Impact on the Next Generation
Interviewer: How has this story affected your life and what you’re studying now, and what is the impact of the war overall in your life?
Interviewee: The older I get, the more I learn about my own history, the more I feel, I don’t know umm what my dad feels too, in a way, in how he… all this time passed and his community and his country and like his culture and just knowing my history knowing my culture and these stories it makes you realizes like wow you know how very privileged we are to be here. It makes me realize how privileged my life is compared to people who are still in Laos worrying about getting food on the table each day, but learning more about my family history and my dad’s struggles empowers me to give back because he’s given me so much. He’s given my brothers and everything you know. He gave his life up just in order for us to continue our education, continue our own lives and make sure we find happiness, but he has been able to find happiness through our happiness in a way.
And so umm like right now I am at UCLA and doing a Master’s degree in Asian American studies so I’m collecting research on Lao Americans and trans-generational memory, kind of like your professor, and how memory passes from like the first generation refugees to second generation. And how does the second generation reflect on their individual experiences with the world and so just kind of like this journey as well for me to find a sense of wholeness and to find out like why what why my history is so important to me and why because the war and colonization and how everything happened and now appear is kind of like story and trying to like figure out and so learning about my dad’s history it just kind fills this empty void that I have like, because no know else is able to relate to me like you know there’s a large number of Vietnamese people that came earlier then there’s Cambodians and Khmer and then you have Hmong people and there actually people that traveled and lived in different countries but they don’t have like an actual country but like with Lao it’s just like people…
I feel like brush over Lao and its history and importance and its importance to the United States, too, so I think that through my dad’s story like he wants to live vicariously through me but I want to live vicariously live through him in a way just to really understand a sense of peace within myself. I don’t know it’s like really spiritual but have a sense of closure that I can be able to, you know, be able to have people validate my history and I think everyone else has a very important history. I think that everyone should be recognized but I don’t think like for me it’s harder to do that because there is nothing for me to relate to a lot of other Asian Americans as much and so, just going back I really hope to, you know, just open spaces and talk about Lao and what is Lao and who are Lao and who are Lao Americans so… I mean it’s just like, you know, what is the next generation going to be because there are also a lot of mixed babies, so I mean that is just awesome and where do we take Lao from there. My dad’s stories have really left a really strong impression on what I do in terms of my research and how I identify myself as a Lao American, well with my mom too she is Thai so like my mom is Thai-Isan so basically that region is an ethnic group in Thailand but they are ethnically Lao. They eat sticky rice they eat like Lao food do Lao things but because the Thai did not want Lao there they named them Thai-Isan kind of like ethnic cleansing and so I say I’m Lao Thai-Isan American Woman.