Minneapolis, Minnesota | Filipina/Mixed Race | She/Her/Hers

Redbone: “Redbone is a term historically used in much of the southern United States to denote a multiracial individual or culture.” (Wikipedia)

I am a 51 year old African American/Filipina “Redbone” Navy brat born in Olongapo City on Luzon, the most northern island in the Philippines (PI). I spent my first 15 years of life in Japan, CA, FL, and Hawaii. My father, an African American “Redbone” from the Southeastern US, was stationed in the PI during the Vietnam War where he met my mother, a Filipina from Manila.

When I was 15, we moved back to the Subic Bay Naval Base, next to Olongapo where I had lived until I was 4. We resided in base housing surrounded by a jungle of majestic trees, monkeys, bats, flying squirrels, boars, and snakes. Our backyard was the ancestral homelands of the Aeta, an indigenous Afro-Asiatic people who continue to be discriminated against for their darker skin and “kinky” hair.

I lived there for 3 years, attending the base high school; touring the country; dancing at clubs; and counting my blessings that I wasn’t one of the many Olongapo prostitutes my age. Olongapo was a designated R&R (Rest and Recreation) zone during the Vietnam War and prostitution remains legal there. The city’s main street is still filled with clubs where Filipinas are employed to “entertain.”

Because of the biases against darker skinned people, very few businesses, overall, were then and are now willing to employ Black AmerAsians, even those catering to African Americans. Women who look like me are often relegated to “street walking.” When off base, I was frequently and disdainfully asked by the town police for my “walking papers” – documents required to “legally” street prostitute. They were usually surprised and sometimes expressed envy that I was “American” because, I believe, I challenged the accepted social order – the established color and class hierarchy – as one of the few Black AmerAsians with married parents; “base privileges;” and all the benefits of US citizenship.

At 18, I had the option to give up that citizenship and be a “Philippine National.” After years of witnessing blatant racism against Black AmerAsians and Aeta people, I had no desire to give up my “American” identity. Despite the atrocities committed against my father’s African and Native ancestors by this country, I still had far greater opportunities here to be educated, build a career, travel, and enjoy the freedoms which those ancestors – over the past 400 years – lost everything but their souls for me to have.

I graduated high school and left the comfort of my “gated” military base community alone on an Air Force Tiger 747 for California to start college. I was idealistic and sheltered from the racism and other realities of being a “Redbone” woman in the US. But regardless of those realities, I will ALWAYS choose to be “American.” I was born in the Philippines but the US is the only place I truly feel at and can call “home.”

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Saint Paul, Minnesota | Karen | She/Her/Hers

I was six years old when my parents told me about America: a land with big houses that contained separate bedrooms and this thing that stored food, which I later found out was called a refrigerator. In September 2007, my family immigrated from Thai refugee camps to Minnesota. We rented a house in Saint Paul; three floors, three bedrooms, and one bathroom. I had five brothers and two sisters, which meant I did not get my own room. What a relief! My six year old self was scared at the thought of having to sleep in my own room.

In the refugee camps, I always slept surrounded by the security of my siblings. On the first night we moved into our Saint Paul rental, my whole family woke up at two in the morning, because our bodies had yet to adjust from moving across the globe. It was then when I finally realized that I no longer had to wake up and tend to the domestic animals or stay up late to do homework with a candle. Home now had running water, electricity, gas stoves, and all I had to worry about was my education. This was my new home and I knew we were going to live here for a very long time.

On April 1st, 2015, I was hanging out with my best friend, when I started receiving texts from my cousin: “Is it true that your house is on fire?” My brother texted me, “Are you guys all okay? I’m on my way back from college.” I texted back to them, “I know it’s April Fool’s day, you won’t get me!” I was really thinking that they were all trying to trick me. I kept receiving texts from other relatives and friends. Finally, I checked the news and my house was surrounded by fire trucks.

