Living The American Dream

Koua Yang is a Hmong man who was originally from Laos. When he was less than one year old, his father passed away leaving his mother, two sisters and himself alone in the aftermath of the Secret War. (1) His small family along with many Hmong people were forced to leave their homes after the American soldiers left the Secret War in 1975. Yang’s family survived the dangers that lied in the jungles such as bombs dropping from the sky like mystic rain and the threatening toxins that filled the air. Yang’s family crossed the Mekong River to Thailand and was put into refugee camps. He spent at least four years in the camps before immigrating to the United States in 1980. Yang is now a social studies teacher at Harding high school and also coaches the boy’s and girl’s varsity tennis team.

My Mother is the Foundation

In our culture, you don’t have an identity without a dad. So, when my dad died in 1976, we were left to fend for ourselves; this is why my mom is such a wonderful woman. She essentially took on the role of the male and the female, the wife and the father. She led us, and normally that does not happen among the Hmong people. She could have left us with our extended family, with the Yang clan, but she didn’t. She could of just gone back to the Vang clan, but she didn’t.

My mom is definitely the matriarch of our family, the centerpiece that created this foundation. She sometimes looks at herself and says, “Oh my gosh, in America I’m so trivial, so small, so unworthy.” She doesn’t realize that she’s the one who created my sisters and I through not only her genetics, but her will, her ability to survive, and her success through hardships. She had us to create that will. She's our foundation. Because of that, I looked up to my mom and I looked up to my sisters. They helped me so I never looked at it like, "I’m a male in this culture, I should rule this family." I looked at it as, we’re all trying to get somewhere, and we gotta help each other.

In the Caged Pen & the Metal Bird 

I pretty much grew up in a caged pen, a barbed wire camp where I couldn’t do much. I could travel from village to village but I couldn’t really get out and do the things that I wanted to do. I never really understood that I was in a refugee camp. I grew up in it, so it was normal. They were trying to prepare us for the trip over to America. My mom remarried as a second wife and when my step-dad did the paperwork to immigrate to the United States, there was only room for my two step-brothers, my two sisters, a wife and a father. And obviously, in the United States polygamy is illegal. So, guess who got screwed? My mom.

My step-dad would tell me, "You’re gonna meet monsters. You’re gonna meet the white monsters. They’re gonna be hairy, and from the stories they eat people.” So, as a kid who was three-four years old, your imagination starts going crazy. It was either my mom or my dad who said, “You’re gonna go to a different world on a Dha Laus.” (2) So here I am, imagining myself on top of a metal bird hanging onto its metal feathers. I asked my step-dad how long it would take to get there and he said, “Oh it’s about 20 hours they say.” So I was thinking, "Okay, I’m gonna die. I’m not gonna make it. We have to hang onto the bird’s feathers for 20 hours.” I begin bawling and crying until we got to the airport and realized that we go inside the metal bird. So I said, “Oh, okay. It’s safer inside the metal bird.”

Inside the metal bird was where I first transitioned to America and saw my first Caucasians ever. Remembering the stories about how big they were, how hairy the were, it was all true. The only piece that was missing was that they ate people. I was four at the time, and I saw the flight attendant and was pretty scared. He offered me apples, which I’d never seen before. He offered me oranges, which I'd also never seen before and he showed me how to eat them. While he was doing this I remember wanting to touch his arm badly. I wanted to know what was up with all the hair, he seemed so monstrous. So I touched it and I was petting him and just trying to figure it all out.

A Chance to Go to School for Free

When I was in school, I was interested in everything because I never had a chance to go to school in Laos or Thailand. If you had money, you can go; if you didn’t, you farmed. I was lucky because I was young enough not to go farming. I was too little, but my sisters, they worked hard. They were young, probably like six or nine and they were already farming and fetching water. I was lucky to escape that.

