MAI Places We Came From, Places We Will Go June 9, 2017 Fresno, CA This zine is a collection of stories and arts depicting Southeast Asian America. Vol. 2 - Stories depicting our journey where we came from to our where we will go.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Pg. 2 - Dedication See Xiong Pg. 3 - the reason we ran Boonmee Yang - Poetry Pg. 5 - the refugee run-on Boonmee Yang - Poetry Pg. 6 - the reason we indent Boonmee Yang - Poetry Pg. 7 - Zoua Lee Yang - Non-fiction Pg. 9 - The Good Daughter’s Burden Ntses Nag - Poetry Pg. 10 - Plig Vlai Ly - Photography Pg. 11 - Braving Imperfection Douachee Vang - Non-fiction Pg. 12 - Troublemaker Douachee Vang - Poetry Pg. 13 - MTT Pachoua Lor - Poetry Pg. 14 - Our House is of Bamboo Pachoua Lor - Poetry Pg. 15 - Flight Pa Vue - Non-fiction Pg. 17 - Gentrification in Oakland Vanna Nauk - Fiction Pg. 20 - Contributors Pg. 22 - Acknowledgements
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For you: I drove through the street of my first home. Two young women; one crouched over the other to look at her hair. “Maybe for lice,” I thought. An elderly woman stood at the entrance to the parking lot. I drove up to the gate and waved at her, and drove to the back of the parking complex just to see how the apartments stood. The rows of apartments stood the same from when we stood for our picture. I thought about those two young women; how long they have lived here and how much longer they will stay. I don’t come through this neighborhood often because the freeway runs through it. When I drive on the freeway, I see the top of buildings and backyards and residential streets filled with parked cars; I don’t see the faces of people who now sleep in the room I once lay in; I don’t see the faces of people who now walk the streets I once wander about. Sometime we go back to where we started to remind us how far we as individuals have gone with our education, our work, our commitment to economic success; or to remind us how impoverished our community still is. This volume is for you, who have gone too far, you might have forgotten when you left and where you came from. This is for you, who wears your brand name clothes and drive your luxury cars as if they bring you a new life, new experience, yet your oppression remains the same. I hope you never forget where you came from and you are successful on your journey to where you want to go.
See Xiong
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the reasons we ran Boonmee Yang - Poetry
we ran as a pack of wild dogs 10 dirtied-face, untamed Southeast Asian boys skin too darkened by the sun for the miracle of soap too savage for smooth, cramped bath tubs hairs sticking out, kicking and punching jabbing at all eight corners of the earth paws out-stretched, whimpering for scraps of dreams thrown our way to fill our time and the hungry pits of our minds
like the hill tribe aunts in glossy dog-eared National Geographic pages we, too, stretched our necks, showing them off to anyone stopping long enough with cautious fascination at the impossibilities of the grimy rings circling up to our chins layered thick with freedom and neglect
we spent those summers scampering after high-pitched lullabies whistling from ice cream trucks painted Little Boy Blue getting shooed away, swatted on the nose with rolled up dollar bills from parents who didn’t want their boy pups infected with what we had--
oh but what we had grew strong legs that ran faster and farther each day put bellows in our barks that chased away the storm clouds of tomorrow sharpened our ears, constantly perked for the call from new distractions-- our only true master to know us by name
hot dogs didn’t cool off well in the sun so we napped, dogpiled atop one another in the shade of bricked buildings filled with squeaky desks, scratchy chalkboards, shuffling raised hands, and the deafening promises of bright futures our tongues panting hot air as quick as we could recite Yo Mama! jokes in broken English our noses sniffing in the wet cacophony of 10 or so gassy pups after a shared meal of Mother’s Milk canned beans
We scavenged and dug up half-opened tins— perfect for pup fangs too small to bite through but itching to chew; we caught and whittled Loneliness
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down to its bones so we wouldn’t choke or worse
nightfall we roamed the streets, howling invitations for the boy pups leashed up in their second-story kennels staring down at us from their captivities lit with dull ceiling stars walled with four sides of marshmallow puffs smoking out of trains named after proper boys the trains’ clean, pale faces smiling with their mouths but longing with their eyes just like the boy pups stuck without the long hair to lay down from their windows “come play with us while Old Man in the Moon keeps watch!” we’d say but they’d flip their blinds and pull their eyelids shut with a thud
those were the dog days when our 10 hearts raced in unison to the call of the wild obeying its one and only command: RUN in search of the family whose last name smelled like ours away from the nightmares of war, ducking under shadowy hands reaching out to grab the younger pups, tagging them towards the sunset, that golden goose egg cracked and runny on the horizon of a giant waving American red, white and blue sky-- a grey-looking promise for some of us whose underdeveloped instincts led to a trip straight to the puppy farm we kept ourselves running nipping at the heels of the slower ones until we found ourselves breathless
at summer’s end.
