Chapter 6: Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation (Part 1)
“Making money means you can do whatever you want,” both my parents were fond of telling us. This particular conversation happened to be with my mother, and it brought with it a particularly shocking and disturbing edge. “That means everyone will have to call you ông này bà kia.”
It was an expression that literally translated as Mr. This and Mrs. That. It meant someone important.
I rolled my eyes, finding the phrase ironic given that she was talking to her two sons. No Mrs. That here.
She continued, “And then you can get whatever girl you want. As many girls as you want.” She looked into the rearview mirror, her eyes locking on mine. “Even white girls will want you.”
“That’s gross, Mom,” I said, shaking my head. The irony wasn’t lost on me—especially given who my brother was. “I want a girl to like me for me, not for anything else. Certainly not for money.”
“That’s naïve,” my mom said. “When you have money, the girls will want you for you and for your money.”
My mother had never been good with words and while I do not condone what she believed and what she would say next, I think a fair and sophisticated restatement of my mother would have been that money broke down barriers. Barriers that otherwise left people like us—the wrong shade of tan, the wrong slant of eyes—invisible. Undesirable. Maybe unlovable.
“Not only get white girls. You could even hire Mexicans to wipe your butt or shake your dick dry.” My mom said, and both of my brother and I exploded in protest.
“That’s just racist!”
“Oh c’mon!”
“You can’t say that!”
On another occasion, my father would list with precision the order of the types (i.e. the ethnicity) of girls we were allowed, or not allowed, to date:
A Vietnamese girl
Another kind of Asian, preferably East Asian but really any type of Asian
A white girl
A Hispanic girl… although that’s not preferable
No Black girls
I was livid when I heard this.
“Dad, you know that is literally racism, right? Like the definition of racism. Not just racial prejudice. You’re a legit racist!”
“Well, it’s true. Asians are just better than everyone else.” He replied with cool indifference.
This type of racism within my family was not abnormal, and race and ethnicity permeated the way I saw the world, both inside and outside my home.
I think a conversation about race—an honest one—must first start with oneself. And in the context how race affected me, I will start there.
***
Eighth grade ended, and I faced a decision that felt like choosing my own identity.
Would I go to La Quinta High School in Garden Grove, where my brother had graduated and where fragments of my elementary school life might reassemble themselves?
Or would I choose Mater Dei, the private Catholic school in Santa Ana where my St. Barbara friends were headed.
It wasn't about school spirit—I had none of that.
It was about who I would become.
The public school world I'd been exiled from versus the Catholic bubble that promised proximity to an American life I had never fully known.
I wondered where my old friends had scattered—Andy, Stephen, Huy, Linh, Kevin, Nick, Ana, Vanessa, Tyson.
Garden Grove High?
Bolsa Grande?
Los Amigos?
Westminster?
La Quinta?
The old world was scattered now, fragments of a childhood that had already begun to fade.
Two things I know now:
If I had to choose again, I probably wouldn't make the same choice.
And yet, the Lord was in charge. In His providence, this was exactly where I needed to be.
I chose Mater Dei High School.
Before that transition, though, my parents had another journey planned for us. Vietnam.
It wasn't my first return to the homeland I'd never known.
I'd visited once before when I was three.
But this time, at fourteen, I approached the journey with a more developed sense of dread. I didn't always feel like belonged in America—why would Vietnam be any different?
***
Our flight to Vietnam included a layover in Seoul that cracked open a worldview I didn’t know I had held.
The airport gleamed with technology I'd never seen: touch screen phones instead of old landline payphones, sleek architecture, efficient systems.
The Korean flag reminded me of the Pepsi logo, and the food—while served in disappointingly small portions—tasted better than I'd expected.
I had grown up believing America was unquestionably the greatest, most advanced country in the world.
No one had prepared me to be impressed by an Asian country with brighter airports, richer food, and flashier technology.
It was the first fracture in my American exceptionalism, though I wouldn't have called it that then.
From Seoul we continued to China before boarding a small Asian Air airplane to Ho Chi Minh City.
The aircraft felt rickety compared to the previous flights, and as we descended, I stared out the window at what had once been Saigon—now named for the revolutionary leader my parents had fled from.
We stepped into a cramped, strangely green airport that felt worlds away from Seoul's modernity.
A customs officer in forest green uniform—công an—inspected our luggage. He examined my Gameboy Advance with suspicion.
“What's this?” he asked, his Vietnamese accent different enough from the Americanized Vietnamese I knew that I had to concentrate to understand.
“It's for videogames,” I said tentatively.
