My brief life story:
"Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one." -Bruce Lee
No one gets to choose what kind of family, ethnic background, or socioeconomic status they will be born into. These things aren't predetermined or genetically modified for us. What we choose to do with our life after birth is truly our own decisions that can be influenced by the people and environment that surround us. At times growing up, I would question myself how my life would dramatically change if I was born into a different family, or if I was of a different ethnicity and race. Would life be easier? As I grew up and gained more experiences, my thoughts have certainly changed. Life is never easy to begin with and although these factors may certainly change some things, it probably wouldn't change the fact that it's not easy. After all, I was never the type to choose an easy battle
My name is Mai Nou Vang. I was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. I am the second child and oldest daughter of five children. Being the oldest daughter in a Hmong family is a huge responsibility. Growing up, I took on responsibilities for my siblings at a very young age because of my parents' struggle and busy life trying to make life better for us. At young age, I had already come to an understanding about the struggles that I would eventually face in life. Being Hmong and being a daughter in the family put me at a disadvantage for several opportunities already. My cultural values shifted and at times i despised being Hmong. Both my parents were born in Laos and raised in Thailand. They were the wave of refugees that immigrated to the U.S. after the Vietnam war. After coming to this country, they barely had a chance at obtaining an education. Fortunately, they both strove hard and completed high school. Growing up with parents who have endured such hardships and struggles, education is valued as the only key to success and opportunities. However, that wasn't the only expectation from my parents. Many other roles and expectations came into play and to balance and make everything work seemed really impossible at times. But as I endured and continued, I have come to an understanding that sometimes in the game of juggling balls, it's not about keeping the ball up in the air perfectly, at all times, sometimes it's just about keeping them off from the ground, so regardless of what I do, I just have to make sure those balls don't touch the ground. I could still possibly win at this game. Aside from all these difficult times, I cannot emphasize enough how much my parents have sacrificed and endured for me so that I can be where I am today, receiving the education that I am getting now. Although it has been a tough journey getting here, I have no regrets. I am proud of who I am and all the things that make me different from others.
No one gets to choose what kind of family, ethnic background, or socioeconomic status they will be born into. These things aren't predetermined or genetically modified for us. What we choose to do with our life after birth is truly our own decisions that can be influenced by the people and environment that surround us. At times growing up, I would question myself how my life would dramatically change if I was born into a different family, or if I was of a different ethnicity and race. Would life be easier? As I grew up and gained more experiences, my thoughts have certainly changed. Life is never easy to begin with and although these factors may certainly change some things, it probably wouldn't change the fact that it's not easy. After all, I was never the type to choose an easy battle
My name is Mai Nou Vang. I was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. I am the second child and oldest daughter of five children. Being the oldest daughter in a Hmong family is a huge responsibility. Growing up, I took on responsibilities for my siblings at a very young age because of my parents' struggle and busy life trying to make life better for us. At young age, I had already come to an understanding about the struggles that I would eventually face in life. Being Hmong and being a daughter in the family put me at a disadvantage for several opportunities already. My cultural values shifted and at times i despised being Hmong. Both my parents were born in Laos and raised in Thailand. They were the wave of refugees that immigrated to the U.S. after the Vietnam war. After coming to this country, they barely had a chance at obtaining an education. Fortunately, they both strove hard and completed high school. Growing up with parents who have endured such hardships and struggles, education is valued as the only key to success and opportunities. However, that wasn't the only expectation from my parents. Many other roles and expectations came into play and to balance and make everything work seemed really impossible at times. But as I endured and continued, I have come to an understanding that sometimes in the game of juggling balls, it's not about keeping the ball up in the air perfectly, at all times, sometimes it's just about keeping them off from the ground, so regardless of what I do, I just have to make sure those balls don't touch the ground. I could still possibly win at this game. Aside from all these difficult times, I cannot emphasize enough how much my parents have sacrificed and endured for me so that I can be where I am today, receiving the education that I am getting now. Although it has been a tough journey getting here, I have no regrets. I am proud of who I am and all the things that make me different from others.
Currently, I am a junior at Sacramento State University. I am a transfer student from Sacramento City College and Cosumnes River City College. I recently graduated in Spring of 2014, from Sacramento City College with two Associate's Degrees, one in Biology and the other in Social Science. As of now, I am a Nursing major at Sacramento State. Being new to this campus feels a little different but nice. Although, it's going to take some time to adjust to this new atmosphere, I have strong and positive attitudes that the educational years to come at this university will certainly bring better changes for me.