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the refugee run-on Boonmee Yang - Poetry
you see
 i struggle with run-on sentences ‘cause when i think on the restrictions placed over grammar and punctuation like barbed wire fence i also think how my Hmong language and the people who speak it never had the chance to slow down enough to end their sentences with periods when bullets were the only ones interested in making small talk in the thick of overgrown jungle foliage ‘cause like the constantly-lightened bamboo-weaved baskets filled with banana leaves and roots and shoots served for every damned meal of every damned day three years in and the empty arms where loud babies fell from every word spoken came at the price of a life so if you spoke you had better keep speaking for if you stopped the bullets would find you and be the period to more than just your words
and so i run on
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the reason we indent Boonmee Yang - Poetry
we’re instructed by white men to indent our paragraphs at half an inch regardless of how our lives began but i see how their history books have hundreds of pages of paragraphs that can afford losing thousands of half inches’ worth of words leaving out their crimes of horror while my people only have two paragraphs to fit in everything wrong about my culture and you might think losing an inch is no big deal yet white men are all about that extra inch
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Zoua
Lee Yang - Non-fiction
My mother dyes her hair black. It is the most American, western thing she does to turn back time, strand by strand. As I sat next to her in the doctor’s waiting room, I noticed the mélange of silver and white hair springing defiantly from her roots. Her eyes wander to the television, to the other patients, and steadily back to her rough patched hands. For the first time in a long time, I was only inches away from her face. Her well-defined wrinkles wore the years of her life. She raised seven of us, excluding the first two boys who passed away in Laos before the war. Not too long after, she also lost her first husband before she married my father. The deaths, the war, the new life in America, and the many things she was unprepared for, had left their marks on my mother’s face. Sometimes people wear their hardships like a glove, others a mask, some wrap it around their necks like a scarf, and others hide it until you look deep enough into their eyes to find their story. For my mother, her story is in her wrinkles, and in the feel and color of her skin. “Nam, can you tell me about your childhood? Laos.”
You never tell me anything about your life in
She hesitated, searching for a reason, she carefully responded between a thought, “Oh, it’s too sad.” Though my mother wasn’t used to sharing her past, I knew I had to try. “What about your dad? young.”
Start with him.
