Amy Nguyen is a senior at the University of Minnesota studying journalism. Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in the early 2000s.
Byline: By Kinsey Gade (Data Editor)
“I feel like a very common experience that I see people talk about or hear people talk about is this idea that, ‘Oh, my parents do everything for me, they make my appointments for me.’ But I’ve had to do that for my parents. They don’t speak English super well, so I’ve always had to make my own appointments. I make appointments for them. I’ve had to interpret and translate for them a lot, so I do. There are definitely certain experiences that I just can’t relate to other people because I’ve had to do that for them, or my parents aren’t able to do that for me.
This one time, my mom and I were in her car, and I was trying to make a call for her, and it was pretty frustrating because there were certain things that I couldn’t understand in English. Things that the woman on the phone was saying to me, but I couldn’t translate them to Vietnamese so my mom could understand. So I was trying to bridge that gap a little bit. The call ended up fine, we got done what we needed to do. I remember that, and it was just like, ‘I’m 10. I don’t know about any of this.’
I think the way we think about money has helped me a lot. Money does give me a lot of anxiety, but I think growing up, having to be more cautious has made me make smarter choices with my money. My sister helped me a lot too, because she was born in Vietnam and she immigrated with my parents. When I got my first job, she was like, ‘Whenever you get your check, save half of it, or save at least half of it.’ Then my parents would always show me different ways to find the cheapest prices for things. So I think that I’m grateful for that.
My family doesn’t really celebrate Thanksgiving. My mom has a tradition of making a bunch of egg rolls, and then we’ll freeze a bunch of them. Then throughout the year, we’ll just unfreeze them. But we don’t have the traditional big old turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce. I thought it was really interesting to learn so much about that in school. Same with Christmas, we exchange gifts and whatnot, but we don’t go all out with decorating, and we’re not Christian, we’re Buddhists. Teachers would throw in Hanukkah and Kwanzaa to be like, ‘Oh, we’re like, inclusive,’ but there was definitely a major emphasis on Christmastime.
I remember my first few years of elementary school. I was in ESL. I didn’t really process why I was in ESL, but it was because I was struggling with English. There would always be those jokes or people trying to guess my ethnicity. It was usually just like Chinese, Japanese or Korean, and that was it. I had a Vietnamese friend, and people would always tell us how much we looked alike, and we could not look more different.
I think right now, there’s this very big misconception that immigrants are dangerous or that they don’t contribute to the economy, but immigrants are very hardworking people. They don’t come here to freeload. They want to build themselves up, and they usually want better for their children. I think people should just be more open and appreciate immigrants and be more patient as well, because I know a lot of immigrants who struggle with or don’t speak English.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview by Kinsey Gade