Communities that have shaped me: Community Analysis
I was born and raised in Sacramento, so I have always been surrounded by a group of diverse people. My groups of friends, family, and teachers throughout my childhood years have highly influenced me to understand more about myself and the people surrounding me. Much of my knowledge about cultural differences and awareness started when I was in Elementary school. I attended Elder Creek Elementary for most of my childhood years. It is a school very rich in diversity because of the student body and teachers. My group of friends were Chinese, Mien, Laos, Vietnamese, Hmong, and Latinos. I started second grade at this school, at a time in which I was first introduced to the START program. The START program is an after school program that provides a caring environment for students to receive assistance with homework, reading, math and literacy activities. When I first started at Elder Creek Elementary, my classmates would always discuss about the activities they did in START, which caught my interest immediately. Soon after, my teacher encouraged my parents to enroll me so I could receive some assistance with my school work. My parents willingly agreed and START became my daily, ritual activity. Every day after school, I would head straight to START and stay until five in the evening doing various fun learning activities. It was a very special life changing experience that helped shape me. A part of my identity, of who I am is derived from my experiences in the START program. The program emphasizes the importance of education and offers a great variety of learning activities that help me to identify my skills, my likes and dislikes. While in this program, I learned so much about myself and learned to build on more skills. It was in this small learning community, that I developed a great love for reading. We often had a checklist of books to read and complete on a monthly schedule. Whenever we have completely finished the list of books, we would be rewarded by receiving the opportunity to enjoy a mini, special lunch sessions with our leaders and coordinators. It was an activity that sparked me to become an active reader, and through that I also became a very active learner. Our START leaders were college students, some of whom, were also students from Sacramento State. They were very inspirational leaders who understand our needs and allowed us to grow and develop accordingly to our interests.
In this program, I learned about the importance of education and what it meant in this society. Coming from a low-income family and a disadvantage socio-economic background and environment, I was well aware that I needed to work hard in school if I wanted to live my life differently from my parents. My parents always reminded me of their refugee life, as mentioned in chapter one: "The History of Asians in America" of the book, The Contemporary Asian American Experience by Timothy Fong. At such a young age, I was continuously reminded of the struggles my parents had to face when they first arrived in the U.S. as the wave of refugees from Thailand after the Vietnam War. My parents' story and this program served as the main motivational factors that prompted me to become an individual who values education highly as the key to achieving a better life. It really shaped me to become who I am today because through my young experiences in START, I learned so much about myself and the people around me. The emphasis on the importance of education that START highly focuses on in our small community shines to light the bigger problems as well. Looking back at my little disadvantaged community, we were lacking in power and voice because we were lacking in education and knowledge. Much of this concept of feeling powerless in the community relates to the discussion of Luke's three-dimensions of power. Small communities like the one I grew up in, is very similar to what Luke describes as the 3-dimensional power in which, "less powerful people have internalized the idea that they are less worthy or important." This is true to some extent in some circumstances because I have seen that often times, people in my community chose not to voice their opinions in political affairs or community decisions because they feel worthless and have internalized the beliefs and thoughts that their opinions will not matter anyway. This is why it's very hard for these Asian American communities to grow in terms of becoming more involved in governmental and community activities that seek to understand about the deeper problems. However, as mentioned in Fong's Chapter 8: The Final Frontier, Asian s American Political Empowerment, Asian American groups have always been lacking participation in political aspects, which is part of the power control in society. In my perspective, the issue relates closely to what I have previously mentioned above.
Aside from the realization of power control in my community, I am beginning to see that my daily ritual of attending START seems to have a deeper connection as well. Due to the groups of students attending Elder Creek and the overall progress of the school, START was most likely specifically designed to be implemented in our school system to alter these sociological views about our community. It was the system of change that would perhaps be able to turn things around for us. Similarly, the concepts and ideas discussed in Mcknight and Kretzmann's writing of Mapping Community Capacity, introduces the different approaches in developing a community. Mcknight and Kretzmann suggests that in the process of building and developing a community, the assets of the people in the community is one of the more important factors to include. This concept is slightly similar to the role that START took on in my little community. The program focuses on helping students like me, develop and learn more about our own skills so that we can make better changes and contributions to the community overall.