I remember you said he died when you were very
She adjusted her back against the leather chair, shoulders moved up, while she subtly exhaled, as if releasing a memory. “Oh, I don’t remember much about him. I was too young.” “Well what was the last memory you had of him? What is the last thing you remember?” “When my father died...I don’t remember it at all, but your grandma told me this. I was probably only 3 years old and your Uncle Tou was still being breastfed. One of my uncles asked my father to go visit him, but he lived so far, villages away. It would take him a whole day of walking to get there. Even though my father was not well, he went. When my father got there, he got a fever from dehydration. He was too ill to walk so grandma had to make the journey there and carry him on her back. When they finally got home, he was barely holding on. Your Uncle Tou started crying and my father said, ’Go back and get my little boy. My baby boy is crying.’ Grandma ran to get Uncle Tou, and when she came back to my father’s bedside, he already died.” With the death of my grandfather, my grandma single-handedly took care of the family. She would dig the ground for potatoes, comb the jungles for edible plants to be boiled into soup. When they were out of rice, my grandmother concocted a mixture of corn and vegetables for the evening meal. They were poor and carried on this way for many years. One early morning before the rooster’s crow, there was a knock at the door. The wooden door swung open and two men stood at the doorway. Aunt Zoua was sent to greet the strangers. The two men grabbed her arms and proceeded to pull her through the threshold as she screamed. Two other men entered the home, bowing in traditional humility to take Aunt Zoua. That early morning, my grandmother’s words “No you can’t. I won’t let you. I won’t let you” echoed
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throughout our home. Shaking, my mother and Uncle Tou pulled the covers over their heads thinking Chinese soldiers invaded their house. The commotion lasted for hours, and even though my grandma refused, they took Aunt Zoua. “You never told me you had an older sister you grew up with,” I exclaimed. “She’s grandma’s daughter, my older half-sister. Aunt Zoua was only 14 years old when she was taken. I was probably only 7 years old and Uncle Tou was still a toddler.” “How old was the man that wanted to marry her?” I inquired half-wanting to know the truth. “He was probably 50 years old at the time.” My heart sunk into the pit of my stomach. I’ve heard the stories of these practices in the old days, but tradition doesn’t justify it for me. My poor Aunt Zoua was only a child. “That’s how things were. That’s what they did,” my mother replied. Despite my Aunt Zoua’s cries, she married her captor. She despised her husband; at least he couldn’t control her feelings. He treated her kindly, gave her whatever he could, but he couldn’t win her affection, and my Aunt Zoua continued to hate him. Because my Aunt Zoua was a beautiful girl, she often attracted many men who would visit her husband just to talk to her. As his jealousy grew, her husband started giving her opium to turn her affections toward him. He was an opium smoker, and he used it to bond them. It worked. When my Aunt Zoua’s addiction grew, so did the gap between her and my grandma. They did not see her for many years. It was ordinary afternoon, an old woman appeared at the doorway of their home. Her face was sunken in, thin and discolored. Some of her front teeth were missing and her voice had a rasp, harsh tone as she greeted my grandma. She looked around the house and said, “Mother, what have you been doing these days?” Confused and startled, my grandma asked, “Who are you that you’re calling me mother?” “It’s me, your daughter Zoua.” My grandma studied the woman’s face and began to recognize her eyes. “It is you, my daughter. My daughter,” as they embraced and sobbed bitterly. Twenty years later, when the Hmong genocide reached its peak, my mother and family escaped to seek refuge in Thailand. There in a refugee camp was a bus waiting to take them to the airport to fly to America. As my mother was packing, a voice said, “Sheng, it’s you. I have not seen you for so long, I missed you so much.” My mother looked up and it was Aunt Zoua. She quickly hugged her sister, but there was no time. Through a face full of tears, Aunt Zoua pleaded, “Since you will be going to America, I will miss you so much. Let me say a kws txhiaj for you.” When my mother said she did not have time, Aunt Zoua cried and held my mother one last time. When the bus left the camp, my mother looked out the window and saw her older sister still standing there, weeping. While my mother shared her sister’s story with me as we sat in the doctor’s waiting room, we both cried. It was then that she realized how much my Aunt Zoua suffered. My mother carried her own pain and did not make room for her sister’s. My mother said, “If only I let her say her kws txhiaj. If only.”
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The Good Daughter’s Burden Ntses Nag - Poetry Take up the Good Daughter’s burdenSend forth the best sons, Sell her off for the family pride, Let no opportunity be outdone. Take up the Good Daughter’s burdenGive her dreams and fairytales, Give her contractions and angst, Let her wait for any heroes. Take up the Good Daughter’s burdenTeach her discipline, Teach her silence, Give her a visit to the sea witch’s den. Take up the Good Daughter’s burdenTrain her docile voice, Groom her gullible heart and cinder-stained hair, Whisk the wand to bless her with prominence and providence. Take up the Good Daughter’s burdenTeach her pride and generosity, Teach her humility and miserly, Seize her spirit and identity. Take up the Good Daughter’s burdenGive her filial labor, Give her filthy spares, Forbid licentious behavior. Take up the Good Daughter’s burdenSend back the pearls at sea, Sell her to the conceited, Let no opportunity for plea.
