[this is a piece that I wrote about a year ago…There’s no official title for it yet…I have performed it a couple of times, and it has gone through a couple of edits. It was my first attempt at spoken word - normally I write in prose. But, really, it’s like a journal entry of how it felt for me growing up….sort of a compilation of all the stories that I heard from my parents about their struggle coming to America, and the struggles they continued to have being here. And it also describes the struggles that continued through me and what it was like growing up as a Southeast Asian youth in a community that was not aware or not accepting of my family and where we come from]

I was but one child trying to fit in with the rest of society

Constantly being questioned about where I came from and who I belong to

And you ask me what I am

I tell you I am Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian

But I am asked whether Cambodia is even real by those who don’t know

Or told by those who do know that I shouldn’t even mention Cambodian as part of my own identity

But to be Cambodian is all my parents ever taught me

Because I was doubted by you and by others, I doubted myself

It was as if the stories of my parents’ are nothing but fabrications

And that I have spent years skimming over pages of school textbooks to validate my very existence

You could care less for because all you see is another Asian kid

You obsess over our differences, wishing only for me to be the same

But it’s the mundane that drives me insane

Because I was only a child trying to fit into my brown skin

Oppression and lack of self education caused me to reject these roots of mine

So I knew nothing of what it meant to be Southeast Asian

I only learned how to be white

Ain’t that right?

Because growing up I was told to be more like you and less of what was in my blood

But I was still too brown, too ghetto, too hood, too much like them

And according to them I was too white-washed, too proper, too much like you

I was out-casted for what I was told to be and who I already was, constantly victimized

Because my parents weren’t Cambodian enough or they were not Americanized

That they knew nothing and that they are not fit to be parents

But their stories are a testament of what it means to be Cambodian-American

My mother walked through minefields so that one day I may walk freely on the paved streets of this country

She sacrificed my brothers and sisters before me so that I may be born with food on the table and clothes on my back

And at 16, she lost her home and family because the Khmer Rouge had killed whatever she held dear, only to be left alone to struggle

Malnourished, she was always running from gunshots, bombs, and foot soldiers

And yet today it is only in her quiet moments that I even see tears

Because she only wants me to see a strong mother

And my father only laughs and smiles through his day because his nights are nothing but reminders of how it felt to be alone in the dark

When he sleeps he is trapped behind his own eyelids

Reliving the moments when he thought he would die

Tortured by memories of genocide and disturbed by memories of being tortured

My house was not haunted by ghosts, but by the shrills of terror and the screams of pain of my father

But despite the fact that they suffer alone, they still worked 16 hours a day and came home

Because to them that was love

And you tell me that they are uneducated and uncivilized?

Bloodshed, poverty, and death have taught them the means to live and breathe

And War showed them that civility does not exist among human beings

So what does it mean to be me?

It means that I am Asian-American

A Southeast Asian-American

That means before I am American, I am Southeast Asian

Before I am American, I am Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian

So what does “being American” mean to me?

It means starving for years and running through Killing Fields

Losing loved ones and hiding in the jungles of Southeast Asia

It is escaping to refugee camps and struggling to make a living in makeshift tents and huts

And finally finding freedom, only to keep struggling in a mobile home with 7 other families

It is speaking in broken English and maintaining 3 jobs

It is holding onto what freedom is here after running from persecution

It is holding onto my parents’ history and sharing their stories

It is being proud of these roots that my life had sprung from even when I am not accepted by you or my own brothers and sisters

Because though I am but one child of refugees that have survived the struggle

I am amongst a SEA of many who know my troubles

[Kelley Pheng]