Thoughts of an April Evening

16 months ago, I went to Việt Nam.

It was a trip I looked forward to all my life but I wondered if I ever would be ready. I went to taste the exotic fruits every Việt Kiều raves about. I went to feast on its wild tropical beauty and hear the lilt of the Vietnamese language on every tongue. I went to skip on Hà Nội's cobbled streets, haggle with the vendorsi n Saigon's Bến Thành, and breathe in the waters of the Mekong River, where my parents once made a livelihood. I went back to Việt Nam as a young woman, yearning to understand the country of my birth, the land my parents fled and I never knew, the nation whose political upheavals have cast on me a new identity: Vietnamese American.

I wondered if I would recognize the form my answers would take.

I met Cường. I met him on my first day in Việt Nam because he was our tour guide. Young, intellectual and charming as he bought us a fruit knife when he noticed we were buying mãng cầu, mãng cụt, and thăng long by the kilo as we went from one attraction to another. Cường made lucrative money for Asia Travel which catered mostly to foreign tourists. As the boat rocked softly on the waters of Vịnh Hạ Long, he suggested an internal struggle which belied his confident exterior. Is money it? The Communist government has not delivered on its promise of material equality or universal brotherhood. He had made siblings still left in his his home village, whose farthest horizons were the rice fields the worked.

I rode on a xe ôm with Hưng to Quán 31, Biên Hòa's most hip-hop ice cream shop. I looked deep into my cousin's dark brown eyes and handsome Korean-like features as he nodded at others in recognition as we watched for our orders to come. I listened to his goal of finding employment at a friend's motorcycle repair shop because finishing high school meant nothing in a thinly masked bribery-infested capitalist economy. He told all this haltingly, for these were his goals, not his dreams.

I stood on the balcony to our room at the Purple Lotus Hotel, watching the cool breeze playing on the hair of Thúy, my niece. She was 15, enthralled at meeting her first Việt Kiều relative. So I told her stories. She was 15, full of wonderings about the things that make a young girl's heart tremble. So I shared my experiences. She was 15 and confused why the world of ideas has to be so limited. So I told her the consequences of living in a totalitarian regime.

16 months ago I went to Việt Nam.

I went to know Việt Nam and the Vietnamese part of my American identity. Or is it the American part of my Vietnamese identity? Việt Nam is no longer a story for me. Nor is Communism. It is an intangible hand that squeezes Cường's, Hưng's, and Thúy's dreams dry.

It is April and I pray for our Vietnamese brothers and sisters everywhere because April was when we lost our country to communism.

It is April and I pray for my ever deeper spirit of gratitude of living in a country which allows me windows to different horizons.

It is April, seven months away from the United States presidential elections, and I pray for my adopted homeland, that we may exercise our political rights and not become Communistic Việt Nam in spirit because of our ignorance and indifference.

16 months ago, I went to Việt Nam. And discovered America.
And me. Vietnamese-American.
Vietnamese and American.

* Originally written in April 2008 for a TNTT online publication.
* All names and places have been changed to protect individuals.