#Repost @isabelle.du BORN OF AN IMMIGRANT. I’ve been told that my name sounds “too white” for a Vietnamese girl. Apparently I also don’t sound Vietnamese enough nor do I look Vietnamese. Whatever the địa ngục that means. I’ve also been questioned if I’ve even been back to the motherland. Clearly, you’ve only just begun to know me. . Our refugee parents gave us Westernized names because they believed it would help us assimilate and “belong”. But I’ve got a Vietnamese name — it’s Du Phương Thảo. Birthed from the word “hiếu thảo”, which means a filial piety to my parents. My parents told me there was no such word that existed in the English language. . My first language was Vietnamese because it’s all I spoke at home. Kids called me “retarded” for my thick accent and so I was pulled out for English as a Second Language classes. Now I sound just as American as you. . And WHY do I need to look the way YOU think Vietnamese people look like? It’s simple: my parents are Vietnamese and I look like them. We can look like this too, you know. I don’t need to justify my ethnicity and my heritage to someone who doesn’t recognize their own. . I lived in Vietnam for 4 years. I couldn’t have felt more like a foreigner in what was home to my parents. And yet, I couldn’t have been more quick to become familiar with what has always been a part of my blood. . As a second generation Vietnamese American, I get backlash from both cultures that I’m not enough of this and that. I’m TIRED of it. I’m proud of my bicultural identity and shouldn’t have to defend it. Yet, I recognize that as hard as I’m holding onto this nguồn gốc of mine —- what of my children? Would they feel as strongly as I do? If I passed this shirt to them, will they embrace what it means? . By asking these questions, am I passing on judgement unto them as other people who have said I’m not Vietnamese enough? . I suppose all of the above is what it means to be Asian American and to be born of an immigrant. . . #bornofanimmigrant #vietnamese #vietnameseamerican #vietkieu #việtkiều #vk #vq #asianamerican #408 #714 #secondgeneration #prose #writing #essay #blog #missvietnam #missvietnamu https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo8dhCABF3R/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1mys8fpj27380
