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September 22, 2014

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Does the American Dream still exist today?

WHEN I think of the Vietnamese narrative in America, I think of my mother’s ancestral altar. In her suburban home on the outskirts of San Jose with a pool shimmering in the backyard, my mother prays.

Every morning she climbs a chair and piously lights a few joss sticks for the ancestral altar on top of the living room bookcase and mumbles her solemn prayers to the dead. Black and white photos of Grandpa and Grandma and uncles stare out benevolently to the world of the living from the top shelf.

On the shelves below, by contrast, stand my father’s MBA diploma, my older siblings’ engineering and business degrees, my own degree in biochemistry, our combined sports trophies, and, last but not least, the latest installments of my own unending quest for self-reinvention — plaques and obelisk crystals and framed certificates — my literary and journalism awards.

What my mother’s altar and the shelves tell is the story of the Vietnamese American conversion, one where Old World fatalism meets New World optimism, the American Dream. After all, praying to the dead is a cyclical habit — one looks to the past for guidance, and one yearns toward that “common origin” to keep him connected to his community, his sense of continuity.

Getting awards and trophies, on the other hand, is an American tendency, a proposition of ascendancy, where one looks toward the future and deems it optimistic and bright.

So we have survived, but we have irrevocably changed. To be Vietnamese American, one learns to lurk between these two opposite ideas, negotiating, that is, between night and day.

Ambitious new comers

Under California’s cerulean sky, the newcomers undergo a marvelous transformation. In the Golden State where half a million Vietnamese resettled, dreams do have a penchant of coming true. The newcomer grows ambitious. He sees, for instance, his own restaurant in the “For Rent” sign on a dilapidated store in a run-down neighborhood. He sees his kids graduating from top colleges. He imagines his own home with a pool in the back five years down the line — things that were impossible back home.

Sister, did you know the man who created the famous Sriracha chili sauce was a boat person? He arrived in America in January of 1980 and by February already started making his famous green-capped bottles of hot sauce. Now his company rolls out 10 million-plus bottles a year. It’s the next ketchup. He’s a very rich man.

Aunty, did you know that the man who started Lee’s sandwiches started out with just a food truck? He parked outside electronics assembly plants in San Jose selling sandwiches to mostly Vietnamese workers, but he parlayed his business into a multi-million dollar chain. There are now Lee’s sandwich shops in California, Arizona, and Texas, not to mention China, Korea and Vietnam itself. It’s an international corporation.

Brother, have you heard about the assistant to the attorney general in the George W. Bush administration? He was a boat person and left Vietnam at age 15 but graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and was editor of Harvard Law Review. He was the chief architect of the USA Patriot Act. Can you believe it?

Soon enough houses are bought, jobs are had, children are born, old folks are buried, businesses and malls are opened, and community newspapers are printed. That is to say, ours is a community whose roots are burrowing, slowly but deeply, into the American loam.

Does the American Dream still exist? From a survivor’s point of view, it still does.

 

Andrew Lam is editor and cofounder of New America Media, an association of more than 3,000 ethnic media outlets in the United States. He is the author of “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora,” “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres,” and most recently, a collection of short stories, “Birds of Paradise Lost.” On Twitter: @andrewqlam. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.




 

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