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Vietnam immigrant recalls first Thanksgiving
By Andrew Lam |
November 22, 2012, Thursday
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"THANKSGIVING," said Mr K, my seventh-grade English teacher. "Repeat after me: Thanksgiving."
"Ssshthanks give in," I said, but the word tumbled and hissed, turning my mouth into a wind tunnel.
A funny word, "Ssshthanks give in," hard on my Vietnamese tongue, tough on my refugee's ears.
"That's good," said Mr K, full of encouragement. "Very good. Thanksgiving."
As I helped him tape students' drawings of turkeys and pilgrims and Indians on the classroom windows, Mr K patiently explained to me the origins of the holiday.
You know the story: newcomers to America struggling, surviving and finally thriving in the New World, thanks to the kindness of the natives.
I could barely speak a complete sentence in English, having spent less than three months in America, but Mr K's story wasn't all that difficult to grasp. Still, I didn't particularly see what it could have to do with me.
The author in 1975, freshly arrived to San Francisco from Vietnam.
Today, in her suburban condo at the edge of California's Silicon Valley, my mother is fond of referring to our first year in America as "a time of living like wandering ghosts."
In a refugee's broken home, there was an oppressive silence.
We ate in silence in the dining room that served as a bedroom at night. We waited silently in line for the bathroom, slept silently side by side, as if saying anything would only bring us all to tears.
Indeed, Mr K, what was there to be thankful for?
Ah, but there was.
As the holiday drew near, I had a change of heart about Thanksgiving. As in Mr K's story, America was populated by friendly natives who helped us out.
There was that businessman at the LA airport, a stranger, who offered to pay for my entire family's plane tickets to San Francisco when we left the refugee camp of Pendleton.
In school my friends Remigio, Tai, Marvin, Wayne, Robert - white, black, Filipino, Mexican kids - all adopted me.
Eric taught me to play baseball; 200-pound Tai protected me from the rowdy kids; and Robert, the popular blue-eyed jock, offered to take me on vacation with his family.
And best of all Mr K, ever patient and nurturing, made me his pet. Whenever I missed the bus, or even simply asked, he would drive me home after school.
That Thanksgiving my family gathered on the floor and ate two gigantic turkeys donated by religious charities.
The kids fought over the food and the adults talked about job prospects.
There was even talk of a possible trip next summer to the place I equated with paradise: Disneyland.
We have moved into the middle class since then. My father retired from his job as a bank executive, my mother from hers as an accountant.
My brother and his wife are successful suburban engineers. My sister lives in a luxury condo in downtown San Francisco and, not far away, I in mine.
Thanksgiving at my brother's home this year will be replete with wines and seafood and crab and yes, turkey, and fabulous Vietnamese dishes.
But the Thanksgiving I remember with fond memories is the first one, where we ate on the floor and wore donated clothes, and when I was just learning to pronounce the word.
New America Media editor, Andrew Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a Pen American "Beyond the Margins" award and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost" is due out in 2013. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
"Ssshthanks give in," I said, but the word tumbled and hissed, turning my mouth into a wind tunnel.
A funny word, "Ssshthanks give in," hard on my Vietnamese tongue, tough on my refugee's ears.
"That's good," said Mr K, full of encouragement. "Very good. Thanksgiving."
As I helped him tape students' drawings of turkeys and pilgrims and Indians on the classroom windows, Mr K patiently explained to me the origins of the holiday.
You know the story: newcomers to America struggling, surviving and finally thriving in the New World, thanks to the kindness of the natives.
I could barely speak a complete sentence in English, having spent less than three months in America, but Mr K's story wasn't all that difficult to grasp. Still, I didn't particularly see what it could have to do with me.
The author in 1975, freshly arrived to San Francisco from Vietnam.
Today, in her suburban condo at the edge of California's Silicon Valley, my mother is fond of referring to our first year in America as "a time of living like wandering ghosts."
In a refugee's broken home, there was an oppressive silence.
We ate in silence in the dining room that served as a bedroom at night. We waited silently in line for the bathroom, slept silently side by side, as if saying anything would only bring us all to tears.
Indeed, Mr K, what was there to be thankful for?
Ah, but there was.
As the holiday drew near, I had a change of heart about Thanksgiving. As in Mr K's story, America was populated by friendly natives who helped us out.
There was that businessman at the LA airport, a stranger, who offered to pay for my entire family's plane tickets to San Francisco when we left the refugee camp of Pendleton.
In school my friends Remigio, Tai, Marvin, Wayne, Robert - white, black, Filipino, Mexican kids - all adopted me.
Eric taught me to play baseball; 200-pound Tai protected me from the rowdy kids; and Robert, the popular blue-eyed jock, offered to take me on vacation with his family.
And best of all Mr K, ever patient and nurturing, made me his pet. Whenever I missed the bus, or even simply asked, he would drive me home after school.
That Thanksgiving my family gathered on the floor and ate two gigantic turkeys donated by religious charities.
The kids fought over the food and the adults talked about job prospects.
There was even talk of a possible trip next summer to the place I equated with paradise: Disneyland.
We have moved into the middle class since then. My father retired from his job as a bank executive, my mother from hers as an accountant.
My brother and his wife are successful suburban engineers. My sister lives in a luxury condo in downtown San Francisco and, not far away, I in mine.
Thanksgiving at my brother's home this year will be replete with wines and seafood and crab and yes, turkey, and fabulous Vietnamese dishes.
But the Thanksgiving I remember with fond memories is the first one, where we ate on the floor and wore donated clothes, and when I was just learning to pronounce the word.
New America Media editor, Andrew Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a Pen American "Beyond the Margins" award and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost" is due out in 2013. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
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