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SÁCH AMAZON


Mua bản sách in

- What is your name?

- Tony Nguyen.

- So are you Vietnamese American?

- No, I am American.

- No one is a “pure” American in this United States. Only Native Americans are often considered Native Americans here. But in fact, they are also the first people from other countries to come here. This is a country of mixed races, so before becoming an American citizen, each ethnic group has their country of origin in front, such as Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, African Americans, Anglo Americans...

- I don’t need to know other people’s business. I only know that I am an American.

- That’s impossible. By law, he has no choice but to identify himself as a Vietnamese American.

- I don’t care what race the law calls me. I just know I’m an American. Period!

The boy is 16 years old, but he looks as mature as if he were in his 20s. He speaks English without a single Vietnamese accent, and even when talking about his last name Nguyen, he pronounces “Uyn” the way Americans pronounce “win”. He seems completely allergic to everything related to Vietnam.

During my 18 years working for the “CPS” (Children’s Protective Services) program, which investigates for the court the illegal acts of child abuse by parents or guardians – according to American law – this is the first time I have met such a stubborn and defiant Vietnamese teenager. According to the court records that I was assigned to investigate and resolve, Tony Nguyen is a teenage “victim” of “abuse and abuse” by his parents. This is a Vietnamese family that has settled in the US for over twenty years. Only Tony was born in the US and is the youngest child in a family of five siblings, the four older children are all successful. Tony wants personal freedom in the American style; while his parents want to educate their children according to the Vietnamese tradition by using strict “traditional” measures such as harsh scolding, strict prohibition, and harsh love... The silent but intense cultural conflict has created generational gaps and psychological crises. The negative and rejecting prism grows stronger every day when looking at each other. Parents accuse their children of being “Americanized”. Meanwhile, the children react, seeing their parents as “outdated, too Vietnamese”. The feelings that come from understanding and sharing will become flexible and loving. Emotions piled up with rejection and conservatism will turn into freezing and conflict. In the middle of his tenth grade year, Tony left home, joined the “Asian Blood” gang and was arrested while fighting and settling scores with other gangs.


Tony was sent to a juvenile detention center, awaiting the juvenile court’s investigation and trial.

According to basic procedures, I had to contact both the victim and the perpetrator. Normally, in a “child abuse” case, the parent or caregiver is the perpetrator and the abused child is the victim. But in this case, Tony is both a victim of domestic abuse by his parents and a criminal who joined a gang that caused violence in society.

The first time I met Tony in the interview office, I was not surprised because I was familiar with the "good-natured" personality of American teenagers because I knew that the law in this country protects teenagers too much. What made me worried was the attitude of turning away and fiercely denying his roots. With that mood, the next day I went to see Tony's parents. Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen were in their fifties. They were an upper-middle-class family with a decent house and a stable job. Talking about the case of their youngest son, Tony, Mr. Nguyen reacted angrily. He pointed to four framed photos with the doctor, dentist, pharmacist, and engineer degrees of his four older children hanging in the living room as a typical proof of their ability to be good parents. While Mrs. Nguyen was sobbing, lamenting that she missed her youngest son “so much that her heart broke”!

The demands of work and the principles of collecting facts did not allow me to go beyond the issues that needed to be known, but only focused on the core of whether or not the way of raising children in Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen’s family was wrong according to US law. Mr. Nguyen still insisted that the way of raising children “love with the rod, hate with sweetness” applied to his youngest son “American son” was correct. According to him, if his way of raising children was wrong, why were his older children all successful, graduating as doctors and engineers. Since I am not in a position to advise, I only acknowledge your determination of Tony for the court to consider and decide.

The next time I met and talked with Tony, I learned more interesting things: the boy spoke Vietnamese quite well and liked Vietnamese music because he was cared for and raised by his grandmother throughout his youth while his parents were busy with work all day. Second-generation children of immigrant families in the US often look back at their homeland through the image of their parents. Mr. Nguyen plays a key role in the family as the "image of the homeland" in the eyes of the Vietnamese-American child. Therefore, when Mr. Nguyen became an "abuser" in Tony's eyes, the reaction of opposition and the mentality of rejecting his father spread, obscuring his origin.

