Van Tran, You Are Not My Future

Dear Assemblymember Tran,

My name is Thanh Truc Duong, and here is my short story. I am second generation Vietnamese American. I was born in the City of Garden Grove, one of the seven cities that you proudly serve. My parents and siblings are refugees of the American War in Southeast Asia.

In 1978, shortly after my father was released from "reeducation camp," my family fled by foot late at night, barely escaping the hands of Vietnamese communists, leaving everything they knew as "home" behind. On a 50-foot fishing boat, they sat cramped and quietly with hundreds of other Vietnamese refugees, waiting patiently to cross the seas, praying for clear skies and a ocean pathway absent of hungry pirates. Blessed by the Buddha's watch, they made it safely to Malaysia where they lived in a refugee camp for six months until being sponsored to America.

They first resettled in Hawthorne. While my father studied for months to regain his license as a family physician, my family lived on welfare. My mother worked multiple jobs as a caretaker, maid, and tailor to bring in any extra cash to help keep my 3 siblings out of trouble. Finally my father passed his certification. The economy was good in the 1980s, so they opened up a clinic with the intentions of serving recent immigrants and refugees in Westminster, families just like ours.

A few years later, I was born, and... here I am now. A recent graduate of the best public university in the world. Looking back at my story, I just can't say that it was solely my hard work that brought me to where I am today.

I read your short story too. Your entire refugee background was written so concisely into two sentences. You skillfully fit 34 years of experience with war, escape, diaspora, and resettlement into a brief and painfully distant paragraph.

As the first Vietnamese American to serve in elected office in the United States, I ask you this...

How has your Vietnamese American identity successfully thrown you into consideration as the "future of the GOP" yet barely be a point of discussion on your own website... or more importantly, how does your unique refugee background inform your policy decisions on immigration, education, and other matters impacting our communities ?

On the hard and cold surface level, our families may share the same history of war and displacement. But beyond that, the boot-straps approach and political ideology that you developed from your experiences are not mine.

So when I heard your announcement to run for Congress, my heart sank. As a progressive-minded second generation Vietnamese American, I do not believe that your narrowed, dated perspectives on social and economic issues will carry our growing, younger generation through the expected challenges and obstacles that face us in the decades to come.

As a native of Orange County, I will look to more forwards-thinking, inclusive-approaching, coalition-building, diplomatic and non-divisive leadership ... regardless of ethnicity.

I think it's time that the Vietnamese American community has a loud wake-up call. For our more privileged generation, being of Southeast Asian descent will no longer be enough.

Wishing you the best,
Thanh Truc Duong