ericlanguyen - Tumblr blog

ericlanguyen · 10 years ago

Text

Symptoms of a Poor Girl

I usually post stories about my parents here but this one is a little different. This one is more about the person my parents have help me become.

Summer 2013

I’ve been waiting to write this because I’m still so mad about it. But it can’t wait.

A few weeks ago someone I considered a friend, not a close friend but a friend still, during one of his usual weekly alcoholic self-obliterations got very upset with me. It is not upsetting to me that he thinks these things about me so much as what he thinks proves to me how truly ignorant and oblivious he really is. We, he, whomever you like, can blame it on his drinking. Really though, we can blame his inability to filter himself on his drunkenness but we cannot use it as an excuse for his ignorance. It’d be too obvious to point out the ways he is ignorant about race and racism. That seems a given as most people are ignorant about race and racism. His ignorance about class and how it interplays with race and citizenship are what really bothered me though.

I won’t go into the details about what led up to this moment but it was about 2 am or later and He said, “I’m going to say the most terrible thing I’ll ever say.”

“Then don’t say it.”

“This is the most terrible thing I’ll ever say…”

“You’re going to regret this in the morning. If you even remember it.”

“No I’m going to say it,” he closed his eyes and paused very dramatically, “Cindy, you are the most racist person I have ever met.”

I am livid, still. I proceeded to ask him what he might mean by this and what he thinks racism is if he thinks that I am the most racist person he’s ever met.

“The way you talk about white people…” he responded, “you’re so racist.” I asked him what it is that I say about white people that seems so racist to him. He had no real answer. His answer was, “You think you’re the biggest bleeding heart. What makes you think you know better than any of us?” He asked me, “What makes you think you know better than anyone else?” He was referring to my stances on race, racism, gender, class, etc.

I said something along the lines of, “well I have never said I knew better than anyone else but if it’s come off that way… maybe the fact that I’ve grown up different from everyone around me in ways that most others have not.” He then tried something I never thought one of my friends would ever try. He played that “one of my best friends is black” card; he said that he had brought his Asian American girlfriend (ex- now) to Northern Idaho once. He didn’t get a chance to elaborate because I already knew where he was going with it. “Getting to watch white people stare at your minority girlfriend is not the same thing as growing up a minority in an all white town,” I said very loudly. Mind you it was about 2:30 am. Sorry neighbors. “I didn’t grow up a white kid in Corvallis, Oregon, like you did,” I continued, when he cut me off; he was mad that I’d said he grew up a white kid in Corvallis—which he had.

He proceeded by saying what would be the last straw for me. It was a culmination of all the worse things he could misunderstand about me. He said, “When was the last time YOU had to worry about money, Cindy.”

So, a letter to J—:

Dear J—,

I wonder if you remember everything that happened that night a few weeks ago. I wonder because you were so drunk that you almost got hit by a car and ended up passed out on the grass on the corner of Broadway and Lincoln where two cop cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck came to see if you were okay. I have thought a lot about that night and all the incredibly stupid things you said to me. I’m not mad at all that you feel the way you feel, and really I don’t blame you if this is how you really feel. But I am mad in general. I don’t know if you deny feeling those things now, but either way I don’t really think it matters. What matters is the fact that you were drunk enough to speak your mind to someone you considered a friend on some level. You were drunk enough to keep from filtering yourself the way normal social situations dictate. In that half hour, I learned what ignorance you have locked up in that head of yours—about racism, race, oppression, class, and about me. Do you remember what you said to me? Let me list some of the things you said:

“I am going to say the most terrible thing I could ever say.”

“Cindy, you are the most racist person I have ever met.”

“The way you talk about white people…”

“I took [his Vietnamese American ex-girlfriend] to Northern Idaho once…”

“What makes you think you know better than anyone else.”

“You think you’re the biggest bleeding heart.”

And the thing that pissed me off so bad that I had to leave before I socked you in the face because I was violently angry. I was so livid, J— and this is a feeling I can’t let go of. This is an anger I reserve for very few people in the world. This is a deep anger that I can only feel towards people I actually know and care about because it is so incredibly insulting to me that someone who actually knows me and talks to me can be this way. I don’t feel this type of anger towards people I don’t know because they don’t matter to me much. This terrible, violent, anger, I’m clenching my teeth just thinking about this right now.

