With the nation discussing closing down immigration, carrying out mass deportations and eliminating birthright citizenship, I find the words of my now 15-year-old granddaughter enlightening.
In a piece originally published in the Brea Olinda High School student newspaper The Wildcat as a guest opinion, she shared the story of her immigrant heritage. Her Vietnamese grandparents braved an ocean escape in an overcrowded boat, low on food to share with their two young children. Their daughter, aged seven when they fled Vietnam, grew to be a U.S. Social Security attorney, lifted by her parents who worked hard for decades for the U.S. Postal Service.
That heritage led to my granddaughter, a brilliant young teen writer who appreciates the sacrifices her family made to make her life possible. But she struggled to fit into the adopted U.S., teased by classmates about her accent inherited from speaking Vietnamese with family. Embarrassed, she dropped her Vietnamese language and hid the exotic fruits her grandmother lovingly nurtured and packed in her lunches.
“Now, as a 14-year old, I look back at those moments of undeserved shame with embarrassment. I am embarrassed for the little girl that felt pulled between two cultures. I am embarrassed for the little girl that purposely lost the language that she once spoke with such fluency. I am embarrassed for the girl that felt embarrassed,” my granddaughter wrote.
“I was hiding a part of myself — the part that is why I am here today, privileged and lucky,” she wrote.
I am grateful my granddaughter has grown up in a nation that fostered her family in a loving way. I worry about future immigrant families that may not be able to have that same nurturing opportunity from our country.
