Well, there was still one more aspect of my identity I had to think about before going back to studying for my midterm. That Peggy McIntosh quote was just too thought-provoking. (“[W]hites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’”)
I dug through the archives of my old blog and found two entries, one I wrote in January 2006 and the other in February 2008. Reading them, I felt both embarrassed and accomplished, embarrassed because I was so fucking stupid back then, and accomplished because I had come such a long way since the last three years.
These were a few lines from my February 2008 entry that made me roll my eyes, “Chuck What?”:
“My goal is not to be ‘whiter’ or ‘less Asian;’ I’d just like to live my life without having to be associated with any kind of racial label that automatically defines my character and likes and dislikes.”
“Today was Tet, or the Lunar New Year, which Vietnamese and Chinese people happen to celebrate for some reason...Of course, to celebrate tet, I wore my special tet outfit: jeans, white shirt, white hoodie, and white shoes. I also emptied out the trash in my car.” [According to Vietnamese lore, wearing white and doing housekeeping on the day of Tet brings bad luck for the rest of the year.]
“I came home from work today to find rice and some wrapped shit (in other words: dinner) spread out on the living room table. There were six places set up, each for my dead ancestors. They got to eat first, and they spent a really long time eating. Hell, I think they were just chatting it up, making racist jokes. The food just sat there accumulating bacteria and digestive juices from flies. As though my parents’ unhygienic cooking methods aren’t enough.”
“I had McDonald’s tonight by the way. 2 cheeseburgers, both with Mac sauce and lettuce added = 1 Big Mac for $1.50 cheaper.”
“Well, I made sure that I was disrespectful as possible today, so does that mean bad luck for the next entire year? No. Because superstitions are just fucking superstitions (and Karma is crap). My only wish is that I could somehow top what I pulled off on tet two years ago (coming out lol). Maybe next tet.”
And these few lines were a few lines from my January 2006 entry about a formal engagement party that I went to for a cousin, “Out of Place”:
“This morning, my parents dragged me along to some kind of wedding. Wait, no, it wasn't a wedding; it was a formal engagement. There's still a wedding that I'll to go to in the future, [fuck]. But anyways, I tend to not like weddings, especially Asian orthodox. Well, it's really just Asian orthodox that pisses me off.”
“They [people conducting the wedding] only spoke Vietnamese. To me, it seriously just sounded like, ‘blarfgh jakllia adfdafdass smakcldkf crackerad dwidge garagh,’ and I spent my time watching the clock.”
“When all that crap was done, people sat down around the kitchen and started eating. I wasn't going to eat because the food was all boring Asian shit, but my mom handed me a plate with rice piled over fried crap piled over more rice.”
“I just can't stand it. My wedding will not be Asian Orthodox (but then again, nothing can really be orthodox if it's homosexual). And at my wedding, I will serve elegant French food. And nobody at my wedding will be wearing those tight shiny Asian dresses.”
“I'm not ashamed to be Asian, and I don't wish to be any other race.”
I used to hate that I was Vietnamese. I was ashamed of it. I didn’t admit it back then, but looking back in retrospect, I could say that I was lying to myself. Shit, I didn’t understand how I could possibly rationalize that I wasn’t ashamed to be Vietnamese back then. I attributed a lot of problems between me and my parents, mainly (what I perceived to be) their disapproval of me having a black friend and a Mexican friend, to some aspect of Vietnamese culture. I didn’t want to be Vietnamese. I just wanted to be “regular,” another human being whose ethnicity didn’t matter.
I was too culturally assimilated, back when I didn’t understand what that even meant. I thought rejecting my Vietnamese culture, language, and history meant making myself racially neutral, but I was really replacing it all with the “regular” culture, language and history. I was glad I came to realize that “regular” meant “white.” When I said I didn’t want an “Asian orthodox” wedding, just a regular wedding, I now knew that I meant a white wedding.
Tuxedos at a wedding? White. Elegant French food? White. Cheeseburgers from McDonald’s? White. Understanding English, not Vietnamese? White.
I’m going to get married, not because I’m a gay guy trying to be straighter in this heteronormative Western society, but because I’m a Vietnamese guy trying to maintain my Vietnamese heritage in this oppressive, white-dominated Western society. And it’s not just for my heritage; it’s for my parents too.
The wedding will thus be a Vietnamese wedding. And I don’t care if I’m marrying someone Filipino. He’s gonna wear that “tight shiny Asian dress” (áo dài), no exceptions, bitch.
Showing posts with label ethnicity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethnicity. Show all posts
The Fashion Island Dining Hierarchy
Thursday, January 20, 2011
(Continued from “Fashion Island”)
My Literature of Inequity teacher asked the class if anyone wanted to share the short story they wrote about their observations at Fashion Island the other day. No one raised their hand. I waited, and still no hands. I decided to raise mine.
“Only rich, old, white people shop at Fashion Island,” I read. “This is something that I knew since my first visit here two years ago, and being back here today I can see that nothing’s changed. However, today I want to know what lies beneath this outdoor mall’s fancily extravagant exterior, so I travel over to the side of the mall with all the big name chain restaurant hoping to locate some dumpsters. I end up finding an open garage entrance to a service corridor facing the parking lot, guarded by nothing more than a measly sign that reads, ‘Authorized Personnel Only.’ Not the most welcoming invite, but I head inside anyway.
“Nothing really interests me until I turn a corner and glance down at the hallway before me. It stretches long and narrow, and the walls are an eerie white, lit by fluorescent lights that glow an equally eerie white. The occasional ‘hazardous wastes’ or ‘no smoking sign’ hangs up on the walls. A web of pipes runs under the ceiling, and it concerns me that some are a little red with rust. An ominous elevator stands coldly at the end of the hallway, so I make my way toward it, steadily and nervously, as though I were trying to avoid trip wires lining the floor. I carefully pull out my cell phone to snap a few photos of my surroundings. Unsure about the presence of security cameras, and knowing that taking pictures inside malls is often against mall regulations, I try to make it look like I’m just using my phone to read text messages or whatever; it’s just that sometimes I like to angle my phone up toward the ceiling or to the sides when I read my text messages. Any minute I expect to be stopped by mall security and to find myself at the police station waiting on my journalism teacher to arrive and verify that I was out on an assignment. I replay in my mind an incident three years ago when cops stopped my friends (one black, one Mexican) and me on the way down to the ground floor after we spent an entire hour talking on top floor of a mall parking structure. They ran our ID’s, patted us down for weed and guns and they asked us if we were carrying any rocket launchers. None of us wore backpacks or bags; I didn’t know how we could possibly conceal rocket launchers.
“If a cop stops me now at Fashion Island, I’d be accused of being a terrorist, roaming the internal structures of the mall and taking pictures on my camera phone so I could report back to my terrorist cell and plan out where to plant bombs. Suddenly the doors of the elevator open as I’m just reaching the halfway point, and out come two fat Mexican men rolling a cart of trash. Their faces are dark and dirty, and their white baggy coveralls are blotted with patches of dirt and dust and smeared with stains of food. Caps sporting The Cheesecake Factory logo rest on their heads. I don’t think it hurts to once again mention that they are fat. I wonder if they will stop me as they roll down the hallway in my direction with their cart, but they just roll right on, muttering in Spanish. There’s nothing at the end of the hallway except for a few dumpsters, as expected, so I snap a few more photos and quickly walk out before anyone could arrest me. I decide on a cleaner, less risky change of environment and head upstairs.
“I stroll inside Cheesecake Factory very casually for some observing. When a seating host asks me if I need help, I just tell her that I’m here to look at the cheesecakes on display. She lets me know to let her know if I need any assistance and then leaves me alone. When she’s busy helping other guests, I turn around to conduct a quick survey of The Cheesecake Factory staff. I squint through the dim warm-tinted lighting to see that most of the servers, bartenders, and hosts are white women, and most are thin and in shape. And even then, the occasional slightly chubby server has the full-volume hair and the bubbly personality to make up for it. Everyone wears a button-up dress shirt and pair of dress pants that both emanate a bright white, a white that stood out brilliantly from the restaurant’s mahogany wood finishing on the cushioned booths and the sand-colored marble walls. No one here looks like they ever had to haul trash bags down Fashion Island’s shady service corridors. I also noted that, here on a Tuesday night, the clientele were white and adult-aged, with some being old enough that I could spot the shadows in their wrinkles from where I stood. White and old—the only ones who could afford to dine out at the Cheesecake Factory on a random day in the middle of the week.