He studied me with unreadable eyes, his dark skin stretched over sharp bones, before waving us through.
I already did not like Vietnam.
Outside the airport, my father's family waited. I recognized them from photos and dim memories of my visit as a toddler. I greeted each with a small bow, surprised by their warm smiles and genuine welcome. I had always preferred my father's family to my mother's relatives in America, and seeing them again reminded me why. Their affection seemed less conditional.
We made our way to my father's eldest brother's home to gather with most of the extended family. That night, looking up at the Vietnamese sky crisscrossed with electrical wires, I felt trapped—a bird in a net.
The buildings rose tall and narrow, pressing in from all sides.
My uncle's home stretched ten stories high, the ground floor functioning as a convenience store.
Each floor was essentially a single room, connected by narrow stairs. I couldn't fathom living in such confined space.
***
After settling our luggage, we took motorcycles to a nearby restaurant. Standing outside on the busy street, engines buzzing past, the air thick with gasoline and fried food smells, I heard my mother scream.
I turned sharply and found her being dragged into the street, clutching her purse as someone on a motorcycle attempted to snatch it. Rather than letting go, she clung fiercely to her bag, her body skidding across the pavement as motorcycles swerved around her. The purse snatcher let go as my father and uncles rushed to pull her back to the sidewalk.
My mom in microcosm—violently refusing to surrender what she believed was hers, even at her own expense.
I hugged my mom, relieved that she was okay. Relieved that one of the few people I knew in this foreign, dangerous country was still safe.
However loaded that knowing actually was.
The attempted theft didn't stop us from proceeding to dinner. We settled at a round table in a spacious restaurant as if nothing had happened.
I studied my father's older brother and his wife—my uncle serious but friendly, his wife quick to smile.
Their son, Tran Sinh, sat beside me, around sixteen years old.
Looking at him, I thought: he screams Vietnamese.
He had hair that did not have product, a peach fuzz mustache that contrasted against my now clean-shaven face, awkward acne on his face. Those weren’t the things that screamed Vietnamese, though.
It was something more fundamental.
The way he spoke—clipped, guttural, with sounds that weren't quite words but carried meaning, his voice lifting at the end of sentences.
The way he moved—how he hunched, how he casually squatted.
The way he smelled—the absence of deodorant making his body odor unavoidable.
Most striking was his absolute comfort in his own skin.
He had no awareness of how others might perceive him—how I perceived him.
I looked from Sinh over to my uncle and asked if I could have a Coke.
“Don't hút too much,” he warned in Vietnamese. “It's not good for you.” It took me a moment to registered what it was he had said.
Oh.
He thought I said hút—a Vietnamese word meaning “to suck” but colloquially indicating smoking.
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
My eyes widened. “No! I mean Coke. As in nước ngọt.” Sweet water. Soda.
“Ahh,” he nodded, returning the cigarettes to his pocket before ordering my drink and asking Sinh what he wanted.
“I'll take a beer,” Sinh said casually. His father ordered it without hesitation.
I did rapid mental math: Sinh at sixteen plus beer did not equal the twenty-one years required… in America.
When the drinks arrived, Sinh took a long pull from his beer, smiling as he set it down. His armpit odor wafted over me as he moved.
And I wondered:
What if my parents had never left Vietnam?
Would I be just like Sinh?
Would I not wear deodorant (something Nick had taught me about in elementary school)?
Would I drink beer at sixteen?
Would I, too, be comfortably unaware of how others perceived me?
Would I squat?
I didn't even know how to squat properly. I was too fat to squat.
***
Later that night, my brother and I were sleeping in our hotel room when a sharp knock startled me awake. I checked the alarm clock: 2:00 a.m.
“Open the door!” demanded a voice. “Cảnh sát! Open the door!” Another word for police.
Why did they need multiple terms for law enforcement?
Though, to be fair, Americans have police, cops, sheriff, FBI, U.S. Marshals...
I opened the door hesitantly after turning on the lights.
“Yes, sir?” I asked in Vietnamese.
“Who's in there with you?” The officer asked suspiciously, wearing that same forest green uniform I was growing to despise. I hated that uniform, even as I idolized the police blues of American city police.
“Just my brother,” I said, opening the door wider so he could see Howard asleep in the other bed.
The officer nodded curtly, eyeing my brother. “Just checking for prostitutes,” he said before leaving.
I was struck by several things: his rudeness, the casual mention of prostitution (repugnant to my mind), and his heteronormative assumption that any visitor to my room would be female.