My neighborhood was on fire. As soon as I saw my mom on the screen, I ran straight home. That was the fastest I ever ran in my whole life. The fire started from a branch that fell on an electric power line which lit the house next door on fire to complete ashes. The fire then flew over to our house, then my friend’s house, and finally across the street. I remember my dad sighing in disbelief and saying, “It is like we’re refugees all over again.” We lost everything in that house, along with our cars, and all of our traditional Karen clothes.

For a couple years, my mom couldn’t go back to that neighborhood. Our landlord let us stay in his other houses and we had to start from scratch all over again. My friend and her family moved to Wisconsin. I was tired from starting over again from houses, friendships, everything we’ve worked for. We lost our home.

As I reflected on everything, I came to realize that home was more than a physical location. From my parents running away from war, to raising a family of eight kids in a refugee camp, to flying thousands of miles to a new foreign country all for their children; my family makes any place home. Home is always the comfort, warmth, and safety that they brought. My family is my home.

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Saint Paul, Minnesota | Lao | He/Him/His

After escaping the Vietnam War, we (my dad, mom, brother, sister, uncle and cousins) settled in Hawaii. At first, we moved around a lot within the housing project program, but eventually found a beautiful big house with five bedrooms in a very nice area to rent; the east side of Honolulu. There were 13 people in our home. We were at full capacity.

Soon after my older siblings and cousins graduated high school, they left. They went into the military, moved to the mainland and so on. Only the young folks were left: one older brother, sister, and me. So, we moved into a smaller house previously occupied by a Filipino family.

Although everything felt stable, we still had our own struggles. My mom struggled with my dad, and he had his own struggles. He had a disease.

Dad was angry and loud towards my mom and sisters. My little sister would sometimes hide in the closet when dad argued with my mom. He never got physical, but he was verbally abusive, especially when he drank alcohol. When he was sober, he was quiet.

Dad was in and out of AA programs. We thought that was normal as kids.

I remember one time when I was 11 or 12 years old, my father was yelling and everyone was arguing in the car. I felt so frustrated I wanted to grab the wheel and swerve the car into oncoming traffic. I wanted all of the screaming and yelling to stop.

My parents finally separated when I went away to college in Oregon. My father moved with me. I took out college loans in order to help take care of him for a year. It was so hard for him to quit drinking. He was dealing with PTSD too, but we didn’t know anything about it then.

The only time dad talked about the war was when he was drunk. He had been the right hand man to a General in Vientiane, Laos so he saw killings and deaths. He had lived through a lot, and he turned to alcohol to find solace and peace. Dad struggled because he couldn’t escape his memories of his homeland.

Over time, my siblings eventually stopped giving him money because he used it for alcohol, but he always found other relatives who would give him something. He moved around to different states, living with relative to relative. When he finally passed on, he was living with a niece.

I sometimes think that his death was sort of my fault because I wrote him a check a week before he passed away. He was in college studying to become a pastor. He only had one class left so I wrote him a check. He cashed the check and bought alcohol.

Everyone remembers him as a soldier, and yes, he was a soldier at heart, but I remember him as a good cook. He made a lot of food that I enjoyed. I wish that I would have inherited that talent from him. He was from southern Laos and he made very good pus pus (raw fish with spice). He really liked making this dish with clams and seafood. It’s one of the reasons why he stayed in Seattle. Looking back, I think he moved around a lot because nothing ever felt like home to him. He wanted to recreate home. Unfortunately, he never did.

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Eagan, Minnesota | Vietnamese | She/Her/Hers & He/Him/His

Billie Joe Armstrong is a musician who clocks in at 5’ 7” tall. He is recognizable for wearing a tousled mop for his dusty black hair — lazily stretching out from Armstrong’s head as though it were a small sun — coated by set in layers of soft black onyx. Tri Minh Vo, the person writing this piece, is also 5’ 7” with hair set by the glaze of black onyx.