“At this point, after looking at all the cheesecakes, I feel a little hungry. Having no more than five dollars to spend, I travel across Fashion Island and head down to the food court, hidden away at the bottom floor of the only indoor part of the mall. Here I find an assortment of fast food restaurants that I can actually afford. I buy myself a chili cheddar cheese dog from Fatburger and sit at a table in front of it. Notably, the workers at Fatburger, just like all the ones at the other fast food restaurants, are brown-skinned Latinos. They speak with a Spanish accent, and they wear baggy black dress shirts, black pants, black caps, and a red apron. Glancing around in the food court, I can see that it’s pretty empty. Only five other tables are occupied. Sitting a few tables away, a white family is having a family night out. Cokes and fries for everyone, cheeseburgers for mom and dad, and hot dogs for their daughter and son, who looked to be nine and four years old, respectively. They all eat in silence, and, except for the four-year-old son who constantly turns his head to every corner of the food court, everyone maintains strict eye contract with the bites they leave in their food as they hold it a few inches from their mouths. Occasionally the mom and dad will stop chewing and open their mouths to say a sentence or two to each other.
“As I reach the end of my chili cheddar cheese hot dog, I muse on the Fashion Island dining hierarchy that I observed today. In the top tier, I found beautiful, young, thin white people who work upstairs in fine-dining restaurants as servers, bartenders, hosts, basically anyone who has to interact with the customers, who were white, old, but still classy. In the bottom tier, I found Mexicans hidden away doing dirty work in the service corridors or working in fast food restaurants. Their customers: middle class parents who avoid awkward conversation with their kids by stuffing them with crispy thin-cut fries and distracting them with the sights and sounds of Fashion Island, minimally enjoyed from the bottom basement floor in the most obscure and most quiet part of the mall (a part that I didn’t even know existed until after my first few visits here). Somewhere a few thousand yards away from the food court, two business partners or a couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary clink their wine glasses together over a seven-dollar slice of cheesecake.”
I laid my paper on my desk and looked up at my teacher. She asked if anyone had any comments.
The first was from a white chick. “Did you actually ask the people that you thought were white if they were actually white?”
I saw where this was going. “No,” I answered.
My teacher, who was Japanese, joined in. “You can’t just assume that people who look white are white. That might raise some ethical issues in your reporting.”
Newport Beach is more than ninety percent white. I think there’s a good chance that people who look white at Fashion Island are indeed white. I didn’t think of this response until after class, unfortunately.
“Plus, I’ve seen some Asian parents with their kids shop at Fashion Island before. It’s not just only white people,” my teacher added.
“Well,” I said, “the very first sentence of my story is intentionally an overstatement.” But I knew she was kinda right. I probably should’ve qualified my “facts” more by writing, “most were white,” instead of, “all were white.”
“One more thing, Brian.”
“Yeah?”
“I sense some spite in your story’s tone. Is there a reason to that?”
I shrugged. “I guess it came out this way.” But I really did know the reason. I just didn’t know how to put it into words yet.
My Literature of Inequity teacher asked the class if anyone wanted to share the short story they wrote about their observations at Fashion Island the other day. No one raised their hand. I waited, and still no hands. I decided to raise mine.
“Only rich, old, white people shop at Fashion Island,” I read. “This is something that I knew since my first visit here two years ago, and being back here today I can see that nothing’s changed. However, today I want to know what lies beneath this outdoor mall’s fancily extravagant exterior, so I travel over to the side of the mall with all the big name chain restaurant hoping to locate some dumpsters. I end up finding an open garage entrance to a service corridor facing the parking lot, guarded by nothing more than a measly sign that reads, ‘Authorized Personnel Only.’ Not the most welcoming invite, but I head inside anyway.
“Nothing really interests me until I turn a corner and glance down at the hallway before me. It stretches long and narrow, and the walls are an eerie white, lit by fluorescent lights that glow an equally eerie white. The occasional ‘hazardous wastes’ or ‘no smoking sign’ hangs up on the walls. A web of pipes runs under the ceiling, and it concerns me that some are a little red with rust. An ominous elevator stands coldly at the end of the hallway, so I make my way toward it, steadily and nervously, as though I were trying to avoid trip wires lining the floor. I carefully pull out my cell phone to snap a few photos of my surroundings. Unsure about the presence of security cameras, and knowing that taking pictures inside malls is often against mall regulations, I try to make it look like I’m just using my phone to read text messages or whatever; it’s just that sometimes I like to angle my phone up toward the ceiling or to the sides when I read my text messages. Any minute I expect to be stopped by mall security and to find myself at the police station waiting on my journalism teacher to arrive and verify that I was out on an assignment. I replay in my mind an incident three years ago when cops stopped my friends (one black, one Mexican) and me on the way down to the ground floor after we spent an entire hour talking on top floor of a mall parking structure. They ran our ID’s, patted us down for weed and guns and they asked us if we were carrying any rocket launchers. None of us wore backpacks or bags; I didn’t know how we could possibly conceal rocket launchers.
“If a cop stops me now at Fashion Island, I’d be accused of being a terrorist, roaming the internal structures of the mall and taking pictures on my camera phone so I could report back to my terrorist cell and plan out where to plant bombs. Suddenly the doors of the elevator open as I’m just reaching the halfway point, and out come two fat Mexican men rolling a cart of trash. Their faces are dark and dirty, and their white baggy coveralls are blotted with patches of dirt and dust and smeared with stains of food. Caps sporting The Cheesecake Factory logo rest on their heads. I don’t think it hurts to once again mention that they are fat. I wonder if they will stop me as they roll down the hallway in my direction with their cart, but they just roll right on, muttering in Spanish. There’s nothing at the end of the hallway except for a few dumpsters, as expected, so I snap a few more photos and quickly walk out before anyone could arrest me. I decide on a cleaner, less risky change of environment and head upstairs.
“I stroll inside Cheesecake Factory very casually for some observing. When a seating host asks me if I need help, I just tell her that I’m here to look at the cheesecakes on display. She lets me know to let her know if I need any assistance and then leaves me alone. When she’s busy helping other guests, I turn around to conduct a quick survey of The Cheesecake Factory staff. I squint through the dim warm-tinted lighting to see that most of the servers, bartenders, and hosts are white women, and most are thin and in shape. And even then, the occasional slightly chubby server has the full-volume hair and the bubbly personality to make up for it. Everyone wears a button-up dress shirt and pair of dress pants that both emanate a bright white, a white that stood out brilliantly from the restaurant’s mahogany wood finishing on the cushioned booths and the sand-colored marble walls. No one here looks like they ever had to haul trash bags down Fashion Island’s shady service corridors. I also noted that, here on a Tuesday night, the clientele were white and adult-aged, with some being old enough that I could spot the shadows in their wrinkles from where I stood. White and old—the only ones who could afford to dine out at the Cheesecake Factory on a random day in the middle of the week.
“At this point, after looking at all the cheesecakes, I feel a little hungry. Having no more than five dollars to spend, I travel across Fashion Island and head down to the food court, hidden away at the bottom floor of the only indoor part of the mall. Here I find an assortment of fast food restaurants that I can actually afford. I buy myself a chili cheddar cheese dog from Fatburger and sit at a table in front of it. Notably, the workers at Fatburger, just like all the ones at the other fast food restaurants, are brown-skinned Latinos. They speak with a Spanish accent, and they wear baggy black dress shirts, black pants, black caps, and a red apron. Glancing around in the food court, I can see that it’s pretty empty. Only five other tables are occupied. Sitting a few tables away, a white family is having a family night out. Cokes and fries for everyone, cheeseburgers for mom and dad, and hot dogs for their daughter and son, who looked to be nine and four years old, respectively. They all eat in silence, and, except for the four-year-old son who constantly turns his head to every corner of the food court, everyone maintains strict eye contract with the bites they leave in their food as they hold it a few inches from their mouths. Occasionally the mom and dad will stop chewing and open their mouths to say a sentence or two to each other.
“As I reach the end of my chili cheddar cheese hot dog, I muse on the Fashion Island dining hierarchy that I observed today. In the top tier, I found beautiful, young, thin white people who work upstairs in fine-dining restaurants as servers, bartenders, hosts, basically anyone who has to interact with the customers, who were white, old, but still classy. In the bottom tier, I found Mexicans hidden away doing dirty work in the service corridors or working in fast food restaurants. Their customers: middle class parents who avoid awkward conversation with their kids by stuffing them with crispy thin-cut fries and distracting them with the sights and sounds of Fashion Island, minimally enjoyed from the bottom basement floor in the most obscure and most quiet part of the mall (a part that I didn’t even know existed until after my first few visits here). Somewhere a few thousand yards away from the food court, two business partners or a couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary clink their wine glasses together over a seven-dollar slice of cheesecake.”
I laid my paper on my desk and looked up at my teacher. She asked if anyone had any comments.
The first was from a white chick. “Did you actually ask the people that you thought were white if they were actually white?”
I saw where this was going. “No,” I answered.
My teacher, who was Japanese, joined in. “You can’t just assume that people who look white are white. That might raise some ethical issues in your reporting.”
Newport Beach is more than ninety percent white. I think there’s a good chance that people who look white at Fashion Island are indeed white. I didn’t think of this response until after class, unfortunately.
“Plus, I’ve seen some Asian parents with their kids shop at Fashion Island before. It’s not just only white people,” my teacher added.