You asked me, “When was the last time YOU had to worry about money, CINDY.”

Do you know what this question tells me? I’ve told people about this since and they think that the irony here is that you, yourself, grew up in a well-off home. But that doesn’t even matter in this situation, really because you weren’t saying that you knew better than I did. No you were trying to delegitimize my stance by saying that I wouldn’t know since I’ve never had to worry about money. You were not saying that you never had money, so this isn’t about hypocrisy. This is about what you think you know about me.

If you can ask me a question like this, you know nothing about my history, Vietnamese American history, or my family. You know nothing about the ways race, ethnicity, citizenship, and class are intertwined for someone like me. I don’t blame you for not knowing. You know nothing about it because you were lucky enough to be born into the family you were and into the town you were. Similarly, I don’t have to know or understand what it’s like to escape persecution and execution because I was lucky enough to be born in the USA. I’m not saying that your life has not been wrought full of sadness, hardship, or terribleness of all sorts. I don’t doubt that your life is very hard for you in ways my life has never been hard for me. I guarantee it, in fact. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not trying to delegitimize YOU the way you were trying to delegitimize ME. Maybe you would know what you were talking about if you thought about it some more, but this doesn’t mean that you can question me on things you are so clearly ignorant of. Let’s not even go into the institutional ways that I “know better than anyone else.” (Okay let’s go into it a little… I have been studying race, class, and gender inequality for my entire adult life, does that give me at least one reason to think I know better than others who have not devoted their lives to understanding these things? Either way, the privilege of getting to devote myself to studying inequality, caring about it, and talking about it to the people I think will be supportive does not delegitimize my stance on these things in any way. Just because I have this privilege, does not mean I know nothing about oppression or am not allowed to talk about oppression and hardship.)

I want you to know, I don’t think “I’m the biggest bleeding heart” and I don’t feel SORRY for myself. In part this explains why you would never ever know it if I was ever worried about money. You know nothing about how poor my family was, how we were constantly moving, how innocently oblivious I was to the fact that the world thought my family was a piece of shit. You know nothing about the long ass hours my mother worked gutting fish and cleaning up people’s shit so I could go to school and be one of those “free lunch” kids. You know nothing about the 3 different third grades I went to because my parents had to move my siblings and I around and send us to our grandma’s because they were about to drown in our debts. You don’t know shit about shared bedrooms in someone else’s house, the old used clothes, the crappy, shared Christmas presents, the welfare, the shit health care (or lack of even that). You don’t know about the 9 shitty schools I went to and the ways kids looked at me and said, “ching chong chang,” and asked me where I was from, and asked me to say their name in Vietnamese. You know nothing about how my parents tried so hard to make sure I didn’t end up like the other children of refugees at my schools, with terrible grades, broke, working part-time jobs at shitty nail salons cleaning up after white women, pregnant, drinking, smoking, robo-trippin, hood rat etc. etc. etc. The summers spent selling nice bottles of wine to upper-middle class white folks who were so surprised that a lowly little, stupid, low class, brown ass (cuz I get hella brown in the summer), Vietnamese girl could possibly be ambitious enough to step beyond her means and beyond her place in society and strive for credentials that so few people in the US actually achieve, all while scolding her for not helping her parents work during the school year, all while NEVER once expecting their own kids to work with THEM during… EVER.

And you want to delegitimize me by asking when the last time I worried about money was? Worrying about money is the least of my problems right now. I am lucky enough to have parents who have devoted all their time and energy into making enough money to support me the ways they have. By no means does this mean that I am set for life. I get enough support and make enough to live well by the skin of my teeth but you have no idea the amount of debt I’m in. The ways I struggle every month to keep up appearances. My car, my clothes, my SHIT. They are all symptoms of a poor girl who finally has money to hold in her hands. Who finally has enough credit and credentials to convince people that she is just like them. You don’t understand that I buy nice looking things or buy nice beer or go out to eat or tip well or foot the bill or buy people presents because I don’t want to confirm the stereotype that I am poor and cheap and not as good as other people and this is something that a poor minority person worries about when she runs with the middle-class. This is why you don’t know the ways I worry about money or life. Worrying about money and looking cheap, I have learned, is a poor person thing to do and everyone spits on poor people. This is something my parents have learned, this is something I have learned and THIS is why you think I never worry about money. So I guess I did a damn good job of it.

