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Biography

My mother, Lan Pham, was born on November 12, 1945 in Saigon, Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam now).  She went through the Vietnamese schooling system and was an exceptional student.  She successfully passed a very selective test to enter the National College of

Commerce.  She did not complete the college, but instead went on to a well paying job working for the American government in Vietnam.  She married her true love, Truyen Ho, in 1965 and had three beautiful children, before the Fall of Saigon in 1975.  My family was sponsored to America by a family in Lynden, Washington where they were given much appreciated support and encouragement from the local community.  In 1980, she decided that it was a good time to start their own lives in Huntington Beach, CA.  That is where my family resides today.          Lan's academic success has empowered her to become a very independent and self sufficient woman .  Education gave her the ability to adapt to many different roles for the sake of her family.

"Provider"

My mother "refused to be trapped by the conventions of her time" ("Kamalayyan," 216).  In Vietnam, my mother was not easily influenced by stereotypical views and it did not matter to her that she was different from the other lower class children who "didn't go to school, but instead, stayed at home and played all day."  She was able to break away from the idea that women should remain in the private sphere and watch as the man brought home the money.  If a woman is passive about financial matters, she tends to feel like she has very little power in her life and as a result, it forces her to submit to stereotypes in order to survive.  Realizing this fact, my mother took control of her destiny and used education as a means to expand her limited opportunities as a poor, uneducated woman.  Education made my mother better off because it enabled her to earn a living in the public sphere and to gain financial independence no matter what happened in her life.

"Purse Keeper"

In March, 1975, when my family was ordered to evacuate Vietnam, Lan faced many new decisions including how to prepare for our indefinite future with the little money that they had.  She remembered, “I couldn’t spend 25 cents on ice cream for the kids even though they wanted some really badly.”  Because of the important decisions she faced every day, she didn’t feel like she was thirty, she felt like an old woman.  She felt a constant pressure to choose what was best for her and her family with the little knowledge she had about America.  She felt purse burden [will expand] as she tried to save what she had in case it was necessary for later.  She thought to herself, “what if this was the only money we would have and how fast would we earn more in America?”  In Amerca, she was responsible for all of the household matters.  She made sure that all of the business involving utilities and other expenses were paid for and on time.  She was responsible for making every vital decision for the family and made sure that the circumstances would gaurantee the family the most opportunities and hppiness in life.

"Preserver of Culture"

Aside from housemaking duties, my mother also remained the "preserver of culture" within the family.  She sent me to Vietnamese School every Sunday for nine years.  There I was able to preserve Buddhism, language, and culture within me.  She always wanted to make sure that culture would stay alive within the rest of the family also.   She emphasized the “importance of preserving Vietnamese family traditions in the United States and of not assimilating into the familial behavior of people in the United States” (The Family Tightrope (327).  Like other Vietnamese families in America, my mother felt that it was very important to keep core family ties that were dominant in Vietnamese culture.  She wanted to make sure that there was a way for the Vietnamese culture to continue to stay alive in the family.  This was done by keeping specific traditions in the family.  Lan believed that young generations should never lose respect for their elders.  She always insisted that we greet our elders with a “thua bac” (respectful greeting).  This was very important to her because it showed us that we still had loyalty to our culture despite us being a part of American society.

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