“Well,” I said, “the very first sentence of my story is intentionally an overstatement.” But I knew she was kinda right. I probably should’ve qualified my “facts” more by writing, “most were white,” instead of, “all were white.”
“One more thing, Brian.”
“Yeah?”
“I sense some spite in your story’s tone. Is there a reason to that?”
I shrugged. “I guess it came out this way.” But I really did know the reason. I just didn’t know how to put it into words yet.
Tags:
ethnicity,
schoolwork,
socal
Fashion Island
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Nearly two years ago, an eighth grade Breakthrough student of mine, who was Latino, told me about how his dad once took him to Valley Fair mall, a high-end shopping mall in Saratoga. Saratoga is a prominently white city that neighbors San Jose on its west side. His dad cautioned him on going there, but my student insisted. Once he walked inside, he felt so nervous and uncomfortable around “all the white people” that he had to ask his dad to take him somewhere else, to Eastridge Mall. Eastridge lies in east side San Jose, where Latinos make up a larger percentage of the population than any other races.
All the times going to Valley Fair during my high school years, I never noticed the race of the different shoppers—I considered myself “colorblind”—and I wondered that if I ever did notice race, if I could ever see race the way a thirteen-year-old saw it, what would that say about me?
2011 just began, as did winter quarter at UCI, and during the second week of January, my literary journalism class, “Literature of Inequity,” held class at Fashion Island Mall for an “in-class” assignment. The assignment was, as expected by the title of the class, to report on some form of inequity at the mall. I immediately knew what I wanted to report on: race.
Fashion Island Mall is a high-end mall in Newport Beach, a small beachside city (as the name suggests) of around 86,000 people, a number that is relatively small to Irvine’s population of around 218,000. With three different Bloomingdale’s stores, an abundance of French cafés that try to outsell each other on overpriced crème brulées, or designer stores that sell you hundred-dollar polos, it’s more high-end than Valley Fair. Even Valley Fair has American Eagle, PacSun, Aéropostale, and all those stores for preppy teens or skater kids, but Fashion Island—nope, none of that. It’s too classy. It’s too white.
More than ninety percent of Newport Beach’s population is white, and the shoppers at Fashion Island reflect this percentage. On any given day, the busiest time is lunch hour, where you can find mostly white men in dress shirts and ties conducting business over pastas, sandwiches and salads. The mall closes at 9 PM on weekdays, and strangely, 7 PM on Saturdays, and 6 PM on Sundays. Maybe it’s no surprise; Newport Beach is a quiet town. If you walk around neighborhoods at night you’ll realize that you can’t see because you can’t find any streetlamps. Residents sleep early in Newport Beach.
Fashion Island stands at the top of a hill that rises about 160 feet above sea level, but the roads from there all slope downhill to the beach, which lies south a mile away. On a clear day, if you walk from the center of the mall toward the southwest parking lot, past the British boutique store, past the world-class jewelry store, and past the Macy’s and its bakery, you’re faced with a view of the ocean. Go at sunset, and you’ll wish that you had a camera on you. The ocean peaks over the dark silhouette of houses and palm trees, and it disappears into a haze of purple and pink at the horizon. The sky retains its blue color, but the horizon’s pink glow gradually overtakes it.
While wandering through the mall and jotting down my observations in my spiral-bound notebook, I realized that this view was the only thing I could appreciate about Fashion Island. Everything else that I didn’t appreciate I wrote in my notebook. My final story was probably going to piss off the white students in my literary journalism class.
All the times going to Valley Fair during my high school years, I never noticed the race of the different shoppers—I considered myself “colorblind”—and I wondered that if I ever did notice race, if I could ever see race the way a thirteen-year-old saw it, what would that say about me?
2011 just began, as did winter quarter at UCI, and during the second week of January, my literary journalism class, “Literature of Inequity,” held class at Fashion Island Mall for an “in-class” assignment. The assignment was, as expected by the title of the class, to report on some form of inequity at the mall. I immediately knew what I wanted to report on: race.
Fashion Island Mall is a high-end mall in Newport Beach, a small beachside city (as the name suggests) of around 86,000 people, a number that is relatively small to Irvine’s population of around 218,000. With three different Bloomingdale’s stores, an abundance of French cafés that try to outsell each other on overpriced crème brulées, or designer stores that sell you hundred-dollar polos, it’s more high-end than Valley Fair. Even Valley Fair has American Eagle, PacSun, Aéropostale, and all those stores for preppy teens or skater kids, but Fashion Island—nope, none of that. It’s too classy. It’s too white.
More than ninety percent of Newport Beach’s population is white, and the shoppers at Fashion Island reflect this percentage. On any given day, the busiest time is lunch hour, where you can find mostly white men in dress shirts and ties conducting business over pastas, sandwiches and salads. The mall closes at 9 PM on weekdays, and strangely, 7 PM on Saturdays, and 6 PM on Sundays. Maybe it’s no surprise; Newport Beach is a quiet town. If you walk around neighborhoods at night you’ll realize that you can’t see because you can’t find any streetlamps. Residents sleep early in Newport Beach.
Fashion Island stands at the top of a hill that rises about 160 feet above sea level, but the roads from there all slope downhill to the beach, which lies south a mile away. On a clear day, if you walk from the center of the mall toward the southwest parking lot, past the British boutique store, past the world-class jewelry store, and past the Macy’s and its bakery, you’re faced with a view of the ocean. Go at sunset, and you’ll wish that you had a camera on you. The ocean peaks over the dark silhouette of houses and palm trees, and it disappears into a haze of purple and pink at the horizon. The sky retains its blue color, but the horizon’s pink glow gradually overtakes it.
While wandering through the mall and jotting down my observations in my spiral-bound notebook, I realized that this view was the only thing I could appreciate about Fashion Island. Everything else that I didn’t appreciate I wrote in my notebook. My final story was probably going to piss off the white students in my literary journalism class.
Tags:
ethnicity,
schoolwork,
socal
Made in America
Sunday, December 19, 2010
I am...
...made in America, where the extent of our culture is backyard barbeque burgers on the Fourth of July, and the paint-coated picket fence shines so white underneath the blue sky;
...made in America, where history as it is written suffers splashes and spills of white-out, but no worries as all that is still readable is beyond doubt;
...made in America, where politicians always act in the best interest of the people, where police uphold laws to the protect the people, and where government hears the voices of the people;
...made in America, where “the people” means “some people,” “no people,” or “themselves”;
...made in America, a post-racial society so proudly represented by a giant melting pot—just make sure you use white pepper, white onions, and no variety, because keeping the porridge white is our number one priority;
...made in America, born and raised, proud and ignorant, patriotic and silent.
Trung and I were on our way back up to NorCal. I drove as always, while he sat in the passenger seat, and Sang slept in the backseat. Trung and I casually talked about the last few months of our second year in college.
“Nothing new is really going on with UCI,” I said. “I think the biggest thing that happened was stuff with the Irvine 11 that happened like four months ago in February. Have you heard about them?”
“No, what’s that?”
“The Irvine 11 are these people from our school’s Muslim Student Union, and they got busted for speaking out during this one speech from some Israeli ambassador, who was invited to speak at UCI by the law school and political science department and some other sponsors. While he was talking, one person would stand up in the audience, shout out some shit, and when that person was escorted out, another one would stand up and yell out some more shit. That continued in succession, eleven times, so that the ambassador guy wouldn’t get to speak. Now there’s controversy because the Irvine 11 are getting arrested. What’s stupid though is there are actually people standing up for the Irvine 11.”
“You don’t support what the Irvine 11 did?”
“No, why would I?”
Trung raised his eyebrow at me. “Brian, do you understand anything about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?”
“I thought I was talking about Israel and Muslims.”
Trung grunted. “Brian, Israelis practice Judaism, making them Jewish in case you didn’t know, and Palestinians practice Islam, making them Muslim. And that’s just a general blanket statement, but I’m telling you this because you’ll probably hear stuff about Jews versus Muslims too when talking about the conflict.”
“Okay, this is too many names, and either way, my understanding of the Israelian-Palestinny Conflict doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“It’s clear who’s at fault here, isn’t it, Trung? The First Amendment, the right that the Irvine 11 and their supporters are claiming to be violated, doesn’t allow you to go into a meeting at a ballroom, sit in the audience, and shout over the speaker at the front. The First Amendment has regulations so shit like this wouldn’t happen, so that no one can yell ‘fire’ for kicks in a crowded room or walk into a lecture hall and start yelling obscenities over the professor. Even though the Irvine 11 disagreed with the ambassador, they could’ve voiced their opinions in a less annoying and less unlawful way. Hell, what happen to common courtesy and respect?”
“See Brian, this is where knowing something about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict comes into use. Do you know about the Gaza Massacre? No, I know you don’t. There were close to one thousand Palestinian civilian casualties, and well over one thousand total if you include those who fought, all thanks to Israel, who suffered around ten casualties total. If I was in their situation, the students of the Muslim Student Union, I’d protest too because I’d be outraged to hear that my own school would be sponsoring a visit from the Israeli ambassador, a representative of terrible war crimes against my homeland. That would be a huge inconsiderate ‘fuck you’ to me.”