Author’s note: Strangely inspired by English novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” February 1899. 9
Plig Vlai Ly - Photography “Plig" means ”soul.” The chickens depicted in the photo were used for a Hmong Wedding. In the Hmong culture, chickens are used as sacrifices to guide a person's soul in a blessing ritual. The photo contrasts the unsightly dead chickens with their seeming intimacy as they're nestled into one another, creating an almost yin-yang-like feel.
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Braving Imperfections
Douachee Vang - Non-fiction
They always told me I was smart. They said I could accomplish anything and everything if I just worked hard enough. But they also said that only rich people could afford to dream and get what they want. They always told me I was hard-working. They would tell others it would be impossible to host big parties without my help. But they also condemn me for being lazy when I put my studies first. So, this is what I’ve learned: People can be there to either hurt you or help you, and sometimes, they do both without even knowing it. That’s why it makes me wonder: when is it ok for them to hurt me, and when is it ok to accept it as help? I was conflicted. No. I still am. They came from a land of no opportunities and war to a land that offers “The American Dream.” With a rush, a gush, and a handful of hope, they pushed us children to only achieve greatness. I didn’t see anything wrong with that. I wanted to succeed for them; I wanted to make them proud; I wanted to show them that anything was possible, just as they had told me. But when does it become too much? When does the encouragement and the pushing become a detriment and too excessive? Is it when I come home at 9 P.M. from a full day of school including a four-hour practice after school, to a mess in the kitchen because I was not home to do my gender role and I am being punished with late-night chores? Or is it when I attend club meetings at school and get scolded for not being home to cook and clean? Or is it when I stay in the library to study all night and get accused of being a “poj laib?” I was tormented. Distraught. Depressed. I went into seclusion. It was then that Darkness opened its arms to me, and it cradled me with such tenderness and kindness by giving me the attention I was yearning for. It let me weep and vent, it let me hit and scream. At the same time, it was there to hold my hand when I created strokes of red sorrow on my soft, delicate skin. I wanted to feel pain. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The pain was shrouded already by my aching heart and burning throat, by the confusion of what my identity really was and how to survive the path ahead of me. Should I be the sedentary filial Hmong daughter they push me to be? If so, that meant suppressing my ambitions, my determination, and my free-bird spirit from creating significant changes to the world and to others, but more importantly, to myself. Or should I be the active and progressive Hmong daughter that they believe will suffer in the future if I don’t live the way they want me to? If so, that meant creating tension and tears with my kin. When I open up to others, they tell me to ease up; to be more lenient with my parents; to remember the turmoil my parents went through in the Secret War. But I don’t think the past should be used as a weapon for the present, especially in this emotionally abusive way. Hence, I’ve learned to walk in two worlds. No. I am still learning. And I know people will retort that I am too stubborn, too hard headed, too closed-minded and not understanding enough. But this is my lived experience. Not theirs. Not yours. Consequently, I want to be completely open. I want you, the reader, to know that there exist such things as imperfections. I want you to know that even compromises and being understood may take time to get through to the other party. Something to remember is that in reality, we have to face things that are uncomfortable because that is a part of life. Therefore, where there is pain or discomfort, there is a story to be told; thus, this is my story which is still unfinished.
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Troublemaker Douachee Vang - Poetry
You can try to take away my liberty, but you will never take away my Fiery Soul. The way that I think and the things that I speak – that is what you should be afraid of. I am not your big-shot Doctor I am not your active Executive Director I am not aspiring to be your Righteous Lawyer because I am more than a six-figure number. To others, you say I am your little peacemaker: you degrade my passions and my agency. But boy oh boy, Let me tell you: I am your biggest troublemaker.
