flavor profiles. You can get any combination of the five—sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or umami—in many of its dishes, sometimes all at once!
But I live here now, in America, known as a melting pot of cultures, which is unique in its own. I love the fact that you could get a slice of pizza on one corner and a bubble tea on another. So many of us who’ve came to America have brought their own signature dishes, or flavors of their home country, and it’s now embedded in the fabric of American life. Without all this freedom and opportunity and variety, where would we be??
I love being here. And I love visiting new places and meeting new people, for the more I meet and learn about, the more well-rounded a person I become. That’s a lifetime goal.
In just a few weeks, we are going back to Vietnam! Hurrah! I am both terrified and ecstatic. More to come.
So interesting to read more of your origin story, Hoang. I’m sure you will find returning to Vietnam meaningful, especially after the loss of your mom.