“Well, we’re not talking about emotions here.”
“And that’s exactly the problem, because the rules and laws, Brian, don’t understand emotions. The Irvine 11, I can agree that they weren’t justified by the law, but they were justified by their emotions. It’s too bad that our fucked up system prefers only to look at the law, which is in and of itself imperfect.”
At this point, I was checking my rearview mirror to see if Sang was awake to watch me, for the millionth time, get owned by Trung in a car ride between NorCal and SoCal. Fortunately, he was sleeping, or at least he was pretending to be sleeping.
The first to-do item on the agenda after arriving back in NorCal was always to go downtown and get authentic Mexican food, specifically for me, a Super Burrito with chorizo. Trung and I picked up our orders along with a bottle of sauce and sat down at a table inside, watching the line stretch out the door with sobering students just getting back from the club. We ate in silence for our first few bites, but then I brought up something that had been on my mind for a while.
2010 was ending explosively with protests over fee increases and budget cuts, which erupted all over California in the last few months of November and December, and one of the controversies that stemmed from the protests was an incident where an officer, Jared Kemper, pulled out and aimed a gun at unarmed protesters at UCSF. When this story initially spread, I naturally reacted by thinking, whatever the protestors did, it must have been deserving enough to provoke Kemper’s response.
I discussed with Trung, over burritos and quesadillas, what the rebuttal for my reaction would be, because I wanted to instead be able to believe the rebuttal. He reminded me, first of all, that police officers weren’t robots that operated one hundred percent by the law; they were human too, capable of making mistakes, and that’s what Kemper did. It was something human within Kemper, a kind of fear or frustration, exacerbated by a realization that he had no training in handling the type of situation he was in, that made him desperately reach for his gun. In this case, however, his reaction was still inappropriate and inexcusable, Trung concluded, because it unnecessarily endangered lives, and under no circumstances would a police officer have a lawful reason to draw his gun on unarmed student protestors. Simple as that.
I nodded. Trung remarked that it was nice to see me trying to see things in a different light, because even if it was just half a year ago, I still would’ve been rolling my eyes at students playing victim and whining about having a gun pulled on them. And if it had been high school, he added, I still would’ve been parading racial colorblindness.
“Remember in high school when all your friends were taking that Asian American summer leadership program at DeAnza? You’d very openly accuse them of wasting their time because all they did was, and I quote you, ‘get together with other fob Asians and whine about racism.’ ‘Maybe if they integrated better and got over their race and other people’s races they could actually accomplish something blah blah blah only one race—the human race!—blah blah blah and I’m insensitive to race and ethnic issues.’ You’ve come a long way since then, Brian, and I know I don’t deserve all the credit, I’m sure, but I still like to say you changed all thanks to me.”
I shrugged. Trung might’ve been right. Something that I didn’t wanna tell him but had also been on my mind was the DREAM act, a bill that would’ve provided illegal “aliens” an opportunity for permanent residence if they satisfied certain conditions, one of which was getting into a four-year college and finishing at least two years. The bill was defeated in Senate one day prior, and how I felt about the news shocked me—I actually felt angry, upset. I don’t know if it was because I knew that Trung, who had been posting a bunch of stuff about the DREAM act on his Facebook and Tumblr, really hoped it would pass; or because throughout my last three years of teaching and tutoring, I’ve taught one or two outstanding students who weren’t legal residents in the United States. Whether or not I changed because of Trung or something else, however, there was at least the one important thing I learned to fully understand: Fuck the system.
...made in America, where the extent of our culture is backyard barbeque burgers on the Fourth of July, and the paint-coated picket fence shines so white underneath the blue sky;
...made in America, where history as it is written suffers splashes and spills of white-out, but no worries as all that is still readable is beyond doubt;
...made in America, where politicians always act in the best interest of the people, where police uphold laws to the protect the people, and where government hears the voices of the people;
...made in America, where “the people” means “some people,” “no people,” or “themselves”;
...made in America, a post-racial society so proudly represented by a giant melting pot—just make sure you use white pepper, white onions, and no variety, because keeping the porridge white is our number one priority;
...made in America, born and raised, proud and ignorant, patriotic and silent.
Trung and I were on our way back up to NorCal. I drove as always, while he sat in the passenger seat, and Sang slept in the backseat. Trung and I casually talked about the last few months of our second year in college.
“Nothing new is really going on with UCI,” I said. “I think the biggest thing that happened was stuff with the Irvine 11 that happened like four months ago in February. Have you heard about them?”
“No, what’s that?”
“The Irvine 11 are these people from our school’s Muslim Student Union, and they got busted for speaking out during this one speech from some Israeli ambassador, who was invited to speak at UCI by the law school and political science department and some other sponsors. While he was talking, one person would stand up in the audience, shout out some shit, and when that person was escorted out, another one would stand up and yell out some more shit. That continued in succession, eleven times, so that the ambassador guy wouldn’t get to speak. Now there’s controversy because the Irvine 11 are getting arrested. What’s stupid though is there are actually people standing up for the Irvine 11.”
“You don’t support what the Irvine 11 did?”
“No, why would I?”
Trung raised his eyebrow at me. “Brian, do you understand anything about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?”
“I thought I was talking about Israel and Muslims.”
Trung grunted. “Brian, Israelis practice Judaism, making them Jewish in case you didn’t know, and Palestinians practice Islam, making them Muslim. And that’s just a general blanket statement, but I’m telling you this because you’ll probably hear stuff about Jews versus Muslims too when talking about the conflict.”
“Okay, this is too many names, and either way, my understanding of the Israelian-Palestinny Conflict doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“It’s clear who’s at fault here, isn’t it, Trung? The First Amendment, the right that the Irvine 11 and their supporters are claiming to be violated, doesn’t allow you to go into a meeting at a ballroom, sit in the audience, and shout over the speaker at the front. The First Amendment has regulations so shit like this wouldn’t happen, so that no one can yell ‘fire’ for kicks in a crowded room or walk into a lecture hall and start yelling obscenities over the professor. Even though the Irvine 11 disagreed with the ambassador, they could’ve voiced their opinions in a less annoying and less unlawful way. Hell, what happen to common courtesy and respect?”
“See Brian, this is where knowing something about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict comes into use. Do you know about the Gaza Massacre? No, I know you don’t. There were close to one thousand Palestinian civilian casualties, and well over one thousand total if you include those who fought, all thanks to Israel, who suffered around ten casualties total. If I was in their situation, the students of the Muslim Student Union, I’d protest too because I’d be outraged to hear that my own school would be sponsoring a visit from the Israeli ambassador, a representative of terrible war crimes against my homeland. That would be a huge inconsiderate ‘fuck you’ to me.”
“Well, we’re not talking about emotions here.”
“And that’s exactly the problem, because the rules and laws, Brian, don’t understand emotions. The Irvine 11, I can agree that they weren’t justified by the law, but they were justified by their emotions. It’s too bad that our fucked up system prefers only to look at the law, which is in and of itself imperfect.”
At this point, I was checking my rearview mirror to see if Sang was awake to watch me, for the millionth time, get owned by Trung in a car ride between NorCal and SoCal. Fortunately, he was sleeping, or at least he was pretending to be sleeping.
The first to-do item on the agenda after arriving back in NorCal was always to go downtown and get authentic Mexican food, specifically for me, a Super Burrito with chorizo. Trung and I picked up our orders along with a bottle of sauce and sat down at a table inside, watching the line stretch out the door with sobering students just getting back from the club. We ate in silence for our first few bites, but then I brought up something that had been on my mind for a while.
2010 was ending explosively with protests over fee increases and budget cuts, which erupted all over California in the last few months of November and December, and one of the controversies that stemmed from the protests was an incident where an officer, Jared Kemper, pulled out and aimed a gun at unarmed protesters at UCSF. When this story initially spread, I naturally reacted by thinking, whatever the protestors did, it must have been deserving enough to provoke Kemper’s response.
I discussed with Trung, over burritos and quesadillas, what the rebuttal for my reaction would be, because I wanted to instead be able to believe the rebuttal. He reminded me, first of all, that police officers weren’t robots that operated one hundred percent by the law; they were human too, capable of making mistakes, and that’s what Kemper did. It was something human within Kemper, a kind of fear or frustration, exacerbated by a realization that he had no training in handling the type of situation he was in, that made him desperately reach for his gun. In this case, however, his reaction was still inappropriate and inexcusable, Trung concluded, because it unnecessarily endangered lives, and under no circumstances would a police officer have a lawful reason to draw his gun on unarmed student protestors. Simple as that.
I nodded. Trung remarked that it was nice to see me trying to see things in a different light, because even if it was just half a year ago, I still would’ve been rolling my eyes at students playing victim and whining about having a gun pulled on them. And if it had been high school, he added, I still would’ve been parading racial colorblindness.