My sisters and I were excited that we got a chance to go to school. My sisters and I were amazed. We all said, “Oh my gosh, we get to go to school for free? And they feed us too? Wow! What a deal.” My oldest sister was dying to go to school back in Thailand. She would sit for days sewing a tapestry with my mom and selling it for however much you can get and then go take a class once a month. I remember she would go and do math problems outside of the school, just trying to sneak in and hear what the instructor taught. That’s how badly she wanted to go to school. But when I came here, I saw some kids that would come to school and before the bells rung, they were already running away from the school. I just see the irony in it.

It’s About a Path to Success; it’s About a Way to Escape Poverty

One of the things my Mother talked about as we grew up was how important it was to escape this cycle of poverty. We were poor, we were on welfare, we lived in the projects, and my Mom told us,“This is a rough life.” We lived in a one bedroom apartment that we shared with my stepfather, stepmom, two stepbrothers, my two sisters and I. We literally had our bedroom in a closet. We lived a harsh life because they didn’t love us very much, so whenever we had food they would keep it for themselves. They would keep it in their room and so we were always starving. The only time we ate was in school. My mom taught us from early on that even though you suffer, it makes you work harder, and it makes you stronger for the things that you want. And, she always stressed the importance of school and an education.

“It’s about a path to success; it’s about a way to escape poverty,” is what my mom essentially said. She says that my job is to get an education, and that’s how I move; socially move. So, she really tattooed that on our genetics while growing up. Her transition was, if you work hard, if you’re an honest person, you’re a good person and you believe and you have good values, and you want to do well in school, you can do well. You can get out of poverty. No matter who you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, if you’re native, if you’re black, if you’re Asian, if you’re green, if you’re whatever. You can get out.

It Takes a Village

My mom had the biggest influence on me, but a lot of people have too, it does take a village. I had a really tough time in junior high, that’s when the immigrants started coming to the United States. The new Southeast Asian immigrants faced a new form of racism because of the Vietnam War. Americans couldn’t distinguish between the Hmong, the Laotians, and the Vietnamese; through this assumption we faced a tremendous amount of racism. In junior high, you were part of gangs because it was protection. During this time I remember one specific teacher, Mr. H. One day after school, I was in a fight and Mr. H. took the other kid and I by the ear to go up to the boxing gym. He told us to “go at it.” And so we did. We just started fighting, and eventually got tired. He said, “See all this energy you guys have? Use this energy in wrestling.” He taught us to use our energy in a different way. We learned how to be disciplined, and be a part of something. He kept that mentorship all the way through junior high; getting me out of the gang activities.

My tennis coach, Kathy, wasn’t the greatest tactician or technician in tennis, but one thing she had which nobody else had was caring for her students. She really loved kids, and I remember her buying me a racket-- a $200 racket! I remember that until this day. As a coach, I hope to do the same things for my kids. I have over a hundred kids in the program and I think about all these kids. Most of them don’t have much, like me back then. I remember the generosity and the human touch that Kathy had and I try to keep that.

Our Second Generation: Education gets you to the American Dream

I think sometimes the missing piece in immigration stories is that it disconnect with the second generation. The fact that they forget. It’s not like they don’t know what they’re roots are anymore. They can always research that. But to remember how it was, to remember how much their families struggled. To remember how the first generation faced all the obstacles, the racism, the economic hardships. To persevere, to get a better life, and then to provide a better life for our next generation. The newer generation forgets the hard work, the tragedies that their relatives went through. And they’re not quite as resilient. They don’t fight quite as hard, and they don’t want it as much. These are all things that I try to keep alive as an educator and as a person who’ in-between the first and second generations. So that’s really my true American story. I don’t know if there’s a generic version for an American story; the American dream, where I live in Hollywood now, and I’m walking on gold streets. That’s what people dream of, but I think this is what it is for most immigrants. We’re not looking to be super rich, I mean it would be great, but most people are looking to make a better life for themselves. And a lot of times they realize that it’s an education that gets them there.

Footnotes:

1. The Secret War was also known as the Vietnam War.

2. The English translation is a metal bird, also known as an airplane.

Photo Sources:

1. Yang, Koua. Family Photograph, circa 1976-83. Provided. 2 December 2013.

Story Facilitators: 

Betty Yang, Jake Bischoff, and Rebecca Bukvich