The amount of sacrifice my parents go through to keep me afloat… They don’t even have health insurance. We prioritize differently than a lot of people do. And some people don’t think this is smart because it’s not how they do it. I guess I’ve never told you or most people these things because, FUCK YOU, I am no damn bleeding heart. I am smarter than you and more critical than you are. I am motivated in a way that you are not because of my past. But not everyone who has come from what I’ve come from (in fact most come from much much worse) has been able to get through it and be what I am today. So this is what makes me think I know better than some folks. And I tell people shit, and I point out shit because I care about the people who are treated like SHIT. And all this does not mean I don’t act like a shitty person myself sometimes. I’m not immune to it just because I see it. I am not a hypocrite because I still do things that oppress people. I’m a part of the system too and I can’t get out of it any better than others can but I haven’t resigned to it either.

2 notes · View notes

ericlanguyen · 10 years ago

Link

“What’s that?” I asked. I patted my own neckline. Dad sat down across from me and did the same. He patted his neckline where a thick gold chain hung and he smiled.

“This?” He pulled at the chain and a large pendant emerged from his slightly tattered crewneck. It looked like a three-inch...

2 notes · View notes

ericlanguyen · 10 years ago

Text

Deer in Headlights

October 2014/October 2004

I just downloaded this new app called "Bagel meets Coffee" or something to that effect. My friend was telling me all about how she just met someone through the app a couple weeks ago. I asked to see a picture of this dude so I could jokingly call him a stinker. (I call every guy she dates a stinker because we have that type of relationship) What struck a chord though the ensuing trade after she emailed me a photo:

Her: don't judge me. i have weird taste in men Me: guy in the middle? Her: maybe...lol SORRY i like asians.. i know most asian girls don't but for some reason. i keep coming back to asian guys Me: lolllllll why are you apologizing to me?Her: idk. because everyone always makes fun of me.lol plus i don't have a good track record of picking cute men dont' tell XXX-XXX Me: hes like a less attractive version of john cho.

That conversation right there I could write whole books about. Why aren't asian men desirable? Are we not as attractive? Why do her friends think its weird that she likes asian guys? She's asian too!

Ok, so I downloaded this app right? If you don't know what its about its a dating app for your phone to meet people. They "connect you" with only people you give a "check mark" to. If you aren't interested you give them an 'X'

They ask for your "I likes", "appreciate when dates...", and preferences. Unlike the other popular dating app "Tinder" you only get one person every 24hrs! I thought this was a really interesting concept but after about 7 days i'm still not sure what I can do with my coffee beans and what happens if I "take a bagel" vs "give a bagel". I'm worried that if I select anything then it might cost me coffee beans. You have a finite amount of beans and you can apparently purchase more, but I ain't about that pay to play life. (Level 7 TH and 4 Builders $0 spent Where you at Puddin' Pops!) Its been 7 days and I realized something, of the 7 bagels that have popped up, every single person listed "Asian" in ethnicity except one. (Black woman)

I thought to myself "That's funny, maybe the app knows that I have a lot of asian friends. Wait, I remember filling out a 'preferences' section rapidly maybe I accidentally put "asian" in that let me check." I had selected the "no preference" in ethnicity.

I came to the conclusion that these people i've been bageled with either selected 'No Prefernce' or 'Asian' (Again I could write whole books about this.) Instead of really diving in depth with this now Imma just leave this right here and let my friend Beau put into words how I feel. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sXOxIq65zg)

TO THE POINT

So this last seven days i've been really thinking about the whole concept of dating, relationships, and everything in between. It got me to thinking about a lot of firsts. The first girl I liked, the first time someone told me they liked me, the firs time... you know.