“Remember in high school when all your friends were taking that Asian American summer leadership program at DeAnza? You’d very openly accuse them of wasting their time because all they did was, and I quote you, ‘get together with other fob Asians and whine about racism.’ ‘Maybe if they integrated better and got over their race and other people’s races they could actually accomplish something blah blah blah only one race—the human race!—blah blah blah and I’m insensitive to race and ethnic issues.’ You’ve come a long way since then, Brian, and I know I don’t deserve all the credit, I’m sure, but I still like to say you changed all thanks to me.”
I shrugged. Trung might’ve been right. Something that I didn’t wanna tell him but had also been on my mind was the DREAM act, a bill that would’ve provided illegal “aliens” an opportunity for permanent residence if they satisfied certain conditions, one of which was getting into a four-year college and finishing at least two years. The bill was defeated in Senate one day prior, and how I felt about the news shocked me—I actually felt angry, upset. I don’t know if it was because I knew that Trung, who had been posting a bunch of stuff about the DREAM act on his Facebook and Tumblr, really hoped it would pass; or because throughout my last three years of teaching and tutoring, I’ve taught one or two outstanding students who weren’t legal residents in the United States. Whether or not I changed because of Trung or something else, however, there was at least the one important thing I learned to fully understand: Fuck the system.
Tháng Tư Đen: Part 2
Sunday, May 2, 2010
(Continued from Tháng Tư Đen: Part 1.)
In Duy’s reeducation camp, there was a Christian nun undergoing religious prosecution. Any mention of Christianity was strictly forbidden, but she refused to renounce her faith. Every day she would march through camp, telling each and every prisoner, “May the lord be with you.” Whenever the nun approached Duy, he would feel his spirits uplifted, even though he was not a religious man. He could not believe in a God at a time like this, but he deeply admired the nun for standing up for what she believed in.
What the nun was doing was no secret, however, especially since spies posing as prisoners continually reported that she was still expressing her faith to all the other prisoners. She wielded words and faith instead of guns and knives, but the Communists considered her just as dangerous. They beat her, chained her, and cut her food rations, but she did not relent.
One morning, my dad heard her cries ringing throughout the fields during call time. Already there were Communist guards on their feet running toward her. “Believe in the lord Jesus Christ, and we will be saved!” she proclaimed. “He is the one who feels our needs, our pains, and our weaknesses! Jesus Christ, our sav—” She fell to the ground as the guards ambushed her and dragged her away. They threw her into solitary confinement, and my dad was sure that he’d never hear from her again.
Duy had many friends who died. Some died from malaria, tuberculosis, or malnutrition. The communists beat some to death and buried others alive. Duy had two friends in the camp who tried to escape. They were captured and shot dead in front of Duy’s own eyes and the eyes of all the prisoners.
Every once in a while, Duy got visitors. Some friends and relatives, who brought him food, clothing, and medicine. But there was one certain visit that was too heartwrenching.
“Chào anh thầy!”
Duy was shocked to see the young faces of his students.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“We came to visit you!”
“Are you okay?” another student asked.
They were all under watch. Any wrong words would result in punishment; both Duy and his students knew this.
“Yes, I am doing fine. You did not have to come visit.” Duy looked at their faces. A thin layer of shimmering tears coated their eyes. They wept silently as they looked at the man who used to be their history teacher. He was so thin now, nothing but flesh and bones. He wore rags, and it was apparent that he hadn’t showered in months.
“We really miss you,” a student said.
“I miss you guys too.” Seeing his students tears, Duy could not help but begin to weep too. His chest tightened, and if he hadn’t felt broken before, he felt broken now.
“Don’t worry, I will be back soon,” Duy assured them.
He was released five years later in 1980, at the age of 35.
My dad was sitting on the couch, watching TV at 1:30 in the afternoon when I came down to say goodbye.
“Ba, I’m heading back down to Irvine now.”
“Ok. Drive safe.”
My dad sat still in place, so I leaned down to give him a hug and a very light peck on the cheek, and he returned it with a peck on mine. Carrying all my stuff, I disappeared out the door with my mom.
There went his son, back to Irvine. Tomorrow, my dad would be waking up in the morning to go to his most recent job: he ran errands and made deliveries for a computer technology business. It was the best job he could get at age 65. After work, he’d come home and make dinner so that there was food on the table for him, his older son, and his wife by the time his wife got home from work at 7. After dinner, he’d watch TV with his wife, and at 10, he’d go to bed and wake up the next morning to start the cycle over again. His job paid him the money he needed to pay for the education of the son he never saw or never really knew, the son who turned out not at all to be the son he had hoped for. His son often saw him as an enemy, and he wondered if his son even ever really cared about the kind of life his own dad lived. His dad didn’t go through the Vietnam War and reeducation camps just to have a son that would wage another war with him.
This past weekend, my dad was surprised to see me trying to reach him on his cell phone. “Hello?”
“Hi Dad, it’s Brian. It’s Black April, and I was wondering if you could tell me about the time you spent in the reeducation camps after the Vietnam War?”
The communists released my dad after he spent five years in the reeducation camp. They felt that they had scared enough sense into him. Not really, as he escaped by boat to Malaysia two months later. As for the Christian nun, she was still alive when my dad left, but he never knew what became of her. The only one thing he knew about what happened to her was that she never gave up.
Sponsored by one of his brothers, Cuong, my dad arrived at Lincoln, Nebraska in October 1980. At the end of 1981, he moved to San Jose. He married a beautiful wife on July 15, 1985, and they had their first son in 1987. On May 12, 1990, they had their second son, which they named Brian.
Our home, from 1990-1996.
In Duy’s reeducation camp, there was a Christian nun undergoing religious prosecution. Any mention of Christianity was strictly forbidden, but she refused to renounce her faith. Every day she would march through camp, telling each and every prisoner, “May the lord be with you.” Whenever the nun approached Duy, he would feel his spirits uplifted, even though he was not a religious man. He could not believe in a God at a time like this, but he deeply admired the nun for standing up for what she believed in.
What the nun was doing was no secret, however, especially since spies posing as prisoners continually reported that she was still expressing her faith to all the other prisoners. She wielded words and faith instead of guns and knives, but the Communists considered her just as dangerous. They beat her, chained her, and cut her food rations, but she did not relent.
One morning, my dad heard her cries ringing throughout the fields during call time. Already there were Communist guards on their feet running toward her. “Believe in the lord Jesus Christ, and we will be saved!” she proclaimed. “He is the one who feels our needs, our pains, and our weaknesses! Jesus Christ, our sav—” She fell to the ground as the guards ambushed her and dragged her away. They threw her into solitary confinement, and my dad was sure that he’d never hear from her again.
Duy had many friends who died. Some died from malaria, tuberculosis, or malnutrition. The communists beat some to death and buried others alive. Duy had two friends in the camp who tried to escape. They were captured and shot dead in front of Duy’s own eyes and the eyes of all the prisoners.Every once in a while, Duy got visitors. Some friends and relatives, who brought him food, clothing, and medicine. But there was one certain visit that was too heartwrenching.
“Chào anh thầy!”
Duy was shocked to see the young faces of his students.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“We came to visit you!”
“Are you okay?” another student asked.
They were all under watch. Any wrong words would result in punishment; both Duy and his students knew this.
“Yes, I am doing fine. You did not have to come visit.” Duy looked at their faces. A thin layer of shimmering tears coated their eyes. They wept silently as they looked at the man who used to be their history teacher. He was so thin now, nothing but flesh and bones. He wore rags, and it was apparent that he hadn’t showered in months.
“We really miss you,” a student said.
“I miss you guys too.” Seeing his students tears, Duy could not help but begin to weep too. His chest tightened, and if he hadn’t felt broken before, he felt broken now.
“Don’t worry, I will be back soon,” Duy assured them.
He was released five years later in 1980, at the age of 35.
My dad was sitting on the couch, watching TV at 1:30 in the afternoon when I came down to say goodbye.
“Ba, I’m heading back down to Irvine now.”
“Ok. Drive safe.”
My dad sat still in place, so I leaned down to give him a hug and a very light peck on the cheek, and he returned it with a peck on mine. Carrying all my stuff, I disappeared out the door with my mom.
There went his son, back to Irvine. Tomorrow, my dad would be waking up in the morning to go to his most recent job: he ran errands and made deliveries for a computer technology business. It was the best job he could get at age 65. After work, he’d come home and make dinner so that there was food on the table for him, his older son, and his wife by the time his wife got home from work at 7. After dinner, he’d watch TV with his wife, and at 10, he’d go to bed and wake up the next morning to start the cycle over again. His job paid him the money he needed to pay for the education of the son he never saw or never really knew, the son who turned out not at all to be the son he had hoped for. His son often saw him as an enemy, and he wondered if his son even ever really cared about the kind of life his own dad lived. His dad didn’t go through the Vietnam War and reeducation camps just to have a son that would wage another war with him.
