Dear Expats and 1st Gen Americans,
I've ceased becoming irritated when people asked me where I hail from. Just to piss them off, I say I'm from Houston. I know they're asking me of my ancestral origin, but I tell them what country I associate myself with, and that country is the United States of America. The U.S., where dreams are made, broken, and remade with only a blatant hint of racial, socioeconomic, and religious prejudice.
On the U.S. Census, I would put myself into the category of Asian/Pacific Islander and the subcategory of Vietnamese if they have that. Most people would consider me Vietnamese-American, but I think of myself as American Vietnamese. After all, I was born and raised in the States; why would I put first the name of a country I've never even seen except in internet ads? If I were adopted, would I not take the last name of my adopted parents rather than that of my blood parents?
Recently, I've noticed that it's the expatriates that have a somewhat higher tendency to ask about nationality. In their eyes, I see a sadness of a forsaken or lost country, the same sorrow I see in my grandmother's eyes as she dotes on her grandchildren who can't even speak the language. It's a similar lament I see in my mother's eyes as she recounts the stories from her teens. It is a tear that has yet remained unshed from my eyes.
One such expatriate came by the pharmacy the other day. After the transaction, he asked the question I've heard 756 times:
Expat: So where are you from? Korea? [I do not look Korean at all]
Me: I was born and raised in Houston, but my parents were from Vietnam. They came over after Saigon fell.
Expat: And when was that?
Me: In '75, a few years after the Tet Offensive.
Expat: Have you ever been back there?
Me: No, never been. I don't have any plans in the near future.
Expat: Why? Are you scared?
Me: It's just the lack money and the work schedule.
--
But truthfully, I am a bit scared of what I'd find. Sure, people will try to swindle and charge me a lot more for something than it's worth, but I can afford to pay $1.50 (converted to Viet currency) for a bowl of pho even if the locals only pay $0.25. That's not the reason.
I am afraid that I'd see the land I had lost, my birthright, and break down crying. I'm afraid that I'd return and my ancestral home would reject me as foreign, something that is not part of itself. I'm afraid to look upon the 4 and 5-star resorts that grace the shores of a land once blasted by B-52s and razed by napalm flamethrowers. I'm afraid I'd look upon at my distant cousins and they'd laugh at my broken Vietnamese. And I'm afraid that the country I would be visiting is not that true Vietnam that my parents fled from.
And Vietnam no longer exists; only the Socialist Republic of Vietnam does. Saigon no longer exists; it is now Ho Chi Minh City. And it's not minor quibble about proper names; if you fly a Communist Viet flag on any expatriate soil, you will have a small uprising on your hands. The yellow star on a blood red field is an insult to all those refugees who braved the Pacific on fishing boats and helicopters. In our hearts, only the yellow flag with three horizontal stripes exists even if no country will claim it as its own.
I know what my ancestral country is; I don't want to go there only to find it gone, like that waif who finds the address of his birth parents only to discover that they have long passed away.
And so I abstain from returning to delay the realization of the truth that I already know: The country of my fathers is gone.
I will always love America, and I wear the badge of 'American' proudly (though I may neglect to mention that fact if visiting a hostile country). But there will always be that part of me that longs for the rice paddies that are no longer there, the talk of the brash fishermen chewing on tobacco and pickled-dried fish, and the pretty girls in ao dai who tease me in my dreams.
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