It never occurred to him that my brother might not be my brother, but a male prostitute.
Howard was gay, after all.
I closed the door, relieved the strange encounter was over, and returned to bed.
***
The main reason for our Vietnam trip was my cousin Son's wedding.
I had always liked Son—when I visited at age three, he'd carried me up a mountain during a family hike. Now I watched him marry in a complex ceremony that blended Vietnamese tradition with Western influences.
For the wedding, we purchased suits in Vietnam—a process that had taken hours and left me exhausted.
Standing before the mirror in my new attire, I studied my reflection. My brother, skinny and taller, looked natural in his suit.
I looked round, awkward, my face puffy with baby fat I hadn't yet lost.
As I glared at myself in frustration, I noticed something: my eyelids folded as I glared.
Holy heck! It almost looks like I have doublelids when I do that!
I shook my head. I couldn't go around glaring all day. Not just so I can feel like I belonged.
But at least I wasn't wearing an áo dài for the wedding.
Small victories.
The wedding day itself was a fascinating blend of cultures. We traveled to the bride's rural home, carrying traditional gifts including a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth (which I found grotesque despite enjoying pork).
The streets looked different here. Tropical and open, rather than cramped. It smells fresh, none of the pollutants from motorcycles slowly suffocating us.
It was a long, arduous walk. I was hot, tired, a bit sore from carrying the pig.
I don’t remember what the bride looked like. In my mind, all Vietnamese women in áo dài look the same—foreign. Vietnamese.
Which wasn’t quite fair because the áo dài is quite pretty and when it fits right, makes a Vietnamese woman look both elegant and distinctively feminine.
The reception surprised me in two ways:
First, how Western it appeared—tuxedos, round tables with white tablecloths, formal place settings.
Second, the distinctly Vietnamese elements—the food, music, and most noticeably, cigarette boxes as wedding favors.
As dancing began, men lit up and the reception hall filled with smoke.
It was disorienting: wearing a Western suit at a Vietnamese wedding, participating in traditional bride retrieval customs, then sitting at a reception that could have been in California except for the cloud of cigarette smoke enveloping everything.
Vietnam was a contradiction I couldn't resolve.
***
“They can tell your accent is American,” my father explained as we walked down the street.
The locals called us người quốc—technically meaning “national” but colloquially referring to foreigners. “They can even hear that I'm American now.” He continued.
We were walking through the neighborhood where my father's family lived, past their single-story home with a shop in front. The street functioned as both residential area and marketplace, bustling with people buying, selling, and haggling.
I was struck by the homogeneity everywhere I looked. Vietnamese people.
Only Vietnamese people.
Where I expected a White person to appear—Vietnamese.
Where I expected a Hispanic man to round the corner—Vietnamese.
The irony wasn't lost on me, even at fourteen.
This should have felt like home, right?
But I was more comfortable in the diverse racial landscape of Southern California than in this sea of sameness that didn't know what to make of me.
Despite having faces like theirs, I was người quốc here—a foreigner visiting, not coming home.
I looked around and let the smells and sound overtake me.
There’s the place that’s selling soup, where instead of washing the bowls they merely dip it in a tub of water. Once dipped, your meal would be ladled into the unwashed bowl.
There’s a barber shop where my mom is getting a haircut. We walk into it and it’s distinctly a house… but also a barber shop.
I pursued the magazines. A famous Vietnamese model appeared on many of the covers and advertisements. I don’t remember her name, but she was ubiquitous—on perfume ads, soda billboards, magazines.
She looked half-White to me, and I found her attractive in a way that felt safe, familiar.
Perhaps she straddled the same worlds I did. But to be honest, I don’t even know if she was half-White.
“I have a picture of someone who looks just like your son,” the hairdresser told my mother, retrieving a photo from her table. “It's uncanny. A twin.”
“Wow! He looks just like you, Jackson,” my mother said, passing me the image.
I studied it curiously, wondering if I'd discover my doppelgänger. “Which one?” I asked.
The hairdresser pointed to a boy a few years older than me with a flattop haircut similar to what I'd been forced to wear. He was heavier than most Vietnamese men, but beyond that, I saw no resemblance whatsoever.
“Don't you see it?” she asked. I nodded politely, not wanting to offend.
“Yeah, that's so weird...” I mumbled, returning the photo. My eyes drifted back to the half-White model's face on the magazine. Strangely, I felt more connection to her than to the boy I supposedly resembled.
I couldn't see myself in the Vietnamese boy who allegedly looked like me.
But I saw a version of myself in a woman who probably didn't resemble me at all.