Immigration of the Lao Iu Mein
I thought it would be an interesting idea to enlighten and inform people about the Lao Iu Mein and our process of immigrating to the U.S. as well as the challenges we have to overcome. I interviewed my parents, Lao Iu Mein refugees who immigrated to the United States from Thailand. Through this interview, I had a chance to hear for the first time the story of my parents' struggles and experiences as they journeyed to a place where they became "aliens" and how that place is now the place they call "home."
During the 1960s and 70s, Laos became engulfed in the Vietnam War. The U.S. government also got involved by supporting the anti-Communist forces and getting the tribes in Laos to help them. The Iu Mein, as well as other minority tribes, provided the U.S. with armed manpower, intelligence, and surveillance. In 1975, the community forces rose in victory as the Iu Mein people began to escape to their homeland. My father said that the reason my family, as well as most of the Iu Mein in Laos, ran away was because they didn't want to be under the new Pathet Lao government. Escaping was not easy to accomplish. Many of my parents' friends who were caught trying to escape were taken to prisons, tortured, and most of them were killed. My parents were terrified of the Vietnamese soldiers and prayed that nothing would happen to them, their brothers, sisters, parents, and their son (my brother) who was 8 years old at the time. They had to flee during the night, pass through the jungles and onto boats traveling across the Mekong River.
When they reached Thailand, my parents and those who escaped with them were taken to refugee camps. The camps were fenced with barbed wire and guarded by armed Thai soldiers. The refugees were given a curfew that only allowed them to stay out before 10 pm. If they were caught disobeying curfew, they would be beaten and taken to jail. The camps received food and supplies that were provided by the United Nations Organization. My parents said that in the camps, their lives were still hard although they felt safer. My mother said that the one thing they worried most about was the fact that they wouldn't continue their farming to grow food, something that had been part of the daily lives before the camp.
Their journey has forced them to face many sorrowful circumstances, and forced them to change in many ways. Over the course of their plight, Hmong have taken many identities. They have been refugees, immigrants, survivors, patriots, and Americans. Even after finding a home in the US, the Hmong identity cannot be determined. The Hmong identity cannot be contained in the jungles of southeast Asia, Thai refugee camps, languages, or a memoir. The Hmong identity is in continuous metamorphosis, and the only people who can voice about their identity are the
Before 1975, Vietnam was divided into a North and South. The North was ruled by communism while the south was under United States protection. On April 30th 1975, communists attacked South Vietnam with the intentions of ruling both north and south in which succeeded. The Unwanted is a self-written narrative that takes place in Vietnam, 1975. At this time the United States had just pulled out of Vietnam as a result of the communist’s takeover. In effect of the flee, the U.S. left behind over fifty-thousand Amerasian children including Kien Nguyen. Kien was one of the half-American children that endured the hardships of communist’s takeover. Born in 1967 to a Vietnamese mother and unknown American father who fled to the U.S.
Even though Little Saigon provided Vietnamese American with economic benefit, political power, this landmark also witnessed many difficulties that Vietnamese experienced. Vietnamese American experienced many traumatic events prior to migration such as war, journey on boats, therefore many of them suffered posttraumatic stress disorder, stress, and depression. Significantly, Vietnamese refugees who went to the re-education camps sustained torture, humiliation, deprivation, brainwashing and several other punishments from Vietnamese Communist. Those refugees have higher rates of having mental disorder. Language barrier is another obstacle that...
When I turned to look, I was excitedly greeted by my relatives and their big signs that read: “Welcome to Korea!” What happened next was a flash of tears, hugs, and kisses. I had seen my parents emotional before, but not to this extent. This made me wonder how much my mother truly missed her family when she parted from them to move to America. It also made me consider how her relationship with her family strengthened her identity as an Asian-American.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, is a realist outlook on the gritty underside of Industrialized America. It is a story that doesn't withhold the dirt and grime that came with living in highly populated impoverished areas. The young Stephen Crane does a very good job portraying the destruction of a young, beautiful, and optimistic Maggie by forces outside of her own control. The rather dreary realism of the novel was a little unheard of at the time. Crane had to publish his book himself, as no publishers wanted to take the chance on a novel so negative about human nature. However, over time his story quickly cemented its roots as a fundamental column of American Realism Literature.
