31 1 / 2012
When was the last time you saw your mother?
I just learned very recently that my mother never got to say good bye to her mother. My grandmother. My ba ngoai.
When she was about 26, my mom’s oldest sister Quyen started sneaking all her siblings onto boats. Pair by pair. Week by week. From camp to camp. My mother’s voyage was accompanied by her little nephew Eric, of 11 years old. Her father and mother were against all of this because they had once fled from China before, so they understood the dangers and grief of such life-threatening flights. They even lost a few babies (who would’ve been my aunt and uncle) along the way. Thus, my mother and her siblings all started to escape one by one without saying good bye to their mother and father. My grandparents.
I was shocked to learn this. I always knew that my mother fled vietnam because it was too hard for her to live there post war and with the viet cong and what not. But i never knew she escaped from her parents.
Then, today we were talking about her mother. When I was just a baby, about 1 year old, my grandmother started to get sick. At this point, my mom was 34 years old living in San Jose with my father. About half of her sibling were scattered in the east coast and in LA. So 3 of her siblings had to go to the Vietnamese embassy to plead to go back to vietnam, due to family emergency. My mother wanted so badly to go back to VN to see her dying mother, for one last time. However, my dad worked all the time and I was a newborn. My mother had no friends or family in the area… she had no choice. It killed both of them to be stuck in America while her mother’s body was leaving this earth.
A month later, my grandma died and all of the sibling in America didn’t have the resources to go home to her funeral in vn. During this time period, it was hard to make international calls. It was hard to contact family, send pictures, send money, etc…etc…
It’s crazy when you hear a story over and over again…and after year and years you realize there were parts that weren’t told. This puts such a new perspective into my life.
Was life so bad, she was willing not only to leave her country, but her parents as well?
My throat closed up as I listened to this expansion of this story and I couldn’t bring myself to ask her: When was the last time you saw your mother?
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26 1 / 2012
Cynthia Nixon: Sexuality as a Choice
Here’s one of the many articles responding to a recent speech that Cynthia Nixon from Sex and the City read:
““I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.””
I’ve been reading perspectives on both sides, and I’ve exhausted the debated for myself. However, one thing that I want to bring into the conversation is the PRIVILEGE of choice and the marginalize, intersectionality of gayness. I.e. Being queer and Asian.
My navigation in life as a queer, Asian woman has heightened as I’ve honed (for a lack of a better word) in on my queerness during my years in college. I’m really thankful for having been surrounded by positive experiences that helped me grow and critical realize my identity. Frankly, the biggest struggle in my journey is the paradox of having a choice without feeling I actually have a choice. And that has to do with being Vietnamese American. You follow? Time for my infamous lists… the struggle of choice:
1) My Homophobia, Vietnamese dad. I don’t know if homophobic would necessarily be the right word. I mean, it’s not like he runs away at the site of gay people (but who does, anyway?). Like all other people who fall under the category of homophobia, my father thinks being gay disgusting, wrong, and a menace to society. Today as I was helping out at the store, I pointed out to him 2 gay male couples. He said something along the lines of,
“Do they bribe their partners to sleep with them? it’s so sad that they havea this disease. They can’t get rid of it can they. Are they born with it?”
And because of language barriers, I just end up snaring at him and say “Dad, where the hell do you hear these things?!” Ba nghe gi ky qua?!
You can’t really blame him. He grew up in a completely different context. But this kind of conversation happens more often than I’d like. And afterwards, I just feel an overwhelming feeling that drives me back into the darkest corner of the closet, fearing I can never, ever in my lifetime “come out.”
2) Being Vietnamese. I assume being queer anywhere around the world sucks. I wouldn’t really know since I’ve only been to Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, and Thailand. (Actually being queer in Thailand is awesome.) But as I’ve learned in Vietnam, if you’re Vietnamese anywhere in the world, you understand for the most part what it means to be Vietnamese…and it’s different for everyone. For me, being Vietnamese means you respect your parents and work as a collective unit. See, this provides a dilemma for me as a Vietnamese American woman. America promotes individualism and independence. Those two clashing values alone are enough for me to break down and cry about once a year as I enter pre-college life crisis/ post-college life crisis/ quarter-life crisis/ etc…
Damn it, I’m 22 going on 23. In Vietnam I should be popping babies out right now. In Vietnam America, I should be … gee I dunno, the SAME?! But then there’s a thing called “The New Century” and I think my parents understand that for the most part and are trying to keep hip-up-to-date-with-the-age . But not the gay part. I’m already stressing just thinking about all these pressures. I can choose who I love. If I stick with the individualist part of my heart I would say fuck it I’ll marry who I want. If I want to make my parents happy and yadda yadda yadda… I can CHOOSE to marry a man and have babies in my house in the suburbs.
People say, “Tracy, do what makes you happy!” I’m sorry, but when you grow up with the burden of your parents’ hardships.. it’s hard not to dedicate your life to making them happy. I understand it’s my own internal oppression that I’ve got to deal with.
3) Sexuality fluidity. “A label for people who don’t like labels” (Irene Shih). I can agree with Cynthia Nixon: I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay and right now I’m choosing…. whatever my heart wants. I’ve always concluded that it’s the person, not the gender. So what does this mean for CHOICE? Well, when (or if ever) I come out to my parents and they’ll force me to marry a man… I’ll have no choice. I will not be able to live with their hurt and disappointment and give into what they want. If I decide to live up to my own agency, I’ll have a choice and do what I want! (and buy my parents’ happiness back with cars and houses…..)