Although my community then was so racially and ethnically diverse, we were all the minority groups, that were often looked down upon because of social class and societal beliefs and stereotypes. As mentioned in chapter two: Emerging Communities, Changing Realities, "southeast Asian refugee groups suffered higher than average rates of poverty" (Fong, 71). At such a young age, I was unaware of these specific data and statistical references, but I did notice that the way people treated southeast Asian groups was biased and very discriminatory at times. In some ways, this set a bigger spark in me to strive to become a better person in my community. I truly wanted to prove people wrong about their assumptions and interpretations of me as an Asian American child. Regardless of these views, I have learned so much from my experiences in my every day ritual activities as a child in the START program. Due to the amount of teamwork and engagement required in working with so many different people from different racial and ethnic groups, I learned to appreciate everyone for their differences. I am a person who works well with others, and I have gained the skills to be very flexible with intercultural communication. Today, many of my values in some ways, still relate to many of the things that I have acquired from my experiences in the START program. I learned to identify with specific qualities of what I want to be like when I grew up such as, by developing proper leadership skills, executing kindness, manners, and care for everyone because treating others well, reflected these values back to myself. Looking back to my childhood years spent in being so actively involved with the START program, I can see how much it has impacted my life in relation to building my identity, understanding cultural values and the influences of power structure and social structure.
As I continued on with my education and learning experiences, I picked up on a volunteer position at South Sacramento Kaiser Permanente, a little after high school. I wanted to gain experiences in the healthcare environment because I have high hopes of going into Nursing. While pursuing my college education at community colleges, I spent one day of the week, volunteering. This volunteering experience helped me step foot into a different community that has also help shaped me to see and learn new things. This helped me to step out of my bubble a little and adjust to a new kind of place. This community helped me to develop new perspective and beliefs about medicinal and hospital care. Many of the new concepts that I was learning often clashed with my own cultural views which became difficult for me at times. I felt that as I was learning more about the care provided in a health-care setting, the more I was beginning to shift towards the American culture beliefs of medicine and care. This was a difficult process for me because I grew up in a traditional Hmong family. Although my parents' particular household did not really have a strong sense of beliefs in the Hmong traditions; my grandparents, uncles, and aunts were very traditional. The religious and traditional beliefs of a person's well-being and health is very much about spiritual matters. However, I strongly disagree because having the knowledge that I have obtained from all my science and health classes, spiritual means does not properly explain illness. None of that makes any sense to me. My understanding relies on biological explanations. When we have fevers, it's because the body is fighting off viruses or infections, not because the soul or spirit is unhappy or ill. I was constantly learning new things being so involved in my volunteer community that I was becoming less of a believer in my own cultural values. However, I am still managing how to balance both because I understand that as a health care provider one day, I have to respect a patients' beliefs and their cultural values. This internal struggle has helped me understand where I stand today and how to work around issues similar to what I encounter within my Hmong culture and my American culture. All my three years that I've spent volunteering has helped me learn more about working with people from different groups. In that hospital environment, i saw many different groups of people coming in for health-related problems. It really teaches me how to work with these groups, what bothers them, how they view doctors and nurses, and what their different beliefs about clinical and hospital care are. It has been a wonderful and interesting learning experience for me. It really taught me more about myself, my beliefs, and my values.
As mentioned in my little introduction, sometimes while growing up I wasn't that much excited to be Hmong daughter. There were so many restrictions and disadvantages because of the cultural values. Comparing my Hmong cultural values to the American cultural values helped me to see and identify the major differences, and in some sense I disliked some of my own cultural values. I didn't want to fit in and I tried to be as different as I could be from the stereotypical role of a Hmong daughter. My culture seemed to place higher social values for males than it did for females. For instance, a son will be more privileged with opportunities than a daughter. Mainly because sons will continue on to carry the family name, whereas a daughter will eventually marry into a different family clan and continue her life serving her husband's family. I witnessed the unfair treatment of these values being put into place. I have also come to strongly dislike these values and hope to find ways to alter our elder's mindset about these concepts because in today's time, these values cannot be put into application anymore. How else can a daughter show her true potential and succeed in life when there are such cultural beliefs narrowing down her options? Growing up in a small community that was so definite on such beliefs, felt burdening at times. I felt so powerless because I didn't even have a voice to begin my argument. However, after becoming so involved in a family non-profit organization, Parents Promoting Higher Education (PPHED), it helped me see things more clearly. I feel that this was the beginning of making our voices heard. This organization was run by our family clan that included over 30 families. Every year in the summer, we would get together for motivational speeches from elders and those that have pursued higher educational degrees. This also became a ritual and annual gathering. There were lots of events and free school supplies and prizes. There were awards given out to students for maintaining certain GPA. Every year, PPHED takes students who earned 4.0 GPA on a trip and if a student maintains their academic GPA for three years straight, there was a monetary bonus. Being so active in this organization made me realize the importance of education for myself in the future. From many of the ways in which I listened to the elders speak about the importance of education, I was slowly beginning to see how much they were willing to change for us children of the younger generation. It wasn't going to be such a harsh battle after all. It just takes a little understanding and time to educate them about the differences in time and situation today. Most of the time, all they ask, is for us to strive for a higher education to make the better changes in our lives. I was starting to see changes in these stereotypical and cultural views because they too were starting to realize that girls do have a lot of potential in achieving many of the things that the boys can. Girls were being recognized for many things we didn't use to be acknowledge for. I have discovered that this was how I was going to change my life. I was determined to become the best at what I do, in order to change how my parents and elders view me and my potential as a daughter. I still carry out some of the expected roles that are placed on me, but I've come to realize that will be my way of giving back to my parents and my family.
