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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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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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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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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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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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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