Embracing the Line
“Who am I?” and “who do I want to be?” has ironically always been the guiding questions as to who I currently am. I think, myself a person that is intensely self aware almost to a fault. I come from a large family of siblings and extended family, all lead by my grandmother, our matriarch. She guided her children through the communist infested jungles of Laos with orphans on her back and a hope that this place called “Thailand” actually existed.My grandma is the second wife; she herself bore 7 children, only 5 made it to the States. Along the way she also adopted and cared for orphans left behind, including the children of the now deceased first wife. I couldn’t tell you how many uncles and aunts and cousins I officially have, but I’m grateful for that. I became aware how much I deeply love and respect all of my family members at a very young age. So who am I, is a first-generation immigrant from a family of fierce survivors. This I find, is sometimes paradoxical to who do I want to be and that’s the line that I’ve been fighting with for what seems like my whole life.
When I was a child, I lived right next door to my grandma and aunts, we spoke everyday, and I was at their house more than mine. My grandma walked me to preschool and kindergarten religiously. We would go to the Vietnamese market down the street and she’s always buy me sweet rice buns (much to the dismay of my mom) and we talked the whole way. My mom and aunts were also always around and we laughed and joked and one of them even helped me pull out all of my baby teeth! Then there was a day when I got home from my preschool class, and was enthusiastically doing my homework when I came to a problem I couldn’t figure out; as much as I tried I couldn’t write the lower case “q”. Logically I went and asked my mom to help me and as much as she tried, she also could not make her hands write the lower case “q”. See, my mom was the second oldest daughter, her life was on the farm, she wasn’t formally educated and at that time she hadn’t taken any “Americanization” courses. And so here I was standing in front of my mom begging her to help me and when she really couldn’t. I started crying out of frustration because I knew that my aunts and my dear grandma couldn’t help me either. It was then that I found the line. I realized at 4 years old how different the course of my life is going to be, in comparison to my mom’s. I loved them so much and I don’t resent them at all, but I had to figure out how to make it on my own, how to navigate this new world, cause I loved what it had to offer and I’m not leaving.
Over the years, I began to speak to my family less, instead devoting my time to studying and trying to master this whole “English” thing. I loved going to school and I did well by fully immersing myself in leadership and sports. I would still see them at large family gatherings and we’d share jokes and they would ask me about school or whatever, but one day I noticed that I had to literally translate a English word to Hmong in my head before saying it out loud. Before that, these translations were seamless, I didn’t have to think or focus on my Hmong. I was losing who I was because of whom I wanted to be and my family dynamics suffer for it. Sometimes even now I find that I cannot fully express myself to my own mom because I literally don’t know the words. This can sometimes lead to a lot of frustrations and misunderstanding within the home. I never wanted to faze my family out this new life I was building. I wanted to be this person so that I could help them; I want to tell their stories. I want to write about this struggle and being an immigrant and being Hmong. I’m now trying harder to be better, to call my grandma and use Hmong words and ask her about her life and her story. I embrace the jokes about my “white-washed” Hmong, because I know that they mean well, they’re not letting me forget them.
So back to this line, this line that I’ve found that seems to comes with education and Americanization, it wants to contain me and force me to forget the backs I rode on to get here. It wants to me to be so good at English that I can’t even say “Nyob Zoo” to my own mom. But I’m thankful for the line, I guess because it taught me that with my education and all my new revolutionary American ways I can say “screw the line.” I love my family, I love the ridiculous things we say and do each other, and I’ll carry their stories with me and we’ll dance all over that fucking line.
