Unconditional love is when you are willing to suffer the most in order to spare your loved ones from the same pain.

—My Parents

A Love Letter To My Parents

Sharing my story is a love letter to my parents and it is the most impactful thing I can do to advance inclusivity in our community. As you take this journey with me, please bear in mind that this is my lived experience as a former Hmong refugee in the American South. 

I was born in war-torn Laos a decade after the Secret War. I am ethnic Hmong and part of the Yang clan, one of 18 Hmong clans. A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. My father is from a large family of five brothers and three sisters, while my mother’s family was small. Her father passed away when she was very young so she only had her mother and an older brother. Like many Hmong elders, my parents’ youthful years were spent amidst war. Due to that, they didn’t marry until their mid to late twenties. In Laos, Hmong traditionally married young, typically during their teen years. Once married, they worked hard to establish themselves - they had a large farm and grew rice, opium, fruits, vegetables, and raised chickens, pigs, cows, and water buffalo. 

For the Hmong, the Secret War continued long after the 1973 peace treaty and the withdrawal of the US out of Laos in 1975. The now communist regime began a campaign of terror against those who sided with the US. Neighbors and friends “disappeared”. Entire villages were raided and many civilians killed or sent to re-education camps. The retribution was so intense that many who testified to the United Nations of the atrocities called it a systematic genocide. My father was a village leader - the equivalent of a mayor - and like other leaders, he and all those associated with him were considered traitors. In 1987, my parents decided to brave the dangerous journey through the jungles of Laos to seek refuge in Thailand. I asked them why they chose that route and their answer was, “It was a high risk option, but the only one where death was not a certainty.” I was almost 3-years old when we went into the jungles.

I may have been young, but the traumatic journey through the jungle has imprinted itself in my memory. I remember being hungry to the point of numbness and very scared. Whatever I was feeling - my parents felt it ten folds. They prioritized giving me and my two older sisters every little morsel of food they could forage, and carried our weak bodies in their arms, over their shoulders, and backs. After almost two months in the jungles, and only moving at night to avoid easy detection by soldiers in the daytime, we crossed the Mekong into Thailand. I did not know it then but my mother made the journey while pregnant. We spent two years in three different refugee camps in Thailand. Diseases and illnesses were rampant in the camps and took many refugees’ lives - I can still remember the ever present sound of the Hmong funeral drum. My parents bartered everything to procure medicine for us to keep us alive. There were also happy times in the camps - my parents reunited with other family members who had made the journey at different times along different paths. Finally, we were approved for relocation and immigrated to the US in the summer of 1989.

We were resettled in Fresno, California, given Permanent Resident Alien status, and placed on welfare. We did not know the language nor did my parents have applicable job skills other than farming. To make ends meet, my parents - and sometimes me and my siblings - worked on farms picking seasonal fruits and vegetables. Even with seasonal farm work, we barely made ends meet and lived in abject poverty and frequented the food pantry at the local church. My siblings and I were enrolled at Wolters Elementary and eventually learned the English language. We made many friends in our bustling neighborhood, and in my mind I thought we were finally settled. However, we did not know that the rest of our lives would be lived out in another state across the country. 

In 1993 my parents moved our family to North Carolina for job opportunities and we have been here ever since. My parents worked in textiles and my dad sometimes held down two full time jobs at one time. They never missed work, even when sick, and made every sacrifice to save every hard earned penny to purchase our family home - just three years after we resettled here. Our first couple of years in North Carolina were not easy. My siblings and I - having learned English in California - could not understand the Southern accent and thus began the struggle to develop an ear for the dialect. We were also the only Hmong family in our neighborhood and became targets of racist attacks from a group of boys who lived a mile down our road. They would drive by and yell out racist slurs such as “go back to China”, accused us of “eating cats and dogs”, or made derogatory gestures by pulling their eyes upwards into a slant. Sometimes they would lean out of the passenger window and hit our mailbox with a 2x4 wood plank or bat, sending the battered mailbox flying into our ditch. My parents never wanted us to confront them, nor report them to the authorities, because they did not want trouble. Finally, my dad built a cement case around our mailbox and when those boys attempted to hit it again, the bat ricocheted back and severely damaged their car. They never bothered us again after that and eventually they moved away. Most people we encountered were polite and friendly, and some of our neighbors were curious about the Asian family whose garden looks like the tropics: full of banana trees, vegetables and herbs, flowers, and a shabby chicken coop in the back. Some made concerted efforts to have casual neighborly chats with my parents and became friends over the years. 

My teenage years were spent playing soccer and running cross country. I did not understand the difficulties my parents faced in order for us to participate in extracurricular activities - they shared one van and took turns sending and picking up one another to and from work, while chauffeuring us between practices and games. We enjoyed media from a diverse array of cultures: American cinema and music, Hmong-dubbed Bollywood and Chinese films, and my grandma always had a Thai soap opera on. On the weekends we met up with extended families at Freedom, Southside, or Bethel Park. Hmong people have strong kinship ties so these gatherings allowed us to reconnect and bond, grill out, and play sports. Being part of a clan that actively engages in maintaining familial ties is the foundation of Hmong society and identity, but my experiences at school played a big role in shaping the other one: my American identity.

The presumption that the South is not culturally diverse was a foreign concept to me because I was always surrounded by diversity outside of my family life. During my time at East Burke High School, we had many students from multiple ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds. Diversity was there even though a lot of students remained siloed in their own groups of friends. I had my circle of Asian friends, but I also floated between many of these groups and developed friendships with students from diverse backgrounds. In such a heterogenous group of friends, my ethnicity was less of a focus because we were all so different and it allowed us to express our own individuality. I was also surrounded by diversity in postsecondary education at Western Piedmont Community College and UNC-Chapel Hill. Throughout my educational journey, I had some fantastic teachers who nurtured and mentored me - steering me toward my individual passions and goals. Many continued to mentor me to this day.

Today, we have a large, loving, and boisterous family. I am the third oldest of eight children, and a proud auntie (my favorite role) to 11 nieces and 11 nephews. Family time can be absolutely chaotic because the kids outnumber the adults; but, every now and then, I glance over at my parents to study their expressions amid the chaos. I see absolute joy, pride, happiness, and infinite love radiating through their eyes. To get to this point, it took unimaginable courage, resiliency, and an unwavering resolve to protect what they love the most in this world - their children.