Kaj Tug Lee
Fall 2022
“I have to say the place that I born. The place that I first step in. I call the place of my birth. But when I say place that I call home, is place that I have my life. Where I have my own home.”
The communists had succeeded. Saigon had fallen, and so would the rest of Southeast Asia. Because of their involvement in the Secret War, the Hmong had no choice but to flee the persecution.
Amidst their running, my mother, who was probably not even one, had been left by her family fleeing from the nearby gunshots of the Pathet Lao. It was then a nearby Lao soldier heard the cries of a baby and decided to adopt the child to be raised as his own.
My mother, Pang, recalls the story she was told by her adopted father, “when I was young, they [Lao soldiers] pick me up from the wood, the night– the night that they have the war and the gunshot.”
My mom lived a carefree life in Laos. She was raised in naunghaimeuongkrapphatvahkanbolikhamsai, Laos, with her adoptive parents and siblings. Everyone in her village knew each other, and her parents were not very strict, so she was given a lot of liberty to move freely in her town. But everything would change when she turned 18.
She says, “When I was 18, I heard my parent in Lao told me that my brother, who live in this country [America], looking for me… And if I want to come, they will pick me up.”
For the last two decades, unbeknownst to my mother, her biological family had been looking for her. When they finally found her, they reached out to her Lao parents, who told my mother the situation and gave her a choice to stay or go to America. Laos was the only place my mother had ever known she was determined to go to. Not to reunite with her blood family per se, but because she had heard America was the land of opportunity and wanted to see it herself.
“American, when you heard about American, they called the land of the opportunity. The– the money grow on the tree! So we [herself] wanna see that.”
So my mother took the ticket her blood family provided her and traveled alone to the United States. She estimates she was likely in her twenties when she took this journey. But having no background in English made her trip and resettlement difficult.
“When I fall into the California, because I live in Laos, we– I do not know that we have to get in line, so I don’t speak English. I give the ticket to the people in the gate to say that I don’t speak English so they can help me. And somehow, I don’t know, maybe the way I look… they take me to the people who speak so different language from me… and it end up… I got lost.”
My mother was supposed to stop in California for a layover. Still, because she couldn’t speak English, the clerks directed her to the wrong line, making her miss her flight to Minnesota, where her biological family resided. But things did not get easier even when she arrived in Minnesota.
Though her blood family helped her resettle into a house in Brooklyn Park, the language barrier made it very hard for my mother to adjust to the environment. She explains she was even more scared of meeting them than getting on the plane to America.
“That’s where I met with my biological family, but it’s more scary. Because when I come to them we spoke totally different language. They and me. We don’t even have no clue what we talking about …we just only communication like eat… and pretty much, that’s what it is. And I being like that for a year. That I have no talking to anybody. Because it’s not that they don’t talk to me. It’s not that I don’t talk to them. Because we don’t know what to say.”
Nevertheless, my mother’s blood family still supported her being in America. They played a significant role in filling out all the paperwork she needed to stay and become an eventual citizen of the United States.
But, even with their help, the journey for citizenship took work. One experience my mother used to highlight this point was when she had to wait hours to get her papers processed.
“We wake up at 2 in the morning, a.m. get out there ready. We drive 45 min, and we wait outside [Immigration court], when they dark, until 6 hour. Sometime, we waiting outside from 3 [a.m] we didn’t get in until 3 in afternoon sometimes. We just waiting outside, long in the building, in the cold season in Minnesota… It’s really tough, but we have no choice… We just stand outside most of the time.
Knowing she is now a citizen, I asked her if she identifies herself as an American, to which she replied no. Instead, she prides herself in her heritage because that is who she is and encapsulates where she is from.
“No, I– I don’t see myself as American. I proud to say that I’m American [citizen], but I still see myself as a Hmong girl who grow up in America. Who have those opportunity to live in this country… Because I’m a Hmong, I still want to keep my, my, what did they call? Myself. I do not forgot who I am. I still Hmong. Even so, I become American citizen.”
Though she does not identify as an American, my mother shared that she sees America as her home, not Laos. To her, home is where she has created her own family, not where she grew up.
“I have to say the place that I born. The place that I first step in. I call the place of my birth. But when I say place that I call home, is place that I have my life. Where I have my own home. Where I have my kid. Where I have everything that I, as people are dream for right? Like job, husband, kid, so that’s the place I call home.”
Throughout the interview, my mother said she is very grateful to reside in the United States. In Laos, she had nothing to call her own, whereas she was able to receive so much in the US. However, though she is grateful for her position, she notes and recognizes that America and its political rhetoric are harmful to immigrants.
This is why, when asked if there was anything else she wanted Americans to know about her or anything, she responded with the following.
“For the people on, for the people who, not just running away from war. They’re running away from unsafe condition and wanna have a good life and wanna have a future like everybody else. Even some people they don’t– they don’t want us to be here. But what I wanna say I can beg them to please say I do not want to come and hurt anybody. I just wanna live. I just wanna have food tomorrow.”