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“It was a rough marriage. She left him...” My mom spoke into the phone in Vietnamese, “Poor thing, he lives alone now. He rents the house from an old landlady.”

“Is she talking about Chú Bích?” I asked my sister from the backseat.

Chú Bích is my uncle—”chú” implied that he was my dad’s younger brother. I can’t recollect any memory of him but I distinctly remember getting trouble for stealing a picture of him and his bride because it was the prettiest thing five year old me had seen. He had let me keep it and take it with me to America. It still sits in one of the many dusty albums closed away in my parents’ bedroom.

I stared out the window on the drive home, but still intently listening to the conversation, trying to glean as much information as I could. We were driving home from Wal-Mart where we had loaded up on supplies for our upcoming trip to Vietnam.

“Candy,” my mom said as she rushed to that very aisle, “We have to buy a lot of candies to give to the kids over there.”

I finally understood--even candy was a luxury for them. This made me anxious, this unfathomable disparity between living standards. What if I was seen as too snobby? And worse yet, what if I wasn’t able to conciliate with the conditions there? However, despite these worries, I looked forward to the trip.

It was our family’s first return in nearly ten years and mine since I was five years old. The first five years of my life, I can barely recollect even as I searched into my deepest archives.

The memories I still held on to were like vivid snapshots—memories of eating mãng cầu on the doorsteps of our pastel colored home, facing our neighbors’ houses across the narrow street; of holding onto my sister’s hand as we walked around the corner to a ma and pop store to buy our favorite snacks; of the old peddler lady who sold my favorite dessert, Chè đậu đen, the kind with the soft and chewy black beans. They were fleeing memories, moments captured within the seconds that somehow managed to escape the doom of time. They were all I had, yet they weren’t enough.

During this trip, I was able to replenish my remembrance. Many of these recollections consisted of beautiful sceneries, from the dusty, unpaved roads of the countryside to boundless night skies; moreover, there were the nostalgic memories of the names and faces of whom I had never met, yet inexplicably had played a part in my family’s past. But perhaps the most profound experience was the two week stay in Saigon at Chú Bích’s two-room home, varnished with blue and green floor tiles. It was on these tiles that I had helped lay out breakfast each morning; on these tiles I had taught my cousins to play Double Speed, a card game that we played zealously at every free moment we had. In a place that was so different from what I was accustomed to, I had found comfort and a familial love that resonated through its walls. I couldn’t fully understand all the struggles or pain he had gone through, but Chú Bích had welcomed us into his home and gave us all he had. He represented a fragment of Vietnam that, in my naivete, I failed to grasp: through all the turmoil and difficulties, he still had the strength to love and the perseverance to toil on. Within these weeks, my sense of materialism tumbled away, and all that was left were the people that I love and the place that I had come from.

That summer, I fell in love with Vietnam. Struggling to find its own economic standing, It is a country ravaged by internal conflict, but it was my own. That summer, I found a missing piece of my childhood, and a neglected piece of myself.

In all my struggles and perseverance to do well in my studies and strive to attend the best colleges in America, I had forgotten much of my roots, as Vietnamese classes gave way to school projects during the weekend and cultural festivals gave way to study dates at Starbucks. My parents, in their struggle to survive in a foreign country and raise their two daughters, could not afford the time to reinforce what they had so cherished. They gave up everything they had—money, family, childhood friends— for the sake of my future. However at some point, I realized that I was old enough to understand the importance of tradition and heritage. It was now my own responsibility to not only preserve my roots, but bridge the gap between the country I was born in and the one I live in.




And here's this year's poetry contest winner.

Photo courtesy of eutrophication&hypoxia via Creative Commons.

Growing up as the headstrong daughter of Chinese immigrants, I – surprisingly – didn’t question my parents’ strict emphasis on academic achievement. I didn’t fight back against the forced piano lessons, I didn’t begrudge the embargo on sleepovers, and I didn’t sulk (for long, anyway) when I brought home an A-studded report card and got only distracted nods in response. No, I accepted everything except the food.