Imagine that you are in Vietnam in 1975. Out of your house window, you hear gunshots and screams of pain and agony. You hide in fear as your parents are packing their things, planning to head a boat to a refugee camp in America, as it will keep you away from those pesky Communists. Who knew that a simple boat ride to a refugee camp would cause so much stress when realising that you will have to leave all your old memories behind? This is what Ha experiences when running away from home with her family because of Communists. Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai is a historical fiction set in South Vietnam in a small town called Saigon. Ha, a rebellious ten-year-old Vietnamese girl, her three brothers, and her mother who had recently lost her husband- must flee out of their hometown once war strikes. But this is a challenge, with little to no source of food and water, and with many eyes of the Communists staring down on them, wishing upon death. Will Ha and the rest of her family be able to flee safely to America, and if they do, will Ha be able to bound “back again” in her new home in
Maggie is a major character in Everyday Use. Because Maggie is quite and withdrawn, she is hardly recognized. “She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since that house burned the other house to the ground”(316). While Maggie loved that house abundantly, Dee despised it. Although she became attached to her previous house, she portrays that materialism is not as important as remembering spiritual values. She has a true, un-superficial sense of family, or heritage, as she tells her mother that Dee may have the quilts because she "can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts" (321). Maggie comprehends that she can recall her spiritual values without material possessions, unlike Dee. Dee becomes more concerned
Crane, Stephen. Maggie a Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York). Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. Print.
As a minority, coming from an international country to a foreign nation has been the most crucial decision that my family has concluded to live the possibility of the "American Dream". However, growing up as an Asian-American student wasn’t simple; I was faced with the challenge of malicious racial slurs, spiteful judgment, and unjustified condemnation that attacked my family's decision to come to America.
The subject of this paper is Liz, a 52-year old, 1.5 generation female immigrant from Hong Kong. What this means is that she immigrated to the United States when she was a child, around 7-years old (Feliciano Lec. 1/4/2016 -. As a child of a family that consists of five siblings and two parents that did not speak any English prior to immigrating, the focus of this paper will be on the legal processes that the family went through to become legal immigrants and the various factors that aided in her path towards assimilation. Liz’s family is from a city called Kow Loon in Hong Kong.
Maggie’s traits that she gained from her father helped make her the woman she is today. Her
...a feeling of that’s what the soldiers signed up for and they made the decision to sacrifice their selves for their country. We can and can’t justify militarism, it’s primarily based upon opinion.
Maggie was the first novella assigned, and it is filled with dark themes of poverty, prostitution, and death. Believe it or not, Maggie also longed for that American Dream. She lived in the slums of New York, her parents were alcoholics, and she worked at a factory. Maggie wanted nothing more but to get out of the slums and get an education, get married, and live a long and happy life. But in the end, Maggie went down the wrong path of prostitution and later was found dead. Maggie had been dreaming about getting out of the slums for quite some time, she even knew that she was different from the other girls. Maggie’s dream was becoming real when she met Pete. Now, Pete in her eyes was the “ideal man.” The way he talked about his job, how he lived in this environment, and his appearance. Maggie thought that with Pete, she could fulfill her dream of leaving the slums, and finally
There are several theories about why adoption of a fruit that has almost come to symbolize Italian cuisine took so long. One argues that it was because tomatoes were believed to be poisonous, another that the earliest tomatoes were inferior and, therefore, eaten only in modest amounts until quality improved enough to make the fruit genuinely popular. In the area of Naples, for example, a key moment appears to have come in the middle of the eighteenth century with the development of a pleasing, large, and sweet tomato. The fruit quickly became the mainstay of Neapolitan pizza
We as health care professionals need to work side by side with the families to provide the best care and decisions that are right by our patients. We have to be mindful of the cause and effect our course of treatment depicts for our patients. No individual wants to live in pain or misery, we all want to be healthy and happy and are willing to go great lengths to achieve this goal. Death is the final stage of life, but as we live and get older we start to prepare for death as to not fear death but accept it. Health care professionals may benefit from the opportunity to acknowledge, normalize and integrate death and dying into the continuum of life, both for themselves as well as their patients. (Sinclair, 2011) With advancements in technology and medicine we are living longer and fuller lives, and given time quality of life will only continue to improve.