Mental Trauma Persists in Ethnic Enclaves
A refugee’s child shares her view on the challenges of assimilation and mental health of her parents
“I don’t feel like an American. America just happens to be the place I landed after fleeing the Vietnam War.” That’s what my dad said to me while we were discussing his immigration to the United States. When my parents arrived in the United States in 1979 after fleeing Vietnam and spending eight months in refugee camps, they landed in Los Angeles. There was already an existing asian ethnic enclave in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles with a Vietnamese population of 51,000. It was in this ethnic enclave that my parents settled and have lived for forty one years. Although my parents appear settled on the surface, becoming U.S. citizens, working jobs, paying taxes, shopping at Ralph’s and Costco, there is still a big divide between them and America in their minds.
Wendy, my father’s cousin, also fled Vietnam and arrived in the United States around the same time, but landed in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State where there were much fewer Asians already settled. The Vietnamese population in Washington state in 1980 was 13,000. She was forced to integrate into a white community upon her arrival in Seattle. She did not have a large ethnic enclave to support her. She…
