Moving here at the age of five, I was very frightened.
My parents seem to be very thrilled, but I was not as excited.
When we first started living here we were very enlightened,
But everything still seemed so farsighted.
Going to school, I began to practice the English language,
I got really good, actually really quick.
My mother wasn’t as good which put her at a big disadvantage,
Plus her it didn’t help that her accent was so thick.
A few years later, when I was about nine,
We were headed back to Vietnam but couldn’t find out gate.
We had a very bad experience with the airline.
When I asked a man for help he was very full of hate.
“If you are going to live in this country, your mother is going to need
to learn English or otherwise it is just unacceptable,”(03:12) he told
us, which I think about daily.
After we walked away, I felt like I needed a tissue,
I hid it from my mother, because I knew it would affect her greatly,
so I tried to make it seem like not too big of an issue.
I had experienced similar situations before,
But this one really seemed to have stuck with me.
But to this day, America I still adore,
And I am happy to live in the home of the brave and land of the free.
This poem is centered around the story of a dear friend, Duy Nguyen. In this short poem, I used a very traumatic experience that Duy went through to inspire the poem. Being Asian has had its setbacks for her and she has handled them all in stride. She has had people give her dirty looks when she was doing nothing, instant judgment because of her race, and has dealt with a lot of stereotypes that surround being Asian. She claims to “have developed a kind of protective barrier against”(03:50) things that would be racist or stereotypical, which no one should have to do.
One incident Duy faced since coming to America was when a TSA worker was rude and hateful towards her and her mother. As they were traveling back to Vietnam, Duy asked a TSA worker which gate was theirs and how to get there since her mother didn’t speak English well enough to ask. When he tried to answer, he spoke to Duy’s mother. When he figured out she didn’t understand and couldn’t reply, he got very upset and told her that if she was going to live in America that she had to learn English otherwise it’s not acceptable. Duy understood what he said but didn’t want to tell her mother, so she hid it from her. She never told either of her parents what he said and doesn’t plan to. Though this isn’t the first of an experience like this, Duy still believes that America has hope of becoming fully accepting of people of different races, religions, and sexuality.
As a first-generation immigrant in “the home of brave and land of free”, I have experienced a variety of exclusions ever since I moved here with my family. I found Sarah Cloven’s The American Dream extremely relatable. This is a poem that Sarah wrote about her Vietnamese friend Duy Nguyen’s traumatic experience with an airline worker in America. The incident happened when Duy and her family were heading back to Vietnam, and the worker at the airport told Duy that her mother needs to learn English or it’s just unacceptable for her to live in this country. Duy hid this incident from her mother but what happened was forever remarkable. I was born and raised in China and my family decided to move to the United States when I was 15. Till this day I still remember when my family was lost at the Chicago airport, how annoyed the worker looked when I asked for help with my “broken” English. Of course, English has become my fluent language really fast but not for my parents, like Duy’s. “My mother wasn’t as good which put her at a big disadvantage, Plus her it didn’t help that her accent was so thick”. It is very hard for a person to speak another language without an accent, especially when you speak your first language your whole life. Even in this so-called the Melting Pot country, people would still see you differently when you don’t speak the same way as everyone else. The airport worker wanted Duy’s mother to learn English just so she could be “acceptable” to live in America, though it’s probably hard for her to understand even when she did learn the language. Just like the German Nazis wanted the Jewish to speak perfect German while they have accents. The reason why we study history is that we don’t want to repeat the same mistakes people made in the past. We should all keep learning and always have an open mind and heart, so America can really be “the home of brave and the land of free”.
As a minority in the United States, you will get judged. Sarah E Cloven in her blog titled, “The American Dream” tells a story in a short poem of an interaction between Duy Nguyen and a TSA worker. Duy Nguyen and her mother were headed back to Vietnam but could not find their gate. They asked a TSA worker for help and the worker realized that the mother couldn’t speak English. He proceeded to tell Duy, “…to live in this country, your mother is going to learn English or otherwise it is just unacceptable.” Duy’s mother was judged for not speaking English. Also, in the short paragraph, Sarah says that Duy was given “dirty looks” when she wasn’t doing anything abnormal. Duy was judged because she does not look like the majority of the population. This judgement has been received frequently to the point that Duy developed a “protective barrier” against it. This judgement is similar to the ones in Nazi Germany. In an Anchor 214 lecture, Professor Bergerson explained how neighbors only clean their half of the street. When your half of the street isn’t clean, but your neighbor’s half is clean then you get judged. This is similar because in both situations they do not meet the standards of the majority. Also, in an Anchor 214 lecture, Professor Bergerson stated that German citizens were judged by Nazi German citizens if they do become Nazi. Nazi German citizens were the majority of Nazi Germany. This relates to Duy’s situation because they were both judged by the majority for not being the same as the others. In the United States, you get judged for being a minority.
There is always people saying how Spanish speakers who are frequently outcasted and told they shouldn’t be in the United States if they “can’t even speak our language.” Personally I am a caucasian women and do not experience this in the United States, but on many journeys abroad I have heard things similar and derogatory towards me. Since I am studying Spanish I am relating this scenario to the part where Sarah said, “Your mother is going to have to learn English here or otherwise thats just not acceptable.” It sadly is looked at like that in many places in the world in this day and age and is shows the prejudice people still have. I feel like in a sense, Germany did this exact thing at the time of the holocaust. They wanted their people to be a certain hair color, skin tone, eye color, speak perfect German, etc. In all three of my examples the thing in common is in every situation it’s examples of people wanting to much stuff from people that is not necessary. In the poem Sarah also wrote, “I hid it from my mother because I knew it would effect her greatly.” She went on to face so much embarrassment that she still remembers those exact words till this day. The difference between these situations is only if the prejudice leads to violence. In Hitlers case it very much did lead to violence and led to something even more awful.