I first realized my own gastronomical ignorance in elementary school, when my friends discussed their favorite restaurants and I could only name the two fast-food places I passed daily on my way to school. Before that, I had lived complacently under what I assumed were the unspoken, unquestioned rules of my household: No sodas, candies, or carb-based munchies could be found in the pantry. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served at prescribed times, with one afternoon snack of fruit and no nibbling allowed in between. Getting a hamburger from McDonalds was a twice-a-year treat for outstanding behavior (like winning a spelling bee) or consolation for a serious misfortune (like getting stitches when I cut my scalp open). And formal restaurants? I was lucky I knew what real, “Western” silverware looked like.

“Why don’t we ever eat out?” I demanded once, in a fit of indignation.

“Do you want to weigh 500 pounds? Americans put so much oil and flavorings in their cooking, it’s disgusting,” said my mother in dismissive Chinese. “And how much money we’d waste if we ate out every week, like American families do! Do you think we’re rich?”

My parents loosened up sometimes – if only to sample genuine Chinese restaurants where the owners and servers all spoke Chinese. They’d order standard mainland dishes, furrow their brows as they ate, and spend the rest of the night debating the authenticity of the food. For someone like me, with a sweet tooth and an adventurous appetite, it simply wasn’t enough.

I could pinpoint with 99% accuracy what we’d be having for dinner any given night, before even coming home from school. There was always the essential staple, rice. Then there was steamed or stir-fried bok choy (and if not bok choy, some other leafy green vegetable). Lastly, a meat dish, maybe mixed with more vegetables and maybe standing alone. On the rare occasions that we didn’t eat rice, we ate dumplings or noodles. And oh, how I hated fulfilling popular stereotypes – but we did all of the above with chopsticks.

My classmates complained about eating Brussels sprouts; they whined about not being able to have dessert before the entrée. My dreams (okay, perhaps my speculations when I got bored) were made of the stews, casseroles, lasagnas, pizzas, and steaks they ate at home. My peers gasped at the multisyllabic words I recited and rolled their eyes whenever I churned out another math problem at record speeds. How would they see me, though, if they knew that the great Whitney had no idea how to pay the check at a restaurant?

When my parents finally allowed me to carry pocket money around, I got sneaky. My middle school hosted a snack booth, and I felt a small high every time I purchased a forbidden pastry or soda. But it was immediately followed by an overwhelming cascade of guilt. I saw, in my mind’s eye, my mother lecturing me on how hard she worked to cook meals with minimal salt and oil, how much she despised “American” foods, which were inarguably fatty and unnatural. A part of me always hung her head in shame, promising never to venture down the road to sin again. The other part of me wanted to lash out against my parents. Was it really such a big deal if I deviated from their oh-so-precious customs here and there? I was a model child in every other department. Fortunately, I had never been bullied for my ethnicity; in my stubborn independence, I had rarely folded under the pressure to conform either. But this, the food – it was my way of saying Yes, I do want to be an American! I do want to share in a part, however trivial, of this society!

My parents started to relax their grip when I entered high school, most likely because they grew worried. “Stop studying so much, Whitney,” they told me. “You’re too stressed. Go out with your friends once in a while.” That, and once the trips I took with clubs dragged on past lunchtime, it became inevitable that my teammates and I would stumble into a restaurant. Learning basic skills like ordering from the menu and tipping etiquette were cheek-reddening experiences, mortifying both for me and my friends. I would explain awkwardly that my parents were traditional, that they – cue self-deprecating chuckle here – disapproved of American cooking, for some convoluted reason. I was lucky; most friends nodded and smiled and didn’t ask anything more. Their seeming acceptance soothed my insecurities, but not by much.

It was difficult for me, when I was younger, to justify my parents’ prejudices. How could they be so closed-minded? I thought angrily. Did they want our family to be outcasts? In my childish bravado, I would often proffer various favorites (“They’ll change their minds when they taste this spaghetti!”). As time passed and my parents kept turning away my offerings, though, I had to swallow the truth. They weren’t going to change. They were middle-aged immigrants; they had grown comfortable with their ways, which had endured the grueling transition to a different hemisphere.

But that doesn’t mean I have to remain a shut-in. My parents have begun to loosen their hold in this tug-of-war. I still keep a rigid diet at home, but I have been allowed to sample multicultural cuisines, even if it is always by myself and always out of necessity. My parents don’t understand it, but they are finally acknowledging it. For me, cultural immersion and exploration will always lie in the next order of macaroni and cheese.





Photo courtesy of Gary Soup via Creative Commons.