"...I'm going to have to help myself"

[I’m] Chong Yang-Thao, [born on] November 29th, 19731, in Luang Prabang, Laos.  I remember some things about the transition into Thailand when war came and we left Laos. I was probably about four years old. We came into the refugee camp, Ban Nam Yao, in the northwest side of Thailand. We lived in the camp for about three years [and] it was tough. We were in transition and we were living in really harsh conditions where hunger was common, fear of the Thai government, and just missing my mother who worked constantly. We were moving around all the time because my father died when I was very young from dioxin poison. In the Hmong community, when you don’t have a father, you have no status and you were at the mercy of your clan, which is very patriarchal. This transience gave me no sense of security and eventually hopelessness really seeped [in]. 

(Picture 1) The arrow points to where Chong Yang-Thao was born. 

Three years [later] we came to Minnesota. My mother was forced into a marriage where she was second wife to a very cruel man. He took her paperwork, and he gave my mother’s identity to his first wife. He took his wife, two sons, my brother, my sister, and me, to Minnesota without our mother. The journey here was lonely and scary because we were with his family and they didn’t treat us well. We got here March of 1980, and it was snowing, it was beautiful and it was foreign. I don’t remember feeling the cold, I just marveled at the snow, the clumps of it, thick, thick clumps of it. Real thick, sticky kind of snow, falling from the sky. We walked out of the plane and the first person [that] I recognized was my grandma. A wonderful thing is that she was my best friend when I was small. My grandma didn’t have teeth. Probably a few teeth left in Thailand and she was gaunt, skinny, and sallow with her cheeks sunken in. When I saw my grandma again, she was full and she had full cheeks and a new set of teeth and I thought “well, this is a nice, nice introduction into America here.”

"Without money, without education, a woman has no place." 

We all squished into my uncle’s Dotson and came to a two bedroom apartment on Ashland Avenue, St. Paul. After dinner, my grandma took me by the hand and said “come here, I’m gonna teach you something.” She took me to her bedroom and she sat me down and took out a wad of cash and some coins and said “I’m gonna teach you about money in America. You see, because you are a girl, and you will be alone probably for some time, you need to know about money, and you need to know about making money.” That was my upbringing, these really forward thinking women. The first night, my induction into Americanism is women in my life show[ing] me the value of money. Without money, without education, a woman has no place. For me to understand, “this is your place and this is what you need, these are the tools that you need to establish yourself.” I think that was the moment of reinvention for me.

We lived in a one bedroom apartment across the street from JJ Hill Elementary. I attended school for the very first time as a kindergartener [and] that was wonderful. I remember I was wearing my best outfit; a white t-shirt with some print on the front, red polyester pants, and some soccer cleats [with] black [and] white stripes. We were taken to this Salvation Army to get clothes and we just took whatever fit. I remember that kids said a lot of things. They weren’t mean, they just probably didn’t know what to make of me. I walked in and they approached me and I didn’t understand [them]. I knew two phrases which were “no” and “I don’t know. We moved again after kindergarten to another apartment on Payne Avenue on the east side of St. Paul. Everything felt dirty to me [and] smelled bad. We were living with my step-father and step-mother. I think that the most miserable memory I’ve had was not so much the poverty and the sense of hopelessness, but just with this family that I felt so trapped with. My mother eventually found us and received the second set of paperwork from my uncle, in which she took my dead aunt’s identity. [After my] mom came, we all lived together in this single bedroom apartment and the hunger was there. We were left with step-mother and step-father who didn’t yell as us, didn’t verbally abuse us, just treated us with a severe negligence. We’re in America and conditions have not improved. We’re still hungry, we’re just hopeless. It was tough!

"We were so hungry to learn."

We were very much on our own. We were just trying to figure out how to navigate, how to go to school, how to get social services. We got welfare checks and food stamps, but my step-father hoarded all of it. Our only meals were at school so school became a place of safety. We loved it, we wanted to learn. We were so hungry to learn. I was proud and very much ashamed of what I went home to and didn’t know how to talk about it because I didn’t know about the legal consequences. When we went to school, we were very focused and we were able to compartmentalize. What was going on at home was totally separated. Then we were able to really absorb [the] academics and learn as much as we [could]. Now, when I see a lot of our new Americans I absolutely understand that school has to be a safe place.

"...in that time of bare footedness and hopelessness that I really had this determination..."

My yearning to be a teacher started when I was in the refugee camps. It just wasn’t believable that in that time of bare footedness and hopelessness that I really had this determination, this relief that it was just temporary. I remember walking around and hearing a bell. A school bell. I think I didn’t know that it was a school bell then, but when we went to investigate I saw some children and they were so clean. The thing I marveled at at the time was how neat they were, how clean they were. I coveted their places. I thought someday [that] I will go to school and be a teacher because to me, that was a position of change, a position of authority maybe even influence where I can change the lives of children. I think it was because I knew no other profession, no other career path. I just saw that and it stayed with me.  Going to school and having wonderful, warm teachers were just constant affirmations of what I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.

(Picture 2) This is an entrance to Ban Nam Yao
 refugee camp, a refugee camp where Chong Yang-Thao stayed. 

[The] school environment[s] were so different and nebulous to me. Like fragmented, watercolor-ish, because nothing was really solid. We were constantly moving around. Anytime the rent went up and we couldn’t afford it we moved out. Eventually our mother went to see a social worker and learned that she could take us back and could go and vy for us legally. When she took us from stepfather and stepmother we moved into an efficiency apartment with my mom. We played that game; rent goes up, we moved out. We were at all sorts of elementary schools and junior highs, all in St. Paul. The one junior high that was very tough for me was Battle Creek. We children have always faced very overt racism by our neighbors, by our classmates, [and] we often got beat