Then I suddenly got transported in time to Thanksgiving break, 2004. Be me, 16 yrs old and a Junior in High School, shaggy hair with a "falls in love too easily" attitude. We were having dinner at our Aunt's house and immediately my uncle comes up to me and asks me if I have a girlfriend yet. I know my uncle really well and I knew what he wanted to hear and he would keep prying and prodding until he gets a laugh.

So I replied "Yeah Uncle 000-000! I have 9, and 4 of them are black!" He chuckled and moved on to other cousins to harass. My uncle can be prejudice against other ethnic backgrounds. I was very much single at the time and looking back I'm ashamed of my lack of sensitivity.

I started to walk towards the living room when out of nowhere my other uncle came up and gave me a colossal hug which I happily returned. And what he said next was something I never would have expected.

"Eric, I hope you know that it's ok if you do have a Black Girlfriend. As long as she's a nice person that's all that matters." He's one of the uncles that can speak english well.

I was taken aback. I did not see that coming at all. My memory then cuts to the dinner where the kids sat at one table and the adults at another. I can't remember much else from the day except this conversation about dating that the adults were having. I had never heard any of the aunts and uncles talk about dating. Uncle 000-000 was adamant. He was talking about how his kids were all going to marry Vietnamese people.

And for the second time that evening my jaw hit the floor.

My Mother responded in Vietnamese "We can't expect our kids to marry Vietnamese people anymore. Especially when we move them to a place that has barely any Vietnamese people. We have to realize we're not in Vietnam anymore."

This was the first time I'd ever heard my mom talk about dating. It's just how it was for us.

Every morning my mom had to run errands I would usually go with her to keep her company. She always did her grocery store runs at either 7am or 12am because she likes take her time and doesn't want to get in peoples ways. Ma's considerate like that. I'm driving our truck to Cub foods when out of the blue she says,

"You can marry whoever you want you know."

I'm a deer caught in the headlights.

"It doesn't have to be a Vietnamese person. I just want you to know that if you ever feel like i'm pushing you towards an asian person it's inadvertent. I'm worried that if they aren't Asian they won't like my cooking. They might think Vietnamese Food is weird. I can't speak english, so all I can do for them is cook and if they don't like my cooking they'll feel apathetic towards me."

She chuckles and then says,

"Even better if they can speak Vietnamese though so your dad and I can actually talk to them... But in the end, we want you kids to marry whomever you love."

I think a lot of Asian Americans with immigrant parents feel that when their parents pressure them to marry someone with their background its because the parents are closed minded. "You have to marry a Viet! You have to marry a Laotian! etc." But what if it's because they don't know how to put into words their own personal insecurities of not understanding your partner? My mom just wants to be able to understand that one special person I love oh so much in this world.

Now it feels like its a regular topic with her, phone calls started to follow a pattern. 'Did you eat dinner yet? What'd you eat? That sounds good. So are you seeing anyone? no? Its ok. You should go on some dates. Why don't you call Linda? She's so cute. Are your sisters seeing anybody?'.

I usually call her on my way home from work and I have a feeling the patterns going to hold true. I generally keep my Ma & Ba on a need to know basis and they don't mind that I don't think.

I just don't think I have the heart to tell her that I've hit pass on my last 6 bagels.

6 notes · View notes

ericlanguyen · 11 years ago

Text

"When I was your age.."

From Top to Bottom: Dad 1979, 1989(my 1st bday), 1997, 2012(sister's wedding)

If any of you know my dad well, you'll know that being silly, lighthearted, and goofy are just in his nature, whether he's trying to be or not. There was this one time where we were all at the dinner table (all four kids and parents) and my sister sneezed.

My dad then said "Achee".

My sister looked at my dad puzzled and said "Wait what did you say?"

"I said 'Achee'" he replied in Vietnamese. We all looked at him confused and so he persisted, "Achee! You know! Its what white people say when someone sneezes!"

And then it dawned on the kids that he was confusing "Achoo" with "Bless you" and somehow came up with his own hybrid form "Achee" (#englishasasecondlanguageproblems)

We all started laughing and my oldest sister said "You're supposed to say Bless you!"

And then out of nowhere my mom burst out "I TOLD YOU SO! I KNEW ACHEE SOUNDED WEIRD!" ...Which was followed by even more laughter.