The story of the court, the law, principles... are social conventions. But besides the responsibility to handle a case according to convention like my American colleagues, Vietnamese sentiments still often stir in me. The soul of a Vietnamese father who has lived abroad for half a lifetime and a child born in America are both imbued with Eastern and Western cultures. To live together in harmony, we need to open our hearts to accept each other's differences. I used this sentiment as a means to resolve the conflict between Mr. Nguyen and Tony.

Thanksgiving, with four consecutive days off, is the most sacred time of the year for Americans to gather and reunite with their families. The case of Mr. Nguyen's family has been resolved. Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen were punished according to the law for "abusing" their children. Tony was sent to the Boys Ranch. The file is temporarily closed in the US government system but still open in my heart, the heart of a Vietnamese living far from home but not far from national sentiment. I chose this moment to be the bridge between Mr. Nguyen and his father.

On a cold and drizzly Thanksgiving afternoon, I drove Tony's grandmother to Boys Ranch, about 50 kilometers from Sacramento. The camp lay quietly in the rain hidden behind an old oak forest. The whole scene was deserted because most of the young inmates had been sponsored by their families to go home for Thanksgiving. The camp manager, also a long-time friend from work, took us to the inmates' dormitory. At the end of the long hallway was Tony's room. The Vietnamese music "Xuan nay con khong ve" (This Spring, I Won't Come Back) echoed from the small room, sounding like a lost sound from a space of the past. Looking in from outside the window, the image of Tony sitting with his head down on a small table next to an iPod playing Vietnamese lyrics made me feel sad. From behind, suddenly came the cry of a grandmother, full of sorrow and sympathy, who had not seen her grandson for a long time:

- Tony, my son! It's grandma!

The boy stood up in surprise, turned his head, and immediately saw his grandmother opening her arms to hug him. The cry of joy and emotion left no room for hesitation. The American street gangster suddenly revealed his true form as a Vietnamese child whose entire childhood was filled with family love in his grandmother's lullaby. With tears in his eyes, he exclaimed with a heart signal:

- Grandma!

The manager and I wandered out to the reception room.

According to the previous arrangement with Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen and their family, I sponsored Tony to come home for five days during Thanksgiving. As soon as the car turned into the front yard and stopped, Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen and their family rushed out to hug Tony. In the living room lit up with lights and the whole family present, Mr. Nguyen hugged Tony's shoulder, with a bit of difficulty but full of love and determination, he spoke as if he had never spoken to his child in the past:

- Dad is sorry, son. Mom and Dad and everyone in the family love you, you know that?

The boy bowed his head, speaking Vietnamese as if he was learning to speak for the first time:

- Yes. I'm sorry, Mom and Dad...

When I tactfully said goodbye to restore the warm atmosphere of family reunion, Tony hesitated and said:

- Uncle! Please let me go home. I want to go back to school.

A social environment like the West, parents raising their children in their own way like Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen, a youth protection and education system like the United States is the image of a "cultural salad plate" that looks beautiful but is not necessarily delicious or sometimes hard to swallow if you do not have the same taste. Tony, like tens of thousands of young Vietnamese people growing up in foreign lands, is increasingly estranged from his roots each day. Some people have compared Vietnamese people living abroad to the sentiments of salmon, every five years following the circulation of the free source, their natural instincts urge them to return to their roots. Rapids, strong winds, fierce waves and life-and-death dangers lurking everywhere on the way back cannot stop the invisible drive to survive.

During Thanksgiving in a foreign land, thinking about my homeland, I absentmindedly wonder where I was four thousand years ago and where I will be four thousand years from now. Whether it is nothingness or reincarnation, how could my presence today be just a coincidence?

Sacramento, Thanksgiving 2012

(Tran Kiem Doan)

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