Thanh Hà
My friend pointed to a CD among the many in the brightly lit store. “Here, you should buy this one.” Enclosed in the jewel case was a stirring photo of what appeared to be a young blonde woman with milky white skin and engaging brown eyes. “Thanh Hà,” I said out loud to myself. “Yeah,” my friend added, “she’s a pretty popular Vietnamese singer. Once in a while, she performs at a club here. She’s Amerasian, like you.”
Yet, there is a big difference between her and me. By ‘difference’, I’m not referring to her status as a relatively popular singer, nor her gender. It has to do with our backgrounds. Sure, the ethnically-correct term for both of us is ‘Amerasian’, which officially groups together those people who were circumstantially born to an Asian woman and American serviceman. We could also check the box for ‘Asian-American’, since we both live in the U.S. and we are of Asian descent. But, these artificial boundaries that we’re made to jump over do nothing to explain who we are to others, nor do they justify who we are to ourselves.
Let me be completely honest: I do not feel Vietnamese, although I was born to a Vietnamese woman in Vietnam. I further confess to you that I cannot completely identify with the people of Asia either. But that won’t stop many people from taking one look at me and coming to the conclusion that I’m not facing up to reality. For them, my race and origin of birth will be deciding factors for them. “Well, he has most of the physical characteristics of a person from Asia: his hair is black, his skin has a dark brown hue, his eyes are a bit slanty, his nose is wide, his lips are full and he’s rather short compared to the average American male. Add to those observations the fact that he was born to a Vietnamese mother in Vietnam, no less, and you’ve got yourself a Vietnamese or, at least, an Asian.”
Stop a minute now and apply this categorical logic to Thanh Hà’s physical appearance. If people were to look only at her picture on the aforementioned CD cover, they would probably guess that she is either American or European. Her golden locks, slim figure, light skin tone and predominantly Caucasian facial features are a dead giveaway for a run-of-the-mill bombshell blonde, they’d conclude.
On both accounts the conclusions drawn on both me and Thanh Hà would be dead wrong because they fail to look past the facades and into the lives created for us and by us.
In Thanh Hà’s case, she was born Truong Thi Minh Ha in Da Nang on March 18, 1971. She lived in Vietnam until the age of 19 or 20. She was then sent to a refugee camp in the Philippines before arriving in Utica, New York shortly thereafter. Having been raised during the most formative years of her life in a country whose culture, geography and temperament are significantly different from America’s cannot be lost on anyone. Thanh Hà spent her first 20 years sleeping, eating, going to school and doing whatever a growing girl does in Vietnam. That country’s people and culture must have made a monumental impact on the way she views the world and how she leads her life. On the other hand, she has been living in the U.S. for over a decade, which is also a big chunk of time. However, a glimpse at her discography shows that all her recordings have been in Vietnamese. So, it seems as if this young woman is carving out a niche in her adopted country by singing in her native language. But whether or not Thanh Hà has assimilated to American ways of life, or borrows what she sees as valuable in our culture and ignores the rest, or even feels completely at home here, is something one can only wonder.
In my case, Thanh Hà’s history as a fairly recent immigrant to the U.S. is not a vantage point that I share with her. I was born in Saigon, Vietnam, but I didn’t grow up there. At six months old, I was adopted and subsequently sent to the U.S. My adoptive father’s grandparents were Irish immigrants who settled in Rochester, New York. The core of his family never left that area, and that’s where I was raised. My adoptive mother was born and raised around Bloomington, Illinois. Her grandparents were originally from Kentucky. My native language is English; not only English, but American English with a mix of Western New York and Midwestern accents. Couple that with my frequent use of colloquialisms, slang and jargon and all anyone will hear me speak is typical ‘American-ese’. I’m completely unfamiliar with the Vietnamese language, let alone any other languages from Asia. My ignorance of Vietnamese history is regrettable, but there was never enough time in the day, between screwing around and getting screwed, to sit with an open book and absorb all that history, all those people and all that wisdom. This S-shaped country in Southeast Asia was never a calculation I plugged into my life. To a young boy, it was just a monochrome geometric shape on a flat map that shared space with a hundred other countries. Their capitals I would memorize in World Geography class. Vietnam became a list of vital statistics: population, currency, GNP, major exports, square kilometers.
My childhood and adolescence was, in many respects, like that of any other kid who grew up in this country. I watched Mr. Rogers numerous times take off his red sweater and comfortable shoes, and then smile into the camera while feeding his goldfish. I remember when ‘Sit-N-Spin’ was an innocent name for a round plastic toy. I had so many crushes on girls at school that almost every other week my sisters would tell my parents that I was ‘in love’ with So-And-So. When Bruce Springsteen’s song, ‘Born in the U.S.A.’, was a full-blown hit on the radio, I used to turn it up and sing along with enthusiasm, never paying attention to the irony that slapped yet another coat of whitewash on my self-esteem. The palpable feeling of being one with America, from sea to shining sea, was nothing less than an unreserved belief that I was a ‘real American.’
And, yet, that phrase - ‘real American’ - sounds so exclusive and unattainable. That’s because it is. Many would say that Thanh Hà looks more American than I do. But, if they took as much time looking into our backgrounds as much as they do looking at us, they would be forced to reassess their measure of ‘authenticity’. What frustrates ‘real Americans’ so much is when a person’s upbringing and lived experiences completely cut against the grain of preconceptions based on mere appearances. Of course, that’s when America starts to become more interesting.