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MTT Pachoua Lor - Poetry 1st grade, Mrs. Herzog says “Criss cross apple sauce” I slowly kneel on the floor “Criss cross apple sauce” She repeats But there is no sauce or apple What is she saying? American-born Hmong kids at school Call me MTT for Hmoob Thaib Teb It means Hmong immigrant from Thailand Slow like a turtle My peers fill in the blank of sentences in one day while I fill in the blanks of English I can’t speak For a whole week I finish the same worksheet Those damn papers are hard During recess, I tag my peers while they steer away Tagging me with terms I can’t understand So I hide in bathroom stalls Practice broken English between toilet flushes Hopping no one hear how broken I am How I practice rearranging subjects and predicates To use my tenses correctly because my senses tells me That no one befriends A slow immigrant I can’t read in first through third grade But I will surely read in fourth I will write paragraphs in fifth and novels in sixth Yes I’m slow Like formation of sedimentary rocks Layers of knowledge and skills on top of one another MTT to me stands for Motivated Transforming Turtle So Mrs. Herzog can have her apple and her sauce My peers can keep on playing their game of tag I will slowly but surely catch up
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Our House is of Bamboo Pachoua Lor - Poetry 12 years since America Became my second home I think again of my nieces and nephews How they walk barefoot of blisters in Thailand How many have lost their shoe How many have lost their hope Our house still of bamboo Our floor still of earth Where ants feast on spilled chicken bones Our roof still of tin, darkness and rain come creeping in Walls so thin they crack and Fill the house with sounds of chickens, dogs, and cats On our wooden porch with battery-powered light My nieces and nephews gather Bowl haircuts Clothes worn too many days They say, “Peb xav paub ntawv Meskas.” They want to learn English Curiosity with no containment Bursting into galaxies Eyes so bright they light Up our whole village of no electricity So I hate That another year passed And our house is still of bamboo 12 years and still I sit at my desk flipping through textbooks Race my pencil through academic papers Believe when I’m done writing I can give my nieces and nephews The infinite space for their energy To cause another big bang And create a universe with happiness within our walls Where bamboo bloom bamboo shoots For eating and not for housing 14
Flight
Pa Vue - Non-fiction My mother tells me the account of her fateful escape from Laos to Thailand. It was near dusk and the villagers were making way out of the village into the void of the jungle. A former soldier of the secret war led the group of villagers with a compass. Big, small, wide, and frantic feet swiftly trampled the earth. They moved with broken hearts and minds set on freedom and escape from persecution. No one knew how many days and nights it would come and go before reaching safety. There was no time to pack, and if there were time, she did not have the strength nor arm room to carry very much. She carried my 8-monthold brother, densely wrapped and covered, on her back. He was lighter than the sack of rice that hung off her arm. Wrapped inside a thin blanket was an old tin spoon, a change of clothes for her and my brother. She strapped the bundle to her waist, wrapping it around twice with her green sash. Overlaying the sash was a twisted rope made of vine threading through one side of the handles of a blackcoasted tin pot. Secretly and carefully tied across her chest in a tightly bounded bundle were all the pieces of French silver gifted to her from my grandparents on her wedding day. She felt fortunate to have a pair of rubber flip-flops to make this journey. The path paving the way to Thailand was the best part of the journey. For the villagers, living on the mountains of Laos, walking terrain were regular routes. Even with extra weight and luggage, walking the many days and nights on this escape was not the terrible part. The inconceivable nightmare was having to make impossible decisions. My mother witnessed parents dosing their small children with opium to keep the child drowsy, preventing it from crying. If any parent refused, the group would threaten to abandon them. Crying and fussing children would jeopardize the whereabouts and safety of the group. My mother felt she had no choice but to do the same for my brother. Having no idea how much would be enough to make my brother drowsy and not overdose him, she gave him a tiny bit of opium, the mere size of a rice grain. My brother did not die from 15
