We Are To Never Forget

To my fellow Vietnamese American diaspora.

This is to growing up in subsidized apartment complexes and neighborhoods where drugs and gangs were more abundant than Christmas presents, to coming to America in a socio-economic context being seen as foreigners and competition to "true Americans" while being grouped with Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese who some have had 2-3 generations of time to gain cultural, social, and economic wealth, to fighting the model minority myth, and to our parents who humbled themselves working jobs as waiters, nail salonists, and clerks when they were doctors, lawyers, and admirals in their native land.

This is for our parents who left their homeland and half of their brothers and sisters and family venturing out onto the open sea with pirates, dangerous waters, murder, rape, and boats with family and friends that never arrived. Stories until this day they do not share with their children. This is to the burden they bear and dreams they have casted upon us. This is for how we have failed to understand the depth of their love. This is to how we fell short.

This is a thank you to our parents.

The appreciation of fish sauce and fried rice, to the sound of the smoke detector going off just right before the meal is ready, to rice porridge and the quarters they would use to scratch our backs red as they coined their love into our ribs. This is to the beatings with broom handles and belts or whatever they had in their hand at the time while they themselves were trembling with tears because they loved us.

This is my apology.

To my Vietnamese people burn themselves working at nail salons and pho restaurants, because their of English skills only allowed them to do so much. I am sorry that we starve for academic validation because our parents’ sacrifices of working multiple jobs just so we can possibly have a brighter future. To those who trade their health and comfort just to be able to afford SAT classes in hope that their kids would be greater than. To those who only know the street names to and from their blue collar jobs just to give their kids the chance to travel to places they’ve never even heard of. 

I am sorry I cannot love you enough to make the mỹ trắng see your sacrifices instead of the label model minority as we were canned foods. I’m sorry I cannot care for you enough because I didn’t know your cut fruits meant “I love you” and the glimmer in your eyes when we show you our awards meant “I’m proud of you.” I’m sorry I always asked to hear Western praises of love when every word you spoke was heavily weighted with shame and longing for home. I’m sorry I always asked for more when you already gave everything you ever had. 

April 30, 1975 - We never forget. Some of us just pretend to.