AAPI Hate Is Personal
Photo/Anh Gray. Mai Tran Nguyen with her beloved dog Happy
By Anh Nguyen Gray
My mother would be in her early 70s now if she were still alive. But, instead, she died five years ago. It's a bit painful when I see older Asian women the age she would be today. They remind me of her; more so, they remind me of her absence.
There's rarely a day that goes by that I don't think about my mother. Lately, I think of her more than usual, but the twinge of pain is different. Stories about violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have made me more reflective about my family. STOP AAPI Hate has documented nearly 7,000 hate incidents nationwide against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders since March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, AAPI women and girls report hate incidents more than twice as often as their male counterparts. The brutal attacks against the elderly and women have been challenging to read and watch.
AAPI hate is personal to me. The incidents could have happened to my mother or my family.
My mother was just an inch over five feet. She was petite in stature but formidable in life. She had many endearing qualities, her well-coiffed hair being one of them. She had the same hairstyle for the last 30 years of her life, soft big curls that fell past her shoulders. My mother maintained that everlasting late-eighties look from dedicated nights sitting under a table-top salon hood dryer at home. Her head under a dryer while perusing a Vietnamese language magazine is one of the only few recollections I have of her sitting restfully for any length of time.
Mai Tran Nguyen worked a relentless amount of hours running her mom-and-pop Vietnamese grocery store in Orange County, California, in a community now dubbed Little Saigon. In the 1980s, my parents opened one of the first Vietnamese businesses. Despite spending long days running her store, she always took the time to be well-groomed and well-dressed. Unlike myself, my mother was not the type you'd catch outside without make-up or with her hair undone. It required a more careful inspection of her calloused hands to get a hint of her life of physical labor. The reality was this beautiful Vietnamese woman woke up at dawn and worked alongside my father to unload crates of fruits and vegetables and stock shelves with packets of rice noodles and bottles of fish sauce.
My family fled Vietnam in 1975 on a South Vietnamese naval ship, the eve before the Fall of Saigon. My mother was 27 then with three young daughters, her youngest still an infant. I am the middle child, the feisty one in the family, and was not yet three years old. When my family eventually landed in America, we were among the thousands who had left behind loved ones, livelihoods, and country. Our first asylum in America was in the tent city erected by soldiers in the U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton located in San Diego County, California.
When my mother was in her sixties, around the time when our family hoped our matron would slow down, to relax finally, and enjoy time with her five grandkids —three from me and two from my older sister— my mother found a lump in her breast. She was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in 2010 and received radiation. By 2014, she learned that her breast cancer had returned and metastasized to other parts of her body. She had trouble walking, seeing, and eating before her death. She deserved a much gentler existence toward the last months of her life than the one she experienced.
Even though my mother was a refugee, she was a proud naturalized citizen. She was no less American than anyone born in this country or anyone who can trace their family lineage back several generations. Like many Asian Americans, my family has roots in another part of the world, but the United States is our home. We are Americans.
It's hard not to think of my mother when I think of racism and hate crimes victims. To me, they are like her, people with hopes and dreams, joys and struggles, and loved by their families. Racism and bias-motivated violence are attempts at dehumanizing people by targeting them for their immutable characteristics.
And even though I don't have to worry about my mother, racism and hate crimes don't offer me peace of mind. As a mother, I hope to be able to leave my children a better world.
Photo/Anh Nguyen Gray.
Anh Nguyen Gray is a public health editor with KUNR Public Radio, an NPR affiliate in Reno, Nevada. Her reporting work has received recognition with a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award and honors from the Associated Press Television Radio Association. Her husband, three children, and two playful dogs fill her life with adventure.
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