In this program, I learned about the importance of education and what it meant in this society. Coming from a low-income family and a disadvantage socio-economic background and environment, I was well aware that I needed to work hard in school if I wanted to live my life differently from my parents. My parents always reminded me of their refugee life, as mentioned in chapter one: "The History of Asians in America" of the book, The Contemporary Asian American Experience by Timothy Fong. At such a young age, I was continuously reminded of the struggles my parents had to face when they first arrived in the U.S. as the wave of refugees from Thailand after the Vietnam War. My parents' story and this program served as the main motivational factors that prompted me to become an individual who values education highly as the key to achieving a better life. It really shaped me to become who I am today because through my young experiences in START, I learned so much about myself and the people around me. The emphasis on the importance of education that START highly focuses on in our small community shines to light the bigger problems as well. Looking back at my little disadvantaged community, we were lacking in power and voice because we were lacking in education and knowledge. Much of this concept of feeling powerless in the community relates to the discussion of Luke's three-dimensions of power. Small communities like the one I grew up in, is very similar to what Luke describes as the 3-dimensional power in which, "less powerful people have internalized the idea that they are less worthy or important." This is true to some extent in some circumstances because I have seen that often times, people in my community chose not to voice their opinions in political affairs or community decisions because they feel worthless and have internalized the beliefs and thoughts that their opinions will not matter anyway. This is why it's very hard for these Asian American communities to grow in terms of becoming more involved in governmental and community activities that seek to understand about the deeper problems. However, as mentioned in Fong's Chapter 8: The Final Frontier, Asian s American Political Empowerment, Asian American groups have always been lacking participation in political aspects, which is part of the power control in society. In my perspective, the issue relates closely to what I have previously mentioned above.
Aside from the realization of power control in my community, I am beginning to see that my daily ritual of attending START seems to have a deeper connection as well. Due to the groups of students attending Elder Creek and the overall progress of the school, START was most likely specifically designed to be implemented in our school system to alter these sociological views about our community. It was the system of change that would perhaps be able to turn things around for us. Similarly, the concepts and ideas discussed in Mcknight and Kretzmann's writing of Mapping Community Capacity, introduces the different approaches in developing a community. Mcknight and Kretzmann suggests that in the process of building and developing a community, the assets of the people in the community is one of the more important factors to include. This concept is slightly similar to the role that START took on in my little community. The program focuses on helping students like me, develop and learn more about our own skills so that we can make better changes and contributions to the community overall.
Although my community then was so racially and ethnically diverse, we were all the minority groups, that were often looked down upon because of social class and societal beliefs and stereotypes. As mentioned in chapter two: Emerging Communities, Changing Realities, "southeast Asian refugee groups suffered higher than average rates of poverty" (Fong, 71). At such a young age, I was unaware of these specific data and statistical references, but I did notice that the way people treated southeast Asian groups was biased and very discriminatory at times. In some ways, this set a bigger spark in me to strive to become a better person in my community. I truly wanted to prove people wrong about their assumptions and interpretations of me as an Asian American child. Regardless of these views, I have learned so much from my experiences in my every day ritual activities as a child in the START program. Due to the amount of teamwork and engagement required in working with so many different people from different racial and ethnic groups, I learned to appreciate everyone for their differences. I am a person who works well with others, and I have gained the skills to be very flexible with intercultural communication. Today, many of my values in some ways, still relate to many of the things that I have acquired from my experiences in the START program. I learned to identify with specific qualities of what I want to be like when I grew up such as, by developing proper leadership skills, executing kindness, manners, and care for everyone because treating others well, reflected these values back to myself. Looking back to my childhood years spent in being so actively involved with the START program, I can see how much it has impacted my life in relation to building my identity, understanding cultural values and the influences of power structure and social structure.
