Isabel Ashford Arya
Spring 2022
When Michael arrived in New York City, he had never heard of hot dogs. This is what he recalls first and foremost about his migration journey, nearly 70 years later. The quintessential American food horrified him at first, because he thought vendors were selling dog meat.
Street vendors were common back in Bangkok, but Michael’s family had led a modest, quiet life there. He spent most of his childhood on Convent Road, their gated house standing just a few doors down from the church where he served morning mass daily at 5 a.m. He devoted his free time to studying or exploring nearby orchards and canals by himself, far from the crowded markets.
“Thailand is gentle, compassionate country and I love it quite a bit,” Michael reminisces. Yet life was not easy, and survival was never guaranteed. With the constant presence of mosquitos and threat of malaria, Michael’s family had no choice but to spray their home with toxic DDT chemicals throughout his upbringing. When Japan invaded Thailand during World War II, his father’s carpentry building was destroyed by the bombing, and they dug a makeshift shelter under their yard just in case. Later, Michael almost died of rabies when a stray dog bit him.
These circumstances made focusing on academics difficult. His family realized that his best opportunities for higher education would be found abroad. Luckily, they were no strangers to migration; Michael’s father, Rene Banlu Arya, came to Bangkok from Hainan, China on a fishing boat at 16. Michael was the same age when he exchanged the fishing boat for a cargo ship and headed to Australia – with his sights set, eventually, on studying in the United States. His four younger brothers would all later follow in his footsteps, and Michael still speaks proudly of their academic and career pursuits in India, Japan, and France. He has many of his own accomplishments to be proud of, too.
Michael graduated with a double major in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Adelaide, where he also learned English. “Loneliness was a constant companion,” he would later write in an account of his life that he shared among family and friends, and hoped to pass along to future generations.
The United States was still calling to him, though. He didn’t have much back then: “$100 in my pocket and hope for the best.” With that, he boarded another ship bound for Manhattan. After disembarking and discovering what hot dogs really were, he went on to the University of Notre Dame. Looking back, he remembers his time in Indiana as freezing and confusing, as he tried to navigate harsh winters and the rules of football. “I don’t know anyone, and no one to help me settle in,” Michael shares. “It was difficult, but when you’re young you think anything is possible.”
“It was difficult, but when you’re young you think anything is possible.”
This perseverance has defined his life. It took him to the University of Washington next, where he pursued his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering on a tuition-free research scholarship while working as a dishwasher to make ends meet and send money back to his parents in Thailand. He excelled academically but continued struggling to find a sense of belonging so far from the intimate, familiar world he knew.
The diversity and freedom Michael first associated with the United States were undermined by its prejudice. “It’s a big country. You see a lot of things, anything,” he explains. “But also, it’s a racist country.” Migrating impacted the way he viewed himself, and his status as an immigrant influenced how certain people perceived him. He elaborates, “my identity changed, I suppose, because of skin color. Sometimes the way that people treat me.” Mostly, though, Michael describes feeling invisible and isolated from others.
“I came here to study, and I know the U.S. is a big country, so I stay in the college town in Washington. It got very lonely around Christmastime – the campus is deserted. Trees are bare, flowers dropping, and everyone is going home.”
Michael wouldn’t go back to Thailand until 1960, after he had finished school, moved to New Jersey, gotten married, and begun working at an electronics company. Although only visiting, it was a natural return. “I feel like I’m home again. You know, you’re born there, you live there for many years, so that’s your home. Home. Home away from home,” he expresses longingly.
The United States has never given him the same sense of acceptance or comfort, despite raising a family here and achieving financial security. “I felt like just one person, one drop in the ocean, so people leave me alone and I have to do what I have to do to study and go on.”
“I felt like just one person, one drop in the ocean”
His four children – now adults with their own families – never demonstrated much desire to learn about their cultural heritage. “They were born here, they live here, so they’re not so interested,” Michael revealed. “I said a thousand times, told them about life over there, but mostly my children call the U.S. home.” While he can’t quite pinpoint why he settled down permanently in the United States and regards it as an almost accidental occurrence, he makes clear that he never intended to stay forever. But by now, he knows he will not return home to Thailand: he is aging, and his family is here.
Although Michael believes in the general notions of upward mobility and success outlined in the American Dream – and he personifies it in many ways himself – he resists seeing it as a distinctly American phenomenon and challenges the typical narrative of American exceptionalism. “[The U.S.] doesn’t really understand other places that well because it’s a strong, selfish country…it tells the world what to do.”
He wishes he could instill in native-born Americans some of the values his childhood in Thailand taught him. “Learn to be compassionate and be humble,” Michael suggests. “Mind your own business and don’t go telling other countries what to do. Do not think you are the only country in the world.”
