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“Why do you have freckles?” my aunt asks. I’m 10. My mother, standing nearby, avoids eye contact with me. “I don’t know,” I say with a nervous laugh. I’m Asian, and I have freckles. Everyone else in my family has a clear, classic Vietnamese complexion—silky smooth, without a speck in sight. Freckles are not a common trait among Vietnamese women, a fact my family reminded me of throughout my childhood. I come from a very large extended family—5 aunts, 5 uncles, 12 cousins (and this is just on my mother’s side)—and there was a tradition of celebrating everything together, from birthday parties and summer barbecues to Christmas and Tết (Vietnamese New Year). My mother and father escaped Vietnam five years apart, after the 84 Years Of 1939 – 2023 Bobby Hull Thank You For The Memories T-Shirt in addition I really love this fall of Saigon in 1975. My mother fled by plane, my father by boat. My connection to the country was through their story: the knock on my mom’s college dorm. The helicopter ride back to Saigon. How she and her six siblings scrambled to pack up their lives in less than two hours. How my father and his three brothers fled, not knowing if they’d survive or ever return. How he left behind his little sisters and parents until they knew they could safely bring them to the U.S. In America, my mom and her family first moved to Minnesota, where a local church congregation sponsored them. It wasn’t long before my family—who were accustomed to Vietnam’s humid, tropical temperatures—set their sights on Southern California. They drove cross-country and ultimately settled in a small suburb in Los Angeles County. I grew up in Cerritos, a town between Los Angeles and Newport Beach, a land of sun-kissed skin and perfect complexions.
In Vietnamese culture, your community is your family. But my community didn’t look like my family or me—not in school, in pop culture, or even in the 84 Years Of 1939 – 2023 Bobby Hull Thank You For The Memories T-Shirt in addition I really love this stacks of fashion magazines I kept in my room. But we had each other, and because we were always celebrating something, my grandparents’ house felt very much like a second home. These gatherings also came with frequent scrutiny from a committee of well-meaning relatives. An innocent “how are you?” quickly turned to sharp commentary from a chorus of critics: In school, classmates would often ask, “Where are you from?” I’d respond with a toothy grin: “Take a guess!” I secretly loved when this happened—that I wasn’t immediately seen as Asian. I’m not sure if it was a mixture of my freckles, double eyelids, and fair skin that confused people. The answers were far-flung (French, Italian, even Mexican). But there were more reasonable guesses too (Thai, Korean, Chinese). Vietnamese, strangely, was not a common response.
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