Armstrong played a key role in ushering me as a Vietnamese 1.5 generation immigrant into the American life through one of America’s more notorious subcultures: punk — or punk rock music. Like black onyx, a stone said to transform negative energy and prevent the drain of internal energy, punk wasn’t merely a form of expression through sound. It was a way for the oldest immigrant child of three, who came from a country devastated only decades earlier by a war that has come to define both the country of Vietnam and its diaspora populations, to begin kindling the rage that he would need to be able to transform into nonviolent forms. Not only by telling his story, but more largely the story of the children of devastation who grow up at risk of blind assimilation into commodity utopias.

America is that utopia. And punk — through its ideal core as anti-imperialist and action-oriented lifeways against oppressive systems — is the light through which the falsehoods of any utopia maintained by power and violence would be exposed; and slowly, with great and collective persistence: disintegrated.

Are you tired of hearing about high stakes political ideologies yet? Tri has a track record of verbalizing her grand schemes to strangers, while forgetting that human beings tend to introduce themselves with less serious things like hobbies and interests first.

Tri has a troubled relationship with her identity. Tri goes by she/her pronouns, and yet presents as a male who can go by he/him pronouns. Jeff Rosenstock and John Darnielle’s music helped her stay buoyed through different stages of her adult life. She has made more meaningful relationships in the past half year since graduating from college, in May, 2018, than when she was in college. Tri wants changes within institutions. Tri wants changes outside of institutions. Tri wonders how she can help various groups in the Twin Cities overcome the forces of segregation that keeps these groups from liberating themselves in coalition, rather than apart from each other.

Tri only remembers that she is Vietnamese when others begin to assume another place that she is possibly from. Tri only remembers an upbringing in Eagan, Minnesota, and an education entrenched in St. Paul. Tri wants to make music. Tri is trying out improv at HUGE theater and is doing stand up to practice finding catharsis in laughter in addition to rage.

Tri is a Punk American. She is 5’ 7” tall with hair like black onyx. She will transform who she is inside so that she may have the right power to transform the world outside.

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Minneapolis, Minnesota | Korean/Mixed Race | She/Her/Hers

I grew up in northwestern Minnesota outside of a very small town of about 300 people named Hendrum. Growing up as a biracial child; a Korean immigrant mother and a White dad made for an interesting mix of cultures and experiences – particularly during the 80s and 90s in rural Minnesota.

To be blunt, there were not a lot of people who looked like our family. My mom took pride in our Korean heritage and instilled a lot of those values in my sister and me growing up. At the same time, my family also embraced a lot of the unique northwestern Minnesota cultures, inherited from folks who have lived there for generations. In this part of Minnesota, families primarily came from Scandinavian ancestors. We learned how to count to ten in Norwegian and celebrated Norwegian Independence Day, Syttende Mai. Overall, during my childhood I felt like I straddled two different cultures – Asian and Scandinavian – including making and appreciating their respective traditional foods.

A lot of traditional Scandinavian food has become synonymous with what many would identify as holiday foods and Minnesota traditions. I grew up in a family that made an intentional choice to keep up our Korean culture but also to explore the community we were a part of. That’s how my mom learned to become an amazing lefse maker. Lefse is a traditional Swedish and Norwegian flatbread. In Hendrum, you could buy them in the grocery store, but many people still make it from scratch.

Food and the process of making food is where I see my two cultures coming together – the care that you put into the food is universal. It’s how most kids grew up; you just watch, learn, and experience. Over the years mom made friends who came from Norwegian heritage. She watched them make lefse and eventually said, “Hey! I can do this, and I think I can do it well.”

Last year at Thanksgiving we were visiting my parents for the holiday, and my mom got out the lefse griddle and taught my daughters, who are three and five, how to make lefse. It struck me as I watched my mom pass on her experience to my daughters that food and the process of making food is where two cultures can come together — the care that you put into the food is universal.

When we visit my parents during the holidays, it’s common that we’ll have lefse, krumkake, rosettes, other scandinavian holiday treats served alongside bulgogi, kimchi, and bibimbap, as well as the traditional holiday fixings of turkey, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. That’s what our holiday table looks like. This table is a great example of my life in Minnesota; growing up in a rural part of the state and being a biracial family. You just take it all in, and it becomes a part of you.