This past weekend, my dad was surprised to see me trying to reach him on his cell phone. “Hello?”
“Hi Dad, it’s Brian. It’s Black April, and I was wondering if you could tell me about the time you spent in the reeducation camps after the Vietnam War?”
The communists released my dad after he spent five years in the reeducation camp. They felt that they had scared enough sense into him. Not really, as he escaped by boat to Malaysia two months later. As for the Christian nun, she was still alive when my dad left, but he never knew what became of her. The only one thing he knew about what happened to her was that she never gave up.
Sponsored by one of his brothers, Cuong, my dad arrived at Lincoln, Nebraska in October 1980. At the end of 1981, he moved to San Jose. He married a beautiful wife on July 15, 1985, and they had their first son in 1987. On May 12, 1990, they had their second son, which they named Brian.
Our home, from 1990-1996.
Tags:
dancing,
ethnicity,
family,
flashback,
gay,
norcal,
spirituality,
teaching,
winter spring 2010
Tháng Tư Đen: Part 1
Saturday, May 1, 2010
I don’t want to walk in on my son having sex with his new boyfriend.
My dad tapped my bedroom door. No response. He knocked.
A few seconds later, he got my response. “Yeeeeeeah?”
“I’m going to wash your car,” he said, in Vietnamese. “Could you hand me the car keys?”
“Yeah.”
My dad cautiously opened the door, but not even enough to peak in. He waited for me to get my clothes back on or whatever it was I needed to do. He figured that I had brought that Mexicanish Filipino boyfriend of mine over, since I drove up to San Francisco the day before and then came back home at night, instead of staying overnight in SF like how I did all the time during Spring Break.
“Uh, you can come in.”
My dad opened the door, only to see me, and no one else, in my bed. Strange, he had figured that I brought my boyfriend back to spend the night.
I got up and handed him the keys.
“Thank you.” My dad closed the door as he left, leaving me to go back to bed for another few hours.
My car was a mess. What else was new? My dad had long stopped bothering to clean up inside my car, not just because it was so messy, but also because sometimes, he didn’t like what he found inside. Dance workshop fliers, Aristotle and English books, teaching brochures—there was even that one time when I had a bag of condoms and lube sitting around in the backseat—they all served as reminders as to how his son completely steered off the path of a stable future.
But nevertheless, he had to get started on cleaning right away because after this, he had to go to Banh Mi Thanh Lan to pick up six chicken sandwiches for me. They were my favorite.
Following the events in South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the Communists invaded Phan Thiet and stole all of Duy Dinh and his family’s personal belongings. His father was jailed, and his mother committed suicide by burning herself to death.
The communists promised humanity, yet very quickly Duy started to question, “What humanity?” This question, along with the fact that he was a high school history teacher, put him in a reeducation camp, deep inside a forest one hundred miles away from Phan Thiet.
The purpose of reeducation camps, as the name suggested, was to, in the most humanitarian way possible, reeducate and to instill within the South Vietnamese a new sense of a new Vietnamese patriotism. But, it wasn’t as much instilling within as much as it was burning to the ground and trying to recreate a totally different person. The word “reeducation” was just a mask for brainwashing, and “camp” was for jail.
Each camper went through a curriculum of political indoctrination. Upon his arrival at the camp, Duy was forced to write a confession about his supposed crimes against the Communists. He had none, but they insisted that he did. They didn’t relent, so he gave them the fake confession that they wanted: as a history teacher, he taught his students a history that inaccurately painted the Communists of North Vietnam as scoundrels and the citizens of South Vietnam as victims.
Duy and the prisoners were taught about the greatness of the Communist Party, the weaknesses of the United States, and the evils of American imperialism. These lessons intertwined with hard labor. Duy planted cotton trees and made bricks. He and the campers got no breakfast when they woke up, and their lunch and dinner rations were very little. His meals would consist of meager servings of uncooked rice and vegetables, and rat feces were often mixed in. He knew this. All the prisoners knew this. But they all ate it anyway.
The communists had promised that people like Duy would only be staying for a few days. But days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and that was when everyone realized that they were not campers. They were prisoners.
My dad tapped my bedroom door. No response. He knocked.
A few seconds later, he got my response. “Yeeeeeeah?”
“I’m going to wash your car,” he said, in Vietnamese. “Could you hand me the car keys?”
“Yeah.”
My dad cautiously opened the door, but not even enough to peak in. He waited for me to get my clothes back on or whatever it was I needed to do. He figured that I had brought that Mexicanish Filipino boyfriend of mine over, since I drove up to San Francisco the day before and then came back home at night, instead of staying overnight in SF like how I did all the time during Spring Break.
“Uh, you can come in.”
My dad opened the door, only to see me, and no one else, in my bed. Strange, he had figured that I brought my boyfriend back to spend the night.
I got up and handed him the keys.
“Thank you.” My dad closed the door as he left, leaving me to go back to bed for another few hours.
My car was a mess. What else was new? My dad had long stopped bothering to clean up inside my car, not just because it was so messy, but also because sometimes, he didn’t like what he found inside. Dance workshop fliers, Aristotle and English books, teaching brochures—there was even that one time when I had a bag of condoms and lube sitting around in the backseat—they all served as reminders as to how his son completely steered off the path of a stable future.
But nevertheless, he had to get started on cleaning right away because after this, he had to go to Banh Mi Thanh Lan to pick up six chicken sandwiches for me. They were my favorite.
Following the events in South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the Communists invaded Phan Thiet and stole all of Duy Dinh and his family’s personal belongings. His father was jailed, and his mother committed suicide by burning herself to death.
The communists promised humanity, yet very quickly Duy started to question, “What humanity?” This question, along with the fact that he was a high school history teacher, put him in a reeducation camp, deep inside a forest one hundred miles away from Phan Thiet.
The purpose of reeducation camps, as the name suggested, was to, in the most humanitarian way possible, reeducate and to instill within the South Vietnamese a new sense of a new Vietnamese patriotism. But, it wasn’t as much instilling within as much as it was burning to the ground and trying to recreate a totally different person. The word “reeducation” was just a mask for brainwashing, and “camp” was for jail.
Each camper went through a curriculum of political indoctrination. Upon his arrival at the camp, Duy was forced to write a confession about his supposed crimes against the Communists. He had none, but they insisted that he did. They didn’t relent, so he gave them the fake confession that they wanted: as a history teacher, he taught his students a history that inaccurately painted the Communists of North Vietnam as scoundrels and the citizens of South Vietnam as victims.
Duy and the prisoners were taught about the greatness of the Communist Party, the weaknesses of the United States, and the evils of American imperialism. These lessons intertwined with hard labor. Duy planted cotton trees and made bricks. He and the campers got no breakfast when they woke up, and their lunch and dinner rations were very little. His meals would consist of meager servings of uncooked rice and vegetables, and rat feces were often mixed in. He knew this. All the prisoners knew this. But they all ate it anyway.
The communists had promised that people like Duy would only be staying for a few days. But days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and that was when everyone realized that they were not campers. They were prisoners.
Tags:
dancing,
ethnicity,
family,
flashback,
gay,
norcal,
spirituality,
teaching,
winter spring 2010
Photo Album 2000
Monday, December 28, 2009
The last entry was supposed to have a part two that would end with a happy conclusion, buuuuuut...
Yesterday afternoon, I finally told my mom that I was switching my major from French to Literary Journalism. She seemed to get a kick out of it, and she asked me, “So are you going to be like one of those news reporters on TV?” My parents only watched ShowBiz tonight. I didn’t know what my mom was picturing in her head, but I definitely didn’t see myself delving into Jon and Kate and the whole eight’s dramatically stupid public lives. (I already have my own.) The conversation overall ended well, and this was where this entry was supposed to finish.
However, I didn’t see either of my parents for the rest of the night, so I didn’t know what they might’ve discussed at dinner.
Today, we had a crowded dinner table: Salmon and rice, cauliflower stock, my mom and dad, my brother, Trung, and me. I had eaten two hours earlier so I wasn’t really feeling the food, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to eat as a full family.
My dad brought up my major and wanted to confirm that I was changing mine to journalism, to which I corrected him (in English) by adding “literary.” My dad, frustrated, responded by ordering (in Vietnamese), “Just change it to math already and become a math teacher!”
I was little shocked to hear that because I thought my parents would fine with my personal career choices, but at the same time I was also not too surprised. I felt that my parents had been waiting for me to change my major, the family disappointment number two, and that they had thought I would eventually come to my senses and change it to math or some kind of science. I did end up changing it, but it wasn’t the change they wanted. Now they were getting impatient.
To satiate my dad, I told him that I would take the credentialing program to teach math along with the one for English, but I said that math would just be a backup and that English would be my main focus.
He then argued back, bringing the issue of race into the discussion: “They won’t hire you because only white people can teach English!”
