Words unspoken between a father and daughter.
Dear Dad,
You once told me, “you are a child … but one day you will learn”. I hardly acknowledge answering to your words. I have paused and reflected on this seemingly nuanced sentence.
Several months ago a scholar and I had lunch. We discussed the issues she had identifying as a mother while being Vietnamese. Although we were more than twenty years apart, we lived with the same mutual understanding. We lacked the visible representation of who we are in the mediums we consumed. She worried she was doing everything wrong; unable to find children’s books about her refugee experience, unable to speak Vietnamese, unable to pass down cultural traditions. What did this make of me–a first generation traversing through an unknown identity?
You left me to be raised in a two-story bungalow with the loud chatter of my aunties while the fresh smell of Jasmine rice wafted the air. My little Saigon was in a safe haven sheltering me from the outside world. The stories I was raised on painted themes of corruption, fear, sacrifice, and loss. Never once had I heard the word triumph. By the time I went to school, I felt like a foreigner in my own skin. The children spoke another language, and my food was from an extrasolar planet. By the time I was seven this unfamiliar culture became native, and my mother tongue was stolen from me.
According to Statistics Canada, 75% of the Vietnamese community report Vietnamese as our mother tongue. But where is this 75%? Why is it that everywhere I go, our community has hidden away the anguish we have faced? I look and hear no young people cheering loudly in Vietnamese. I see no one, not even myself.
Your life was defined by the war–mine is not. My identity is being shaped by capitalistic idealism, responsibility, and a belief that we have something to offer. You tell me to go achieve the American Dream, but every time I try I seemingly fail in your eyes. You deplore my encouragement to discuss our identity, and understanding of the war. I am sorry that your expression is of no concern to me. I cannot sit idly anymore. I have realized the importance of storytelling, and my story is one that has never been offered before. My story has yet to be told.
The last time I saw you, you walked away from my life. I never knew when you would return, and I am plagued with inner fear and constant resentment. You would always express great anxiety over my choices in life. We never saw eye-to-eye. But in what you saw as the corroding of the American Dream, I saw my utopia.
You would not have sat idly when you found out that boy called me a chink. You would not have commended the children for picking on me for my lunch. You would not encourage the men in my life calling me “pretty for an Asian girl”. If you saw and observed the way people looked at me. There is a willingness from people to cast me aside because they refused to give in to my differences. You would not be in the sidelines. I am sorry I could not become the things you wanted me to be. It is true I am probably making terrible choices through the advocacy I do. But for what purpose do I do this? For myself? For you? I am trying to make it clearer for young people like me the wrong we faced.
We never had a chance to learn our parent’s stories, and yet we built our own identity through this sense of loss. It is time for me to reclaim that space. Wherever you are in the world, and whoever you are with–your story taught me the hero that deserved recognition. Your feet were always sore, and your hands grew stiff providing for our family. It may have disheartened my childhood unable to see the person I longed for. But your absence grew my fond admiration for you. Like a superhero, you were at the cusps of my fingertips and I could only fantasize from a far. I am going to say the words you never said to me.
I am proud of you dad. Thank you,
Julie Anh Mai.
Originally created for SSH 505 at Ryerson University [April 2018].
Revised [June 2018].