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Marshall, Minnesota | Hmong | She/Her/Hers

Last spring, I sought out a chiropractor. He did a complete scan on me and read the list of stressors in my life. It was no shock that “guilt” was on top of the list. As the oldest Hmong daughter, I had wife, mom, sister, and last but certainly not least, daughter guilt. I’m sure every Hmong son or daughter feels some guilt their parents pile on them, some may be on a daily basis.

You don’t visit as much as they’d like you to, so they remind you of the time they crossed the Mekong River with you as a baby strapped to their backs while soldiers shot at them. You forget to do the dishes, so they remind you of the time they packed all that they had and boarded a plane to a new country, so you wouldn’t have to sleep on a dirt floor hut and have a chance for a better life. You don’t give your parents money to send to relatives back in Laos, but they find out you took a trip with your family, so they remind you of all the times they worked in the hot fields in Laos in order for you to have rice to eat. My mother reminds me constantly of how grateful I should be to be alive and to be where I am today.

I am grateful to my parents for everything they’ve done for me, but as I raise my own child, I realize I have to also not let this guilt manipulate me. Everything my parents did, they did out of love. I shouldn’t feel guilty for it, even if they use it against me at times. They’re just carrying a long tradition of Hmong parenting – guilt your children to get them to do what you want.

In Hmong culture, many parents don’t show affection through affirming words, quality time or physical touch. Growing up I never heard “I love you,” nor did I experience any kind of physical touch, and there was no such thing as quality time. There was always too much work to do to just spend time with each other. The way Hmong people show love is through acts of service and gifts. My parents brought my siblings and I to the United States in the summer of 1986, and I will always be grateful for the courage they had. I have shown my appreciation in different ways, even though it may be in different forms than my parents are used to. The guilt was and will always be present, but I have mostly made peace with it.

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Minneapolis, Minnesota | Chinese/Mixed Race | He/Him/His

I grew up in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. My mother is Chinese. She immigrated here from Taiwan in her early twenties. My father is Polish and grew up in Northeast Minneapolis. He passed away two years ago. I’m mixed race. I also grew up with an older sister who passed away 14 years ago.

These experiences of loss led me to become a social worker. I worked on mental and chemical health issues, and did group therapy with individuals and families that were experiencing homelessness. This led me to community organizing where I began using art as a way to amplify stories.

Until then I really hadn’t done much art even though all of my family members are artists. My father was a graphic artist, my sister was a photographer and a filmmaker, and my mother is a makeup artist. My whole family are artists. I guess I was the black sheep; until I fell into it.

The idea of making ACCENT as a book came from wanting to make something you could touch, feel, and flip through, or put on your coffee table and have a family conversation. I wanted something physical because everything visual today is on a 3 to 4 inch screen on your phone, and we don’t connect with it the way we do with something printed. And I knew I didn’t want to just make a bunch of prints, so I made a book. I wanted to connect with people like me. People that identify as Asian American, and to have conversations about what that means to us, because too often that conversation gets overlooked. So the best part of creating this book over the past year was talking to people in my community, connecting with friends, and making new friends.

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Saint Paul, Minnesota | Hmong | She/Her/Hers

A biography of Khamphiou Vang, my grandfather.

When I was a child, I lived in a village in Laos. Everyday airplanes flew over us. I told myself that one day, I would get my own airplane. I eventually surpassed that dream and owned two airplanes after coming to America – a Cherokee Six and a Piper Warrior II.

I am the second youngest child, so I couldn’t help on the farm as much, so my older brother sent me to a boarding school. In 1964, my village was attacked by communists, so my family fled to Long Cheng, then Vientiane.

I went back to school in third grade, but once I finished sixth grade, I realized that I wanted to get more education so I could earn a good income someday. My family no longer lived on a farm where we could raise crops and livestock so I knew I must go to school.