continuous dosing of opium, as other children were less unfortunate; my mother believed the ancestors protected him. The hard travel, the deprivation of sleep, the fear and anxiety got to my mother before long. Exhaustion was finally setting in; she felt like giving up was the best thing to do than to continue torturing herself and her son on this escape. She was certain to give up should my brother pass away. Perhaps they may be united with her late husband, she would wonder to herself. The journey got worse when she ran out of rice and others did not have enough to ration, let alone her husband’s family. Often, she would join other older women to forage for food for the group. The most common source of food came from roots dug from the earth. If it were not bitter, it was safe to eat; that was the experience, my mother said. Most nights she slept with her son still tied to her back. She was careful not to lean against him. Sleep was only possible due to exhaustion, she recalls. There were only a handful of times my brother was held in my mother’s arm during sleep because she had dosed off breastfeeding him. It was unsafe to have him untied because should the group be ambushed, she must get up instantly and run. After what seemed like an endless journey, the group finally reached the Mekong River, the great divide of life and death. My mother bought a life jacket to swim across the Mekong. They watched until the water was low and began to swim. She tried to keep my brother above water as she desperately crossed that fateful divide. The Mekong pulled her under a few times but she managed to make it to shore. My brother was quiet and still as she unwrapped him. Mother held him upright against her right shoulder and rubbed his tiny back. He coughed and a drizzle of water spilled from his mouth and onto her shoulder. She cradled him and watched as he tried to catch his breath. Finally, he cried; and then my mother shivered with tears running down her face, hovering over her child.
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Gentrification in Oakland - Vanna Nauk - Fiction Under the grey sky of overcasting clouds, the Amtrak train moves smoothly against the edges of the Bay Area water as I patiently await for my stop in Oakland, California. Once the train ran through Oakland I stared out into a city I once knew, the city that was once filled with ethnic minorities and an African American majority making up the city’s population. Now, as I glance through the windows of this train, I see a changing city that no longer has a place for the historical residence that made this city their home for many generations. The current condition that I am observing through these windows is known as gentrification. Gentrification is an event that has historically taken place in this region many times before, but in the current case of Oakland, this is the largest gentrification effort of its kind in decades. In the 1990s there were 3,560 Cambodian residents living in Oakland, California. Like many Cambodian families, Oakland became my family’s new home after escaping the Cambodian Genocide, followed with many years of oversea migration into numerous countries of Southeast Asia. Settling into Oakland was not always easy for my family because of the culture shock, but after years of cultural clashes with our neighbors, we eventually became acquainted with some of them. In some fortunate cases, we had even become friends with them. It was only then, did I begin to discover that us people of color shared some common sufferings throughout our history. At some point or another we have been oppressed, displaced, or remain unsettled, whether it was from fleeing from a genocide or by systematic segregation. At the age of 12, my parents finally allowed my siblings and me to have friends over and to hang out at our friends’ house. I became close friends with my classmate Brian, he was also my neighbor who lived two houses down from me. Brian’s house is filled with many pictures in comparison to our house, and the pictures that I always found most intriguing were the ones of his grandparents, because they had clearly came from different ethnic backgrounds. Since my family’s oldest pictures can only be traced back to the early 90s when we had just arrived to America, I was always impressed by the amount of old family photos Brian’s family have out on display in their living room. His family photos can be dated back as far as the 40s and 50s, before neither of us were even born. For every picture that Brian family had hanging on the wall, each one included a story of its own. Over time, I accumulated a lot information about Brian’s family through stories from the photos he shared. Because of my fascination with Brian’s old family photos, I have managed to piece together his family history in California. Brain’s dad side of the family are of African American decent, and like most African American families who have lived here for several generations, his father’s family first arrived to the Bay Area in the 1940s. During WWII a wave of African Americans, including Brian’s family migrated from the South to the Bay Area for job opportunities, such as those in shipyards and in factories. 17