They owned their own business at the time and while I was at school flirting with girls (or at least what I thought was flirting at the time) they were probably having mini arguments on English slang and vocabulary.

My dad's always been a funny guy. He was always one to exaggerate things and crack bad dad jokes. He usually left the everyday disciplining to my mom and from my previous posts if you've read them you'll know that nobody messes with mom. As serious as we took our mom, if dad yelled at us, then we knew we done fucked up. But I was a pretty good kid, so those lectures were far and in between.

I definitely grew up idolizing the man. I was weaned on tales of his adventures in Vietnam, getting into fights with the boys from the neighboring town and dishing out ass-kickings comparable to Jackie Chan!

He even taught me how to fight when I was in middle school! (His spinning back fist is no lie. Lets just say I know from experience... also learned the important art of ducking that day as well)

I guess I never really understood how lucky I was to be living the life I was until about a week before I moved off to college the summer before my freshmen year.

(Sometimes I feel like I still don't really understand how lucky I am.)

I was out at our liquor store in Hopkins, MN working with the old man on a hot summers day. We were both sitting behind the counter waiting for the next set of customers to come in putting off the endless work that comes with owning your own business. I was probably texting a cute girl trying to make plans before I left and He was watching probably watching sportscenter. Out of nowhere he says to me, " You got it pretty nice you know that? You know what I was doing when I was your age? "

"Hmm?" I replied not looking up from my text messages.

"I was fighting in a war when I was 18." he said nonchalantly.

This definitely made me caught me by surprise. My dad never really ever talked about the war with us kids and up until that point it was kind of an unspoken fact. Every once in a while we would get a "In the army we had to..." statement but nothing of too much note and substance.

He continued, "There was this time when where we were out in the field with our captain. There was about 30 of us and we had to get to a rendez-vous point. We were looking at the map and the captain picked a route that was faster but dangerous. A few of us were from the surrounding towns and we started to argue with him that this route we were taking was bad idea and we should take a route that was safer even if it was slower."

I started to look at him in shock that he was actually telling me a story about his time in the war. Something that was always so ambiguous and far away to me. Still staring at the television he carried on...

"There was three of us that got into it with him. He wasn't from the area but he still thought he knew better. The three of us were so angry at his stubbornness that we marched off away from them to calm down. Fifteen minutes later, we were probably about 100 feet away when all of a sudden we heard huge explosions and saw our platoon-mates get hit with a huge explosion. Just like that our whole squad was killed in the matter of seconds with only the three of us still alive."

I had no idea what to think. I was staring at his face but he was still looking up at the television so I only saw his profile. I had to assume that he wasn't seeing the highlights on the television anymore, but looking back into a past that was filled with loss and misery.

"I wasn't sure what to do... I was in shock... I started to pick up a few of the body parts of our friends and putting them in my pockets so that maybe I could bring it home to their families so they could have something to bury...

For months our families thought we were dead because it was reported that whole group had been wiped out. It took us weeks to get back to a safe zone because we wanted to be careful..."

I can't quite remember what happened next after that. He probably made a joke or made a remark like "I wonder what Mom's going to cook for your last dinner at home"

Today's Ba's 60th birthday. Just got off the phone with Ma, right now at this very moment he's doing some engine maintenance on a used fishing boat him and Ma recently got. Him and ma have been fixing it up for the last year and a half and it's almost ready to set sail for the first time. Lady Mocha II.

I spent most of my day today complaining to my friends about how I just had to pay $950 for some car maintenance. Then I rambled on about how I was annoyed with work and being swamped with new accounting software and tracking down other people's receipts. When I sat down to write this I didn't know what I was going to write about until I started typing. It made me remember how lucky I am to be living the life i'm living.

I'm in the city I want to be in, doing what I want to do for a living and My Ba and Ma are directly responsible for that. There definitely is a small language barrier. It makes me sad that my Vietnamese isn't up to par because I'll never be able to fully put into words how much I appreciate every sacrifice they've made for me and my sisters.

Hopefully at least i'll be able to show them, someday, even if I can't tell them...

Achee boys, girls, and everything in between.

4 notes · View notes