Brandon
“How does it feel to be a minority of an immigrant family?”
It doesn’t really matter that much, where your born doesn’t really matter, and like I have you and dad and that connects me. Even though Mama and mom arent really like that,
I wouldn’t say that a language barrier is a gigantic barrier, but it has its challenges. Sometimes its on different levels and we’re talking about two different things and it's odd to say that you have a parent that doesn’t speak what you speak. I do wish that I could speak Vietnamese and Chinese not for the families sake but I think it’s cool speaking another language to speak with classmates and other people in the world. I do feel disconnected because I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and i see these asians people at my school and they always go down to chinatown, and get some tea while I’m going downtown and I want to get a burger and when someone asks me I always identify myself as American. The asian culture feels exotic to me, like it’s something new. With them, I feel like I understand a good bit, I think they just say the same thing over and over again, and if I’m with my friends and they said something in Chinese or Vietnamese, 9 times out of ten I have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s hard to say if I lived in Vietnam now, there are a lot of variables, I feel like I would definitely more closed minded, and there are only vietnamese people, while in America it's more diverse and I feel like seeing Vietnamese people all the time. Will just sway my thoughts on how I would perceive the world. Dad’s story is so unreal, it’s like wow man, I think about this sometimes that I always compare my small problems of having a test tomorrow while dad had to think about how he’ll eat the next day or will I be killed by pirates, and it makes me think about the 1st-3rd world problems. Even though in the scope of things, they’re relatively small, they’re still problems. I don't think I can go through what dad went through to get here, and it's hard to think about our dad was in this survival situation and it’s hard to think that he’s now working at a desk job and wears pajamas that he was once a kid trying to struggle to get to a better place. The American dream, I want to have a beautiful wife and live in the suburbs with my kids, I don’t need to be loaded rich and I want to be better off, have a great job I like, I think my dad got the american dream, we’re better off, he’s done having kids. And I think that he’s created a great life for himself. Embarrassed is not the world, it’s not that I’m ashamed because of my mom’s accent or anything, it’s sometimes that when we’re out in public, she would act different like she would in Vietnam, having an accent is not the problem it’s the different customs that she does in public that’s bizarre.
I’d raise them like I am now, which is more Americanized, it’s not like I dislike the Asian culture, and it’s weird to raise your kids in something that you’ve never experienced, and since I was raised as Americans, I think my kids should be raised as Americans. I’m not going to abandon the culture, I want to teach them about the culture, but most of my teachings will probably be western based.
The journey is going to be hard, it’s going to be scary but one day you’ll be fine and mama and uncle bryan will be fine and you will make it to america and you will have a better life than you have now.
It doesn’t really matter that much, where your born doesn’t really matter, and like I have you and dad and that connects me. Even though Mama and mom arent really like that,
I wouldn’t say that a language barrier is a gigantic barrier, but it has its challenges. Sometimes its on different levels and we’re talking about two different things and it's odd to say that you have a parent that doesn’t speak what you speak. I do wish that I could speak Vietnamese and Chinese not for the families sake but I think it’s cool speaking another language to speak with classmates and other people in the world. I do feel disconnected because I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and i see these asians people at my school and they always go down to chinatown, and get some tea while I’m going downtown and I want to get a burger and when someone asks me I always identify myself as American. The asian culture feels exotic to me, like it’s something new. With them, I feel like I understand a good bit, I think they just say the same thing over and over again, and if I’m with my friends and they said something in Chinese or Vietnamese, 9 times out of ten I have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s hard to say if I lived in Vietnam now, there are a lot of variables, I feel like I would definitely more closed minded, and there are only vietnamese people, while in America it's more diverse and I feel like seeing Vietnamese people all the time. Will just sway my thoughts on how I would perceive the world. Dad’s story is so unreal, it’s like wow man, I think about this sometimes that I always compare my small problems of having a test tomorrow while dad had to think about how he’ll eat the next day or will I be killed by pirates, and it makes me think about the 1st-3rd world problems. Even though in the scope of things, they’re relatively small, they’re still problems. I don't think I can go through what dad went through to get here, and it's hard to think about our dad was in this survival situation and it’s hard to think that he’s now working at a desk job and wears pajamas that he was once a kid trying to struggle to get to a better place. The American dream, I want to have a beautiful wife and live in the suburbs with my kids, I don’t need to be loaded rich and I want to be better off, have a great job I like, I think my dad got the american dream, we’re better off, he’s done having kids. And I think that he’s created a great life for himself. Embarrassed is not the world, it’s not that I’m ashamed because of my mom’s accent or anything, it’s sometimes that when we’re out in public, she would act different like she would in Vietnam, having an accent is not the problem it’s the different customs that she does in public that’s bizarre.
I’d raise them like I am now, which is more Americanized, it’s not like I dislike the Asian culture, and it’s weird to raise your kids in something that you’ve never experienced, and since I was raised as Americans, I think my kids should be raised as Americans. I’m not going to abandon the culture, I want to teach them about the culture, but most of my teachings will probably be western based.
The journey is going to be hard, it’s going to be scary but one day you’ll be fine and mama and uncle bryan will be fine and you will make it to america and you will have a better life than you have now.