As I continued on with my education and learning experiences, I picked up on a volunteer position at South Sacramento Kaiser Permanente, a little after high school. I wanted to gain experiences in the healthcare environment because I have high hopes of going into Nursing. While pursuing my college education at community colleges, I spent one day of the week, volunteering. This volunteering experience helped me step foot into a different community that has also help shaped me to see and learn new things. This helped me to step out of my bubble a little and adjust to a new kind of place. This community helped me to develop new perspective and beliefs about medicinal and hospital care. Many of the new concepts that I was learning often clashed with my own cultural views which became difficult for me at times. I felt that as I was learning more about the care provided in a health-care setting, the more I was beginning to shift towards the American culture beliefs of medicine and care. This was a difficult process for me because I grew up in a traditional Hmong family. Although my parents' particular household did not really have a strong sense of beliefs in the Hmong traditions; my grandparents, uncles, and aunts were very traditional. The religious and traditional beliefs of a person's well-being and health is very much about spiritual matters. However, I strongly disagree because having the knowledge that I have obtained from all my science and health classes, spiritual means does not properly explain illness. None of that makes any sense to me. My understanding relies on biological explanations. When we have fevers, it's because the body is fighting off viruses or infections, not because the soul or spirit is unhappy or ill. I was constantly learning new things being so involved in my volunteer community that I was becoming less of a believer in my own cultural values. However, I am still managing how to balance both because I understand that as a health care provider one day, I have to respect a patients' beliefs and their cultural values. This internal struggle has helped me understand where I stand today and how to work around issues similar to what I encounter within my Hmong culture and my American culture. All my three years that I've spent volunteering has helped me learn more about working with people from different groups. In that hospital environment, i saw many different groups of people coming in for health-related problems. It really teaches me how to work with these groups, what bothers them, how they view doctors and nurses, and what their different beliefs about clinical and hospital care are. It has been a wonderful and interesting learning experience for me. It really taught me more about myself, my beliefs, and my values.
As mentioned in my little introduction, sometimes while growing up I wasn't that much excited to be Hmong daughter. There were so many restrictions and disadvantages because of the cultural values. Comparing my Hmong cultural values to the American cultural values helped me to see and identify the major differences, and in some sense I disliked some of my own cultural values. I didn't want to fit in and I tried to be as different as I could be from the stereotypical role of a Hmong daughter. My culture seemed to place higher social values for males than it did for females. For instance, a son will be more privileged with opportunities than a daughter. Mainly because sons will continue on to carry the family name, whereas a daughter will eventually marry into a different family clan and continue her life serving her husband's family. I witnessed the unfair treatment of these values being put into place. I have also come to strongly dislike these values and hope to find ways to alter our elder's mindset about these concepts because in today's time, these values cannot be put into application anymore. How else can a daughter show her true potential and succeed in life when there are such cultural beliefs narrowing down her options? Growing up in a small community that was so definite on such beliefs, felt burdening at times. I felt so powerless because I didn't even have a voice to begin my argument. However, after becoming so involved in a family non-profit organization, Parents Promoting Higher Education (PPHED), it helped me see things more clearly. I feel that this was the beginning of making our voices heard. This organization was run by our family clan that included over 30 families. Every year in the summer, we would get together for motivational speeches from elders and those that have pursued higher educational degrees. This also became a ritual and annual gathering. There were lots of events and free school supplies and prizes. There were awards given out to students for maintaining certain GPA. Every year, PPHED takes students who earned 4.0 GPA on a trip and if a student maintains their academic GPA for three years straight, there was a monetary bonus. Being so active in this organization made me realize the importance of education for myself in the future. From many of the ways in which I listened to the elders speak about the importance of education, I was slowly beginning to see how much they were willing to change for us children of the younger generation. It wasn't going to be such a harsh battle after all. It just takes a little understanding and time to educate them about the differences in time and situation today. Most of the time, all they ask, is for us to strive for a higher education to make the better changes in our lives. I was starting to see changes in these stereotypical and cultural views because they too were starting to realize that girls do have a lot of potential in achieving many of the things that the boys can. Girls were being recognized for many things we didn't use to be acknowledge for. I have discovered that this was how I was going to change my life. I was determined to become the best at what I do, in order to change how my parents and elders view me and my potential as a daughter. I still carry out some of the expected roles that are placed on me, but I've come to realize that will be my way of giving back to my parents and my family.