Conclusion? Some queers won’t agree. Some Asians won’t agree. Everyone has their own separate struggle of choice. Everyone has different privileges. I know I have a choice. It’s a fact for everyone born in this world. We have choices. We have willpower. We have agency. (Except people who are forced into violence, abuse, labor, etc). For those who have to deal with the same familial challenges (queer or not), I applaud you for exercising your freedom of choice. And for those who have been kicked out, abuse, or discriminated from coming out, your choices remain courageous and admirable. It’s more than just a choosing who you love. It’s choosing your liberation.
But before I can learn how to be selfish and please myself, I feel like I have no choice. And the closet remains closed.
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26 1 / 2012
"Speaking from the perspective and the tradition of lesbians of color, most if not all rationales for excluding transsexual women are not only transphobic, but also racist. To argue that transsexual women should not enter the Land because their experiences are different would have to assume that all other women’s experiences are the same, and this is a racist assumption. The argument that transsexual women have experienced some degree of male privilege should not bar them from our communities once we realize that not all women are equally privileged or oppressed. To suggest that the safety of the Land would be compromised overlooks, perhaps intentionally, ways in which women can act out violence and oppressions against each other. Even the argument that “the presence of a penis would trigger the women” is flawed because it neglects the fact that white skin is just as much a reminder of violence as a penis. The racist history of lesbian-feminism has taught us that any white woman making these excuses for one oppression have made and will make the same excuse for other oppressions such as racism, classism, and ableism."
(Source: eminism.org, via tarae)
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26 1 / 2012
"Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere."
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25 1 / 2012
SOTU Highlights
Yay troops are home. If we all worked as hard as them, our country would be tight. Osama is dead. Sorry about the recession. Ya greedy wall street knuckheads fucked up because its okay there are 3 mil more jobs! Invest in manufacturing (yeah get that outsourcing shit outta here…. or back here…hah). We’re working on policies to improve education— its been the best it has been in this generation. Oh, eff that exponential tuition increase. (BOO TO the live twitter feeds that left out the education part. SHAME.) Immigration and deportation - it aint making sense. Yee immigration reform! Let’s do it. Clean energy, I’m down. We can create a cycle of more jobs, less pollution, and corporate environmental responsibility! Oh btw, everything after WW2 was awesome, so let’s expect the same. And uh.. you millionaires should pay more taxes to support Medicare.
Now everyone play nice! Or else you in big trouble and we’re gonna have to regulate you.
Holla back. I got yo back. Let’s do this!
——
Of course, I got lazy towards the end. But hope that sums it up for y’all. Obama’s SOTU is always like a good pep talk before the big game.
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24 1 / 2012
My dad’s age.
My dad’s mom died a few months after giving birth to him. Since it was during the war, no one ever kept track of my dad’s birth date. Gramps just told him he was the year of the dog. Which should have meant that he was born in 1948. He grew up thinking he was the year of the dog. In vietnamese culture this is a big deal because ur zodiac determines your faith..love conpatability, luck, etc.
During my last month in Vietnam, i visited my dad’s birth spot in Sa Dec where his eldest brother still lives. Damn, dad was in the cuts. Rice fields and errthang. Anyway, grandma’s tomb was built right in front of the house so i lit incenses and took a picture. However, i was confused because it said that she died in 1947. I showed it to dad when i came home and since then he has been trying to figure out his zodiac.
“Im not a dog???”
We still arent sure what’s his sign because we dont know how many months it was that dad got to be with grandma before she died. Also it depends when the first day of the lunar year was that year. It’s funny because my mom is hella annoyed and tells him to get over it.
But damn, what if i thought i was snake all my life and then i realize im a..mouse. ha.
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24 1 / 2012
I’m back.
Pre-blog: I’ve signed onto my first ever smart phone. It’s horrible in a lot of ways. And it’s great … i guess. Well anyway, I’m trying to be more integrated with social media. If i dont keep up, i’ll start feeling OLD. Ah, too late.
It’s been over a week since I’ve been back from Vietnam. (Excuse my poor English..) How is it? Well, it’s been a lot of jet lag and scarfing my face with food. I meant to exercise, find a job, and reconnect with friends… but hey, i’ll give myself a little more time than that!
I’m not usually good with blogging or being articulate with my thoughts… but numbered lists usually suffice:
1) Reflections. I think these next few months will be the real reflection period. The last 5 months were adventure after adventure. Squeezed in between a surprisingly excessive amount of academia (thanks to Thay G). But it’s my return to America that I’m starting to FEEL the experience. I’m reflecting without even knowing it. Whenever I’m eating, conversing with parents, or buying stuff… I somehow connect it with Vietnam. Lunar New Years was especially special this year. I’m regretful not to have spent it IN vietnam, but Tet had a whole new meaning this year. I know my internal reflections are going to keep coming to me for a while. And I’m excited for that journey in itself. All in all, EAP VIETNAM WAS LIFE-CHANGING-EPIC.
2) ….job, family, love life, etc…
Eh, i’m already bored with my list/blogging. More later.
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