Race was an entirely different issue to me, and one which I had always been sensitive about, especially given my past two summers teaching Breakthrough. I wanted to raise my voice to my dad, detailing how incredibly wrong he was and how he understood nothing about race or anything, just as I would’ve done two and a half years ago, but with Trung and my brother sitting at the table, I didn’t want to start a scene.
Plus, I couldn’t argue as fervently as I had with my aunt a long time ago over French because, just as my parents were, I was currently confused about where I was going with my college career and my goal to become a teacher. Literary Journalism major. Not an English major because I would rather write more than read. But I’d probably end up being an English teacher with an LJ major anyway. Raise students to become the best writers but at the same time teach books that bore me to death?
---
“I came out to my parents today, my 18th birthday.” [Not the gay kind of coming out.]
Written May 12th, 2008 (Excerpted)
[At a restaurant for mother’s day.] “Do you want to be an engineer?” my mom asked. No. “Doctor?” No. “Pharmacist?” No. “Engineers can make good money too.” No. “Teacher?”
I looked down at my food and stirred the rice a bit. I looked back up at her and said more timidly, “No.” Right at that moment, I felt something drop down my back, and I turned around to see a baby girl standing on the seat behind me, smiling at me, her right arm extended out and her hand grasped the air. I looked down at my seat and saw a balled up napkin. I smiled at her, and turned back to my seat, still smiling. I thought to myself, What a cute kid—
“Ah! You’re smiling Brian! I can see it! So, that’s it right? You want to be a teacher!” my mom beamed victoriously.
I froze. The smile immediately fell off my face. I slowly looked up at her, and this time, I could only manage, “I don’t know.” The conversation was done. For the rest of the night, we did not speak of Trung or my future career. However, I was deep in thought as I went to bed. The dinner left me feeling optimistic.
The next day, today, I woke up feeling unusual, rejuvenated. I was 18 now. For the last several years of my life, I would wake up on my birthday hardly feeling any different...but today was not the same. I knew that today was the day that I would finally do it—something that I told myself that I would not do until the end of college, for fear that it would be the last bit of shame that I could bring to my parents. It was a secret that tormented the relationship between me and my parents, what put up the iron wall separating us. I was going to...finally confess to them that I did not intend to become the big money-making engineer or doctor or businessman that they hoped I would become, but instead, I intended to major in French and become a French teacher. Live a simple life. Nothing extravagant. Probably in an apartment. Simple and fulfilling.
[At dinner that night] I turned to [my parents], and smiled. “Mom, dad, I’m majoring in French, and I plan to become a French teacher.”
And there was no shock. No screaming. No crying. In their voices, there was only the satisfaction that I finally admitted it to them.
“That’s good Brian,” my mom said. “Being a teacher is a noble job. And I’m glad you’re going into something that you like doing.”
“Are you going to study abroad in France?” my dad added. “You can always stay with one of my sisters. She’s married to a French man. They live together in Luçon.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about doing a year in France. Not too sure about Luçon though,” I replied.
They nodded. And then House M.D. came on TV, and they focused on that. I quickly finished my Pho and left to go upstairs. I didn’t immediately retreat to my room, however. I lingered at the top of the staircase, eavesdropping on my parents to see how they really felt.
My mom was telling my dad how much it made sense. “He took that one French class at San Jose City College for fun. He has all those French novels in his room and he took the AP French test even though he wasn’t in the class. I hear French music in his room every day. It makes sense.”
My dad agreed, and they chattered about it for a little more, but eventually, they both concluded, “Brian is happy when he does French.”
---
As I’m sitting here typing this entry, I can hear my parents in their room muttering about something, and they don’t sound pleased. I imagine that they’re talking shit about me. My parents and I didn’t have a good relationship until the events of my eighteenth birthday, and I don’t want to wreck what we currently have. So I’m going to do what I resort to a lot nowadays: Ignore everything. But that can only work for so long.
And as for what I plan on doing with myself in college and in the future, I dunno—I’m just going to go dance now.
Yesterday afternoon, I finally told my mom that I was switching my major from French to Literary Journalism. She seemed to get a kick out of it, and she asked me, “So are you going to be like one of those news reporters on TV?” My parents only watched ShowBiz tonight. I didn’t know what my mom was picturing in her head, but I definitely didn’t see myself delving into Jon and Kate and the whole eight’s dramatically stupid public lives. (I already have my own.) The conversation overall ended well, and this was where this entry was supposed to finish.
However, I didn’t see either of my parents for the rest of the night, so I didn’t know what they might’ve discussed at dinner.
Today, we had a crowded dinner table: Salmon and rice, cauliflower stock, my mom and dad, my brother, Trung, and me. I had eaten two hours earlier so I wasn’t really feeling the food, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to eat as a full family.
My dad brought up my major and wanted to confirm that I was changing mine to journalism, to which I corrected him (in English) by adding “literary.” My dad, frustrated, responded by ordering (in Vietnamese), “Just change it to math already and become a math teacher!”
I was little shocked to hear that because I thought my parents would fine with my personal career choices, but at the same time I was also not too surprised. I felt that my parents had been waiting for me to change my major, the family disappointment number two, and that they had thought I would eventually come to my senses and change it to math or some kind of science. I did end up changing it, but it wasn’t the change they wanted. Now they were getting impatient.
To satiate my dad, I told him that I would take the credentialing program to teach math along with the one for English, but I said that math would just be a backup and that English would be my main focus.
He then argued back, bringing the issue of race into the discussion: “They won’t hire you because only white people can teach English!”
Race was an entirely different issue to me, and one which I had always been sensitive about, especially given my past two summers teaching Breakthrough. I wanted to raise my voice to my dad, detailing how incredibly wrong he was and how he understood nothing about race or anything, just as I would’ve done two and a half years ago, but with Trung and my brother sitting at the table, I didn’t want to start a scene.
Plus, I couldn’t argue as fervently as I had with my aunt a long time ago over French because, just as my parents were, I was currently confused about where I was going with my college career and my goal to become a teacher. Literary Journalism major. Not an English major because I would rather write more than read. But I’d probably end up being an English teacher with an LJ major anyway. Raise students to become the best writers but at the same time teach books that bore me to death?
---
“I came out to my parents today, my 18th birthday.” [Not the gay kind of coming out.]
Written May 12th, 2008 (Excerpted)
[At a restaurant for mother’s day.] “Do you want to be an engineer?” my mom asked. No. “Doctor?” No. “Pharmacist?” No. “Engineers can make good money too.” No. “Teacher?”
I looked down at my food and stirred the rice a bit. I looked back up at her and said more timidly, “No.” Right at that moment, I felt something drop down my back, and I turned around to see a baby girl standing on the seat behind me, smiling at me, her right arm extended out and her hand grasped the air. I looked down at my seat and saw a balled up napkin. I smiled at her, and turned back to my seat, still smiling. I thought to myself, What a cute kid—
“Ah! You’re smiling Brian! I can see it! So, that’s it right? You want to be a teacher!” my mom beamed victoriously.
I froze. The smile immediately fell off my face. I slowly looked up at her, and this time, I could only manage, “I don’t know.” The conversation was done. For the rest of the night, we did not speak of Trung or my future career. However, I was deep in thought as I went to bed. The dinner left me feeling optimistic.
The next day, today, I woke up feeling unusual, rejuvenated. I was 18 now. For the last several years of my life, I would wake up on my birthday hardly feeling any different...but today was not the same. I knew that today was the day that I would finally do it—something that I told myself that I would not do until the end of college, for fear that it would be the last bit of shame that I could bring to my parents. It was a secret that tormented the relationship between me and my parents, what put up the iron wall separating us. I was going to...finally confess to them that I did not intend to become the big money-making engineer or doctor or businessman that they hoped I would become, but instead, I intended to major in French and become a French teacher. Live a simple life. Nothing extravagant. Probably in an apartment. Simple and fulfilling.
[At dinner that night] I turned to [my parents], and smiled. “Mom, dad, I’m majoring in French, and I plan to become a French teacher.”
And there was no shock. No screaming. No crying. In their voices, there was only the satisfaction that I finally admitted it to them.
“That’s good Brian,” my mom said. “Being a teacher is a noble job. And I’m glad you’re going into something that you like doing.”
“Are you going to study abroad in France?” my dad added. “You can always stay with one of my sisters. She’s married to a French man. They live together in Luçon.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about doing a year in France. Not too sure about Luçon though,” I replied.
They nodded. And then House M.D. came on TV, and they focused on that. I quickly finished my Pho and left to go upstairs. I didn’t immediately retreat to my room, however. I lingered at the top of the staircase, eavesdropping on my parents to see how they really felt.
My mom was telling my dad how much it made sense. “He took that one French class at San Jose City College for fun. He has all those French novels in his room and he took the AP French test even though he wasn’t in the class. I hear French music in his room every day. It makes sense.”
My dad agreed, and they chattered about it for a little more, but eventually, they both concluded, “Brian is happy when he does French.”
