Goodbye Vietnam
by Sister Ane Monica Nguyen, CSC
 Ane Monica Nguyen
has been a Sister of the Holy Cross for 15 years. In her ministry in
Austin, Texas, she serves as coordinator of Refugee Services for Caritas,
where she provides case management and coordinates counseling, English as
a Second Language instruction and other social services for refugees from
many different nations and cultures.
Currently, she reports working with Vietnamese, Cubans, Bosnians,
Haitians, Ethiopians and Kurds. Her goal with them, she says, is to help
each individual become self-sufficient.
The challenge of multiculturalism, Sister Ane observes, is not a new experience for the United States.
The United States is
facing a time in which the majority of immigrants entering the country
come from non-Western countries. With that comes the problem of how to
integrate them into the mainstream culture. What we must understand now
more than ever is that once there is an attempt to open dialogue old and
new cultures, both cultures will never be the same again.
 I was born in
Saigon, Vietnam, and did not come to the United States until I was
twenty-three years old. I have seen the good and the bad, twice, of two
cultures clashing in Vietnam during the War, and when I came to America.
 In early 1961,
American soldiers came to Vietnam. They came in such numbers that they had
an immediate effect on our culture and our lives. I was five years old,
the youngest of five. My family tried to teach us to respect the
Americans, and the Church taught us to see them as children of God. Despite my
familys attempt to shield us from the more negative influence
of these strangers, things soon changed. The American culture was such a
force that it broke down some of the traditional walls that were in place
at the time.
War was getting harder and harder to ignore. Many of our people were
influenced by the economic opportunity these soldiers represented. I
saw
money become an obsession among my people, and in order to make more money
my people were moving from their traditional rice lands into the slums of
the cities, where economic promise seemed to be greater as a result of the
large population of American soldiers there. Old women washed clothes for
the American soldiers; middle-aged women mixed cement for the airports and
roads; young women worked in bars and brothels; children went to bars
where they sold cigarettes, candies or drugs to the soldiers.
 As I became aware
of this reality, I was both angry with life and afraid of it. I began
hating Americans for the drugs, the prostitution, the drunkenness and the
war that they brought to my home, my city and my country. The conflict was
evident even within my own family. In 1964 my sister-in-law began working
for the American Embassy in Saigon and soon learned to be more
independent. Before long she was no longer living within the family
structure. Eventually she emigrated to the United States.
In 1975, Saigon fell and the communists took over Vietnam. Many
Vietnamese people tried to leave the country by boat, on foot or by plane.
The Americans left, and what replaced them was another foreign force, with
ideas and beliefs that were as strange to us as the ideas and beliefs held
by the Americans. Even though those now in power spoke my language and
came from cities and places I knew, they held beliefs that were as
dangerous as those they replaced. Perhaps they were worse since they were
Vietnamese.
 When the
communists took over, they tried to control our economy, our social system
and our religious beliefs. They allowed only people who became communist
to find employment. We had to get permission from the city leaders to have
social functions such as weddings, funerals, or any kind of party. If we
disobeyed, we were put in jail for retraining or charged a
large sum of money. It became another war of ideas that was just as costly
and as bloody as the conflict had been with the United States. Only now it
was a war between brothers and sisters, a war that seemed without end.
I lived in constant fear because I was a Catholic. I began to think
about leaving Vietnam somehow. That would be hard, yet I was determined to
have the freedom to exercise my religious beliefs.
Through my correspondence with my sister-in-law in the United States, I
got favorable reports about the American educational system and the
American people. So I said goodbye to my family and friends, got on a
fishing boat with 123 people, and traveled to Indonesia. After a six-month
stay in Indonesia, my sister-in-law sponsored me to come to the United
States and I went to my new home.
I was a stranger in this new world. I did not speak the language or know
the culture. The education system was very different from the one Id left
in Vietnam, where an idea was not something to analyze or discuss, but to
memorize, where the teacher was someone not to be challenged but obeyed.
In America social functions frequently took place outside the family in
discos and bars, for example. In Vietnam socialization took place
primarily within the confines of the family.
Displays of affection in our culture were kept very private. In America it
was very open. People were expected to show proper affection to one
another, even to giving a hug to strangers. In Vietnam these things were
considered inappropriate.
It also seemed that in America everyone was always in a hurry, rushing
here and there, grabbing a bite to eat when it was convenient. I was used
to a more relaxed environment. In Vietnam we would come home for lunch,
have time to prepare the meal, eat it, and even take a short nap before
going back to work.
However, the biggest difference was the political culture of the United
States. Here, not only was there freedom of speech, freedom to vote and
freedom of religion, it was expected that one give voice to those
freedoms; to put into practice those words that are held in the
Constitution and Declaration of Independence; the idea being that the key
to freedom lies not with some piece of paper written in the 18th century
but with the individual, who is the only true protector of the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
In Vietnam freedom was restricted to those faceless few who controlled the
communist party. The communist political culture demanded that the
individual must be broken for the good of society. Law and order were not
something to be discussed by the masses, but something that changed with
the mood of party leaders. Freedom was not a living reality, just a word
that was corrupted by those who uttered it.
From 1979 to the present, I have been living in the United States, and I
have adapted to this culture. I have not discarded all my old world
values, however. In Austin, Texas, there is an active Vietnamese parish
where some of our old-world traditions still exist a community of
Vietnamese people who can celebrate and teach the next generation the
history of our culture and our traditions.
Fortunately, even though I realize that many minorities suffer for being
different, I have been lucky because the Americans I have met have
generally been very supportive and willing to learn about and accept my
cultural differences. The community of the Sisters of the Holy Cross is a
multicultural, international group, and so we have learned to be very
open-minded about each other.
After living here for over 17 years, I have grown to love and trust the
American people and have even learned to live by their customs. Through my
exposure to this country I have developed a love for people of different
cultures and have grown in patience and wisdom in dealing with people at
work and in my community.
What is multiculturalism? It is what it has always been: a mix of the old
world and the new. Sometimes the two cultures clash, but in the end not
only does the immigrant culture change, but the dominant culture changes
as well.
The United States is a country of immigrants from Ireland to Vietnam.
As a
result it is a country that is constantly changing with each new immigrant
group. What holds this country together, however, it the promise of
liberty. That is unchanging.
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