On Finding Hope
When I was in a village up to when I was fourteen years old it ate me alive until the war ended, victory bring peace to the land. My lover, my boyfriend, my dream husband, had a lot of children. He died and was buried at the same graveyard as my ancestors are buried. When war came so many people died. The more you see people die, the more you want to fight because there is no reason why they died. Nobody told you why they died except that they died you die for your father’s land. You die for what you believe in. But the South Vietnamese and Americans believe in the same thing and the Viet Cong says the same thing. Nobody answers which side they believe in right or wrong. They are willing to die for their country. Our country is small compared to the US but it is big for us because we never go outside our village, but we are willing to die for our country. So we did what we had to do.
Now looking back I had a beautiful childhood. I had rice patties, water buffalo, coconut trees, pond, river, the things you don’t see over here (US) that’s what kept me going. When I left the Village and went to Saigon when I was working in the city you would see the rich with the refugee and jobless we would never complain. The poor villagers belonged in the village. We should be working on the land and be with our ancestors. But because of the war we had to become refugees, homeless, and jobless. This is what we had to deal with. This happened today in many countries. We never asked why we only know what propaganda said, the Americans and outsiders invaded our country and we fought for our ancestors graveyard, rice paddies and it was the right thing to do. So we did fight.
When I came to the US it was opposite. You come here to take care of the children, housewives and you keep your mouth shut and believe in whatever the news says. But little by little I became widowed twice and raised three children on my own. I start to question, why America and why Vietnam? Why this? Why that? You have your own mind and you play with it however you want. That is when I started to travel back to Vietnam in 1986 that is what opened a new door for me of new thinking, new questions and new answers. But who am I to ask these questions? I want to write books. I want to help Vietnam as a single mother with three kids and very little education background, what can I do to help? However my mind and my soul told me that I am equal to everyone. The only thing is my English is funny, my writing is limited, I’m a single mother and sometimes it held me back at times. But other than that I ate the same food as you, breathed the same air, thinking my own thoughts and have my own compassion and love like you. So it doesn’t hold me back. It just keeps me going. Unlimited thinking. Nobody pulled a gun on me in this country and told me what to do and what not to do like a young kid in a village. So that freedom changed my thinking a lot and made me look back on what Vietnamese people had to endure and go through.
The entire refugee coming they knew nothing about the war and hated the commoners. It gave me a lot of thinking to do but then when the FBI came to me and told me to be a spy when I go to Vietnam and work for the CIA. I only could laugh at myself and think I’m a fool nobody knows what I am doing. But that’s okay I know what I am doing. That is the key knowing what you are doing for the good or for the bad but that is all on you. Do something that you won’t regret. Do something when you die people will still talk about you and people will remember you. That is important.