Prior to the 1950s and 1960s wave of African American that followed, multiple neighborhoods in the Bay Area had already become restricted. North Oakland, West Oakland, and South of Berkeley had all included restrictions known as redlining, but other restrictive systems were set in place as well. These restrictions band African Americans from living in certain neighborhoods that had a population of as many as 96 percent White. By the 1960s, however, an influx of African American started to overwhelmingly dominate these neighborhoods. In some cases, completely flipping the demographic of these predominately White neighborhoods into a population of as many as 85 percent Black. The immense shift in demographic of this era earned people like Brian’s family, and many others, the collective title of “historic residents.” Brian’s mom side of the family have historically been in California for an even longer period of time before migrating into Oakland. After the Mexican Revolution, about 375,000 to 500,000 Mexicans were living in the Southwest around the year 1900. By 1910 to 1930 a surge of over a million Mexicans migrated northward into the United States to find jobs in agriculture and industry. In 1900 her family found their way into Los Angeles, California, making her family apart of the group of 3,000 to 5,000 Mexican population residing in the expanding city. Just like her husband side of the family, her family have always experienced segregation in their experience of living in California as well. In fact, Brian once told me a story that was passed down from his grandparents to his mother, about Latinos confronting segregation of their children into Mexican schools in the fall of 1944. As a consequence of this event, by March of 1945, the League of United Latin American Citizen sued four local school districts for the segregation of their children. For Brian’s parents, the mid to late 1900s era marked three significant events: Black communities were beginning to shape the neighborhoods in Oakland, Latinos were confronting segregation of schools in Los Angeles, and Brain parents met each other in the Bay Area. Brain’s mom side of the family moved to Oakland in 1975, and her family settled into a Black neighborhood before she was born. Just like Brian’s father, Brain’s mother was also born and raised in the North Oakland area as well, explaining how they would eventually meet. Brian was later born in the house his parents got married in, which is the current house that Brian is living in now, the same house that his grandparents had also lived in. As a result of various migration from ethnic communities that my family and Brian family came from, by 1990 Oakland had a total population of 49,267 Hispanics, 54,012 Asian Pacific Islander, 163,526 Blacks, and 120,855 Whites. At this rate, the city’s color population has undoubtedly overwhelmed the once dominate White majority that was at 59.1% in the 1970s. The changes in demographic stayed relatively consistent up until 2010. Between the year 2000 18
and 2010 the White population increased by 3.2%, subsequently, the Black population decreased by 7.7%. The population shift would appear to be in correlations with the housing crash, as the average asking price for rent in a one-bedroom rose from 31.2% between 2009 and 2010. In addition to the fallen crime rates in recent years, the Bay Area economy was heightened by the technology industry boom. Since real-estate brokers positioned Oakland to be comparatively more affordable than San Francisco, this drew in renters and buyers to reside just a few miles away from the technology hubs. After the housing crash, investors began to take notice in Oakland. Consequently, in 2007 to 2011, about 42% of the 10,508 foreclosure homes in the city were acquired by investors. Despite the fact that the Asian Pacific Islander overall population in Oakland increased by 1.6%, this did not account for all the Asian groups within the Asian umbrella. My family serves as a great example, with a household income under the poverty level it was only a matter of time that we would be driven out of the city. Unfortunately, by 2010, my family had to move out of Oakland and into Fresno because we could not afford to keep up with the rapid rise in rent. Prior to becoming displaced, there were a few indications of gentrification, but no one knew it would actually send our communities up and packing. Brian and I first noticed these indications in 2007 on Telegraph Avenue near 51st Street, Temescal’s main commercial strip. As a wave of new restaurants and cafes moved into the old neighborhood, Oakland was dubbed the new Gourmet Ghetto because of Temescal. Brian I could not decide on whether or not term “Gourmet Ghetto” was flattering or offensive since our working-class families could not afford to eat in these places anyway. Not only were the restaurants and cafes changing, but so were the farmers’ market. Temescal Farmers’ Market sold products that was targeting a particular group of entrepreneurs, like Bakesale Betty that opened in 2005. Brain and his family has managed to keep up with the cost of living in Oakland, but they still often debate on whether to continue to resist the changes or leave too. During my summer breaks I would jump on the Amtrak just to visit them and to observe what kind changes Oakland has made. This summer, when I came to back to visit, I have noticed that our neighborhood in North Oakland is almost unrecognizable. The Southeast Asian families that were living here before are now gone, and the Black and Latino residence had decreased substantially in population. Individual and collective investors can call the changes in these historical neighborhoods what they want, but there is no denying that the historical residents are now being displaced.
