My Family: Vietnamese In The United States

As a little girl born in Vietnam and having grown up in poverty, I can understand the struggles that many other unprivileged Vietnamese families experience. At a young age my family and I immigrated to the United States for a better life. My parents have always put their best efforts into educating my siblings and I about the importance of giving back to the community. Growing up in a foreign environment, I was able to distinguish and grasp the opportunities I would have missed out on if I had not immigrated to the U.S. My background inspired me to aid those who I would have possibly been in the same shoes if I wasn’t as fortunate to have immigrated. This community service trip to me was not only a bucket list wish I had wished to accomplish, but it as well allowed

195,000million-430,000million is the estimated amount of innocent civilians who died during the Vietnam War. The war affected the civilians in a number of different ways. From having to move to different countries in order to survive to mass murders in your backyard. The things these civilians faced during this time is unreal; something no one could even fathom.

I experienced many different cultures, ethnicities and traditions when my family lived in Thailand. We lived in a Refugee camp and it was not like an America society. Every month, a volunteer group from a big city would aid every family in the refugee camp with bags of rice depending on how many people are in your family. There were about ten schools in the camp which were public schools and Catholic schools. Schools and houses were built out of bamboo and trees, and the buildings don't last more than a decade. Life was not easy in Thailand. Not every parent had a job and they found other ways to make money to provide for their families. There were many cultures and different ethnicities living in the same area and our neighbors spoke different languages and they were from different ethnic groups. There are many holidays and cultural traditions that we celebrate every year by dancing, playing music, and having big festivals.

My family on the same car with my uncle, the other on the same car with Steven. The traffic congestion is common in Chicago. But, that was really bustling for newcomers. On the road, there was many dead animals like: deer, skunk, and raccoon. We got home at 7:00pm. This time in Vietnam, the sun had already set, but not here. “It will set at 9:00 pm” my uncle said. My first impression about that house was that is a big and smell good inside. The first Vietnamese American is Kim Nguyen, she cooked many Asian foods for us as chicken soup, chicken salad squeeze, Vietnamese salad… because she knows we could not eat American food on the first day. I was guided downstairs because I couldn’t eat or do something right now. A sleep will probably

During the Vietnam War, United States military forces worked closely with a population indigenous to Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam known as the Hmong. The Hmong demonstrated loyalty and dedication in their cooperation during the war at a great cost to themselves. Not only did they suffer losses of 20% if their adult male population (Vang, 1979, cited by Tatman, 2004, p. 223), but once the fall of Saigon in 1975 marked the end of the conflict with a victory for North Vietnam, the Hmong were suddenly targeted for retaliation in the form of a genocidal campaign waged by Pathet Lao with the support of the Vietnamese military. As friends and family members, including children, were murdered mercilessly, many sought safety in Thailand where they were

My grandfather came to America from Portugal when he was 30 years old. Beside him stood my grandmother and their three year old son. Moving to a new country across the world and learning their language is, in my opinion, the most difficult thing a family could possibly do. English is the undeclared national language of America, and unfortunately my grandfather never learned to speak it fluently.

My parents, both Hmong, came to America in 1987. A safe and prosperous environment to grow up in, full of knowledge and money. They believed in the opportunities and achievements that America held for my siblings and I, chances that they never had in their life. I come from a family, that talks very little about how we care and love one another. My parents rarely gave my siblings and I praises, whenever we accomplished things.

According to an article by http://classroom.synonym.com titled; The Hmong People's Involvement in the Vietnam War, this group of people were effected during the war by the loss of more than 25% of its people. After the loss of so many people in order to continue this “secret war” they began recruiting children as young as thirteen years of age. After the war that really never ended many migrated to the United States and lived in refugee camps. However, many remained and continued fighting the war as late as 2010. The reason many continued this fight is that they believed according to an article in the “"The Independent," George described them as a tiny force of desperate people clinging to the hope that the CIA would come back to rescue them.

As I was growing up, I was reminded constantly by my parents, to never forget the language that I was born with. The language that I speak is part of who I am and where I came from; it does not defines what kind of person I am as a whole. I went to school and was taught everything in English. When I come home, I speak Vietnamese to my parents and all my family members. Now that I am older

The conference panel I attended was for Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, regarding Vietnamese American identity and the role of archives in shaping epistemology. The speaker mentioned several points regarding how the archive allowed for members of Vietnamese descent to offer their narrative, and essentially give perspective to a community that had inherently omitted and censored itself. It is interesting to have found out that at one point in time, the Vietnamese identity was primarily focused on the Vietnam War, and the Vietnamese were primarily associated with labels such as victims or enemies. From the presentation I learned that the Vietnamese American community identity changed as they adopted a new mentality that stems from them being refugee. The media back then and even today in regards to the Vietnam war had generalized and simplifying the act of being a refugee and being displaced into the US. Vietnamese refugees were characterized as being indebted to the US, and grateful. In addition, the action of becoming a refugee and escaping to the United States were commonly described by various sources to have done so in desperate, cramped, and out of their control. This description appears to have

In my household, my parents are the first ones who came to the U.S. They came here 21 years ago, so they were not here during the larger national events in our past. Thus, for my family history paper I will be concentrating on a family friend of ours who lives in Oregon. She and her husband came from India to the U.S as immigrants in 1968 and have been living in the U.S for the past 49 years, moving here for job reasons.

If you knew about the Vietnam war, you would understand why Vietnamese people who had been living in America called April is the “Black April”. Every year on the 30th of April, while Vietnamese who live in Vietnam are celebrating this day happily, the other Vietnamese immigrants, who live in the States of America as well as other countries like Canada or Australia, … are commemorating in sadly. I have this interview for my parents, Mr and Mrs Vo, who had come to the United States since 1993. Through their stories about life in America after they had settled on this soil, I then realize how racism exists and that racism is always toward to those who are not in the same color.

I enjoyed reading “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. Tan states, “I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes”. This quote resonated with me because my grandma’s English is different from my English. My grandma came from Mexico and learned how to speak English. However, English was my native language. As a result, our English sounds different when we speak it. Just like Tan and her mother, when I speak English to my grandma it is more of a “broken English”. In other words, my English is not the same as if I were to be speaking to a professor. I tend to speak this way to my grandma because it is how we connect with one another. Tan also states, “that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families… plays a large role.” Reading

The United States is also known as a great nation in the world. While Vietnam is a backward country. Generally, the U.S economy is more developed than Vietnam. Why is that? Because of the management of government. The US’s government is united, while Vietnam’s government is unorganized and segregated. The U.S GDP is $ 18.561 trillion, and $198.8 billion in Vietnam. The US exports is thousand fold than Vietnam, and the imports is more than 1.500 times higher than Vietnam. The US economy affect to economic global. The US average net salary is hundredfold than Vietnam. So, a millions immigrants move to the US every year, the emigrants are more immigrants in Vietnam. The similar of both American and Vietnamese people are friendly. The climate

As a daughter of two Vietnam refugees, I endured many difficulties growing up in an impoverished community. Many of my classmates like myself depended on the free lunch program offered to low-income families and its advantages to pursue higher education. Because we resided in an impoverished community, my peers were unmotivated to succeed academically, educators did not believe in offering college prep classes, and counselors discouraged students from taking community college classes over the summer break. Once, I asked my counselor if she would place an order for an AP Chinese exam, but discouraged me from doing so because my school did not offer a prep class (despite my 10 years of Mandarin Chinese schooling on the weekends). I felt my potential