---
As I’m sitting here typing this entry, I can hear my parents in their room muttering about something, and they don’t sound pleased. I imagine that they’re talking shit about me. My parents and I didn’t have a good relationship until the events of my eighteenth birthday, and I don’t want to wreck what we currently have. So I’m going to do what I resort to a lot nowadays: Ignore everything. But that can only work for so long.
And as for what I plan on doing with myself in college and in the future, I dunno—I’m just going to go dance now.
White People
Friday, July 17, 2009
Race plays a prominent role at Breakthrough, whether or not that makes some people uncomfortable. Regardless, it is as tricky to work with as it is necessary to acknowledge.
Before I started working at Breakthrough last summer, I’ve always believed that all students of all different ethnicities should be looked at as equals and treated no differently from each other. Okay, that’s still pretty true for me. But I used to believe, and I still think a lot of teachers today believe, that, as way of making a completely perfect world, everyone must be colorblind. Colorblindness is key.
All that matters is your education. Your grades. I don’t need to think of your race when I teach you. I don’t need to acknowledge it. All that’s bullshit reasoning now.
90% of Breakthrough students are of color. 79% are Latino. 68% receive free or reduced lunch. And 77% speak English as a second language.
In my writing class two weeks ago, we read excerpts from The Bluest Eye, and of course, race issues came up. However, that discussion went a direction that I didn’t expect it to go.
My students hate white people. And since there were no white students in my Block C, they didn’t feel any reason to not shout it out and declare it with so much rigidness, a rigidness that could only be supported by their past experiences.
Yesterday, Wednesday, Breakthrough had a field trip day, “Occupational Career Day.” While some large groups got some pretty cool places to go to, such as Google, Yahoo, and Adobe, I had a small group of three students, and I had to take them to the San Jose Water Company. Great.
On the bus ride there—okay, first thing’s first. I made my group board the bus going in the wrong direction. Oops. One of my students, let’s call him Cecil, who is also a student from my Block C class (irony: his pseudonym is a white name), kept on thinking out loud, “I think we’re going the wrong direction.” It wasn’t until he said with confidence, “Alright, I know we’re going the wrong direction.”
The bus driver confirmed it, and we got off. I thought the kids were going to kill me and hate me for the rest of the day, but once we got on the right bus, things were going smoothly again.
This particularly bus was driving around in the area of Valley Fair Mall and Santana Row (the rich people land that I referred to in the previous entry), so I brought up Valley Fair. Cecil told me this story:
“One time, my dad brought me to Valley Fair, but before getting out of our car, he asked me, ‘Do you think you can handle this?’ I didn’t think there was nothing to be afraid of, so I said yeah. When I went inside, I got scared. I couldn’t handle it. I made my dad drive me to Oakridge Mall instead.”
When I asked him what he was so afraid of, he responded, “White people.”
Why all the hate for white people? I knew. And I felt for him. It wasn’t hard to fill in the gaps.
---
“Ironically, I think none of this would’ve happened if…” (Excerpted)
Written on March 28th, 2006
I go out to Oakridge at least twice a week and come home anywhere between 10 and 12. My mom does not utter any single sign of protest at all, so I was always thinking, "Cool, I have the best Asian mom ever."
I've finally had to have my brother call me while I'm away at some key club event whatever and listen to him as he explains that my mom would, walk into his room, tears streaming down her cheeks, and explode with random shit about how she's so afraid that I'm really smoking pot with the true Mexicans and Blacks that Peter and John are.
So at this point, I've had two things that have really been bothering me about my mom:
-She still has a problem with Peter, John, and Miranda, the Mexican, Black, and White, respectively. I've tried so fucking much to show my mom that they're not a bad influence: I had them over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I told her about how we've eaten dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and how Peter paid for my dinner. I'm constantly telling her, "Yeah, John's driving me," or, "Yeah, Miranda's driving me."—no fucking car accident to date. And of course, every weekend: "I'm at the mall with John, Peter, and Miranda." My mom must actually be that fucking stupid to not be able to determine that I'm perfectly sober each time I come home after a day at the mall with those three.
So my brother tells me that she told him that she would rather have him hang out with his friends, who amazingly enough, are all Asian. Here, my mom also managed to contradict herself. A while back, she told me she thought Miranda was weird (in whatever worst way possible) because she was some White 18-year-old and was still hanging out with 15-year-olds like me. But what the fuck, my mom would rather have my brother's Asian friends (18-19) take me out?
But my mom says she's perfectly cool with Peter, John, and Miranda being Mexican, Black, and White. Really Really? My fucking ass.
My mom so desperately cries, "Why aren't you the nice little boy that you were when you were 9?" Well, I grew, I became less naïve, and I was finally able to see all the gaping holes in my parents' logic.
---
And three years later, after having gazed into those “gaping holes” for so long, I now know how they got there.
Before I started working at Breakthrough last summer, I’ve always believed that all students of all different ethnicities should be looked at as equals and treated no differently from each other. Okay, that’s still pretty true for me. But I used to believe, and I still think a lot of teachers today believe, that, as way of making a completely perfect world, everyone must be colorblind. Colorblindness is key.
All that matters is your education. Your grades. I don’t need to think of your race when I teach you. I don’t need to acknowledge it. All that’s bullshit reasoning now.
90% of Breakthrough students are of color. 79% are Latino. 68% receive free or reduced lunch. And 77% speak English as a second language.
In my writing class two weeks ago, we read excerpts from The Bluest Eye, and of course, race issues came up. However, that discussion went a direction that I didn’t expect it to go.
My students hate white people. And since there were no white students in my Block C, they didn’t feel any reason to not shout it out and declare it with so much rigidness, a rigidness that could only be supported by their past experiences.
Yesterday, Wednesday, Breakthrough had a field trip day, “Occupational Career Day.” While some large groups got some pretty cool places to go to, such as Google, Yahoo, and Adobe, I had a small group of three students, and I had to take them to the San Jose Water Company. Great.
On the bus ride there—okay, first thing’s first. I made my group board the bus going in the wrong direction. Oops. One of my students, let’s call him Cecil, who is also a student from my Block C class (irony: his pseudonym is a white name), kept on thinking out loud, “I think we’re going the wrong direction.” It wasn’t until he said with confidence, “Alright, I know we’re going the wrong direction.”
The bus driver confirmed it, and we got off. I thought the kids were going to kill me and hate me for the rest of the day, but once we got on the right bus, things were going smoothly again.
This particularly bus was driving around in the area of Valley Fair Mall and Santana Row (the rich people land that I referred to in the previous entry), so I brought up Valley Fair. Cecil told me this story:
“One time, my dad brought me to Valley Fair, but before getting out of our car, he asked me, ‘Do you think you can handle this?’ I didn’t think there was nothing to be afraid of, so I said yeah. When I went inside, I got scared. I couldn’t handle it. I made my dad drive me to Oakridge Mall instead.”
When I asked him what he was so afraid of, he responded, “White people.”
Why all the hate for white people? I knew. And I felt for him. It wasn’t hard to fill in the gaps.
---
“Ironically, I think none of this would’ve happened if…” (Excerpted)
Written on March 28th, 2006
I go out to Oakridge at least twice a week and come home anywhere between 10 and 12. My mom does not utter any single sign of protest at all, so I was always thinking, "Cool, I have the best Asian mom ever."
I've finally had to have my brother call me while I'm away at some key club event whatever and listen to him as he explains that my mom would, walk into his room, tears streaming down her cheeks, and explode with random shit about how she's so afraid that I'm really smoking pot with the true Mexicans and Blacks that Peter and John are.
So at this point, I've had two things that have really been bothering me about my mom:
-She still has a problem with Peter, John, and Miranda, the Mexican, Black, and White, respectively. I've tried so fucking much to show my mom that they're not a bad influence: I had them over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I told her about how we've eaten dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and how Peter paid for my dinner. I'm constantly telling her, "Yeah, John's driving me," or, "Yeah, Miranda's driving me."—no fucking car accident to date. And of course, every weekend: "I'm at the mall with John, Peter, and Miranda." My mom must actually be that fucking stupid to not be able to determine that I'm perfectly sober each time I come home after a day at the mall with those three.
So my brother tells me that she told him that she would rather have him hang out with his friends, who amazingly enough, are all Asian. Here, my mom also managed to contradict herself. A while back, she told me she thought Miranda was weird (in whatever worst way possible) because she was some White 18-year-old and was still hanging out with 15-year-olds like me. But what the fuck, my mom would rather have my brother's Asian friends (18-19) take me out?
But my mom says she's perfectly cool with Peter, John, and Miranda being Mexican, Black, and White. Really Really? My fucking ass.
My mom so desperately cries, "Why aren't you the nice little boy that you were when you were 9?" Well, I grew, I became less naïve, and I was finally able to see all the gaping holes in my parents' logic.
---
And three years later, after having gazed into those “gaping holes” for so long, I now know how they got there.
Tags:
black john,
breakthrough,
ethnicity,
family,
flashback,
miranda,
norcal,
oakridge,
peter,
repost,
summer 2009,
teaching
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