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CONTRIBUTORS Boonmee Yang is an aspiring writer who probably could've published a book by now if he wasn't so lazy. He also likes birds. Douachee Vang is a Hmong woman who faced much sexism and injustice when growing up and she still faces it today. It is through her lived experiences that she is attending Fresno State with a major in Women's Studies and focusing her undergraduate researches on Hmong women. While hoping to achieve her PhD some day, her main goal in life is to trailblazer the way towards a more exposed Asian feminism, especially in regard to Hmong feminism. Lee Yang is an educator who has been teaching and learning for the last 14 years in California and Minnesota. Her origin is in a refugee camp in Thailand. She has had her share of struggles and victories being Christian, Hmong, and American. Her lifelong goal is to make a difference in this world through teaching, writing, advocating, speaking, and aspiring people everywhere to believe in their God-given abilities and their authentic voice. Ntses Nag is a Hmong woman, feminist scholar, and daydreamer. She is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree at California State University, Fresno. Strangely inspired by English novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” Ntses Nag wrote "The Good Daughter’s Burden" in her second year of high school during a time when she felt heavily discouraged and distressed by oppressions she hadn't yet known the language of. Now in her fourth year of college, Ntses Nag has decided to revisit and revise her poem in the efforts of giving people access to the language of just some of her struggles. Despite the heavy waves, Ntses Nag plans on continuing the journey of finding herself in the sea of life. Although she hopes to gain strength through the conversations she narrates in her daydreams, she ultimately hopes to apply her strength to the larger narrative of the world she exists in.
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CONTRIBUTORS Pa Vue was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, where her father met her mother. Though her mother does not know how to read or write, it was her that encouraged Pa to write, in order to express herself. Therefore, she's been writing since she was 12 years old. Writing has been Pa's life long passion, as she has written many pieces of unpublished poem and a handful of short stories about her family. Pachoua Lor is currently an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. She was born and raised in Thailand where she lived with her grandparents for the majority of her childhood in a rural Hmong village in Tak Province. She immigrated to the United States from Wat Thamkrabok, the last Hmong refugee camp, in 2004. She hopes to return to her family in Thailand and lift them from poverty. Vlai Ly is a Hmong American photographer currently living in Sacramento California. He is the owner of Letters to the Mountain where he is a wedding photographer and a community photojournalist. His parents, May Nou Yang and Fai Yia Ly, taught him and his siblings to have a soft and kind heart towards the world while also staying true to themselves. These values shape his vision and allow him to understand the innate beauty within his subjects. Vanna Nauk is a P.A.S.S. Leader/Tutor at Fresno City College and an undergraduate student of History and Asian American Studies at California State University, Fresno, where he is the Student Coordinator for the Asian Pacific Islander Programs and Services.
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Acknowledgement MAI is a project of the Tamejavi Cultural Organizing Fellowship Program (TCOFP). It was made possible by the Pan Valley Institute of the American Friends Service Committee. MAI is curated by Cultural Organizing Fellow See Xiong. She is a graduate student at California State University, Fresno. She was born in Chiang Kham refugee camp and came to the United States as a refugee at the age of 5. Thanks to the support from Fellows, Brenda Ordaz and Wasan Abu-Baker; Pan Valley Institute staff, Myrna Martinez-Nateras, Minerva Mendoza, and Dayanna Sevilla. Front cover photo courtesy of See Xiong. Disclaimer: The contents in this zine are from the experiences and perspectives of the writers and not endorsed by AFSC Pan Valley Institute.
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Contact Tamejavi Cultural Organizing Fellowship Program Pan Valley Institute 3649 W Beechwood Ave., Suite 102 Fresno, CA 93711 (559) 222-7678 infopvi@afsc.org http://www.tamejavi.org http://www.afsc.org