In high school, I was ranked the second top student. After graduation, I worked for the Lao Transportation Department and made 35,000 kip a month (that’s worth about $4 today). After four months, I left to work for a Lao Manufacturing company where I took care of packaging machines and made 55,000 kip per month (that’s about $6.50). I was still not making enough income to support myself. Finally, when I was promoted to a supervisor and had a salary of 80,000 kip per month, our country was taken over by the communists so I had to leave.

We didn’t have a choice to stay because my two older brothers were soldiers who fought against the communists. If they stayed, they would have been jailed. If I stayed, I would likely not be paid, or I would have lost my job because the communists do not like people who were part of the resistance.

In 1975, I crossed over the Mekong River to Thailand and made it to the refugee camps. I stayed there a year before being resettled in Minneapolis, Minnesota with my older brother and his family in 1976. We were the first Hmong refugee family to be resettled in Minnesota. The first family came as immigrants.

I was 21 years old at the time and wanted to pursue higher education. I worked hard for my dream and goals. I took English Second Language courses to prepare for college. I then went to an aviation tech school and received an airframe and powerplant certificate. Soon, I received my electrical and pilot license and worked at a small airport. I wanted to continue my career in aviation, so I went to the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities for four years. I could not finish my bachelor’s degree due to my family situation.

I was married with three children andr one more on the way. My wife worked a full time job to support the family while I worked part-time and went to school. In 1986, I landed a job with Northwest Airlines so I was able to work on airplanes. I enjoyed that so much. Eventually I was able to buy two aircrafts.

I’ve worked hard since the beginning. I had a dream and goals, and I strived to reach them. That has allowed me get to where I am today.

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Minneapolis, Minnesota | Korean | He/Him/His

I was born in Jinju, South Korea and adopted when I was 14 months-old. From that time, I spent most of my life in Hugo, Minnesota; just north of White Bear Lake. After college, I moved to Korea and taught high school English in Jeongeup, a “small” town nestled beside a mountain — famous for its maple leaves.

From 2010 to 2011, I lived in Seoul while working at Korea’s Fulbright headquarters. It was during that time that I was reunited with my Korean birth mother, who now lives in Daegu (Korea’s third-largest city), along with my uncles, who still live in Jinju.

I then moved back stateside—working in academic editing, children’s publishing and politics. In 2016, I decided it was time to move back to Korea for a while, to explore the possibility to living closer to my birth family. I stayed for about six months—learning a lot along the way—and eventually made the decision to move back to Minnesota. I’m really happy I did, but I don’t think a day goes by without missing Korea.

Over the course of my own journey, I’ve learned that sooner or later, most transracial adoptees have a racial awakening—an awareness that we are, in fact, not White. This is followed, sometimes days, sometimes years later, by a cultural identity crisis: a radical awareness that we are, in fact, Korean, Chinese, Guatemalan, or Ethiopian, etc.

Once that awareness and identity crisis really sinks in, there’s no going back. Suddenly, nothing else matters more than figuring out your Korean/Chinese/Guatemalan/Ethiopian/etc.-ness you have within. And if you don’t find enough of it inside yourself, you immediately go about searching for it outside yourself—by meeting people who can teach and most importantly help transform you into the complete, legitimate, and socially accepted Korean/etc. you now desperately want to become.

And somewhere along that journey of self-discovery and self-creation, you realize that you will never, literally never, be as culturally Korean/etc. as they are.

This truth is often quite devastating. It’s Cultural Identity Crisis Round Two—but this time, it’s a crisis not of self-discovery or self-creation, but self-acceptance. You learn that as hard as it is to create and re-create something, it’s even harder to accept what you create—and, like most creative endeavors—that the final product almost never turns out as you originally had imagined and hoped, and maybe even demanded it would.

But then, over time, you begin to see someone else taking shape—someone who’s not defined by how “X” you are, but by how brave and resilient and beautiful and worthy of love you are by trying to find out.

You discover a person you never knew could existand can’t help but admire. And you learn to love yourself, over and over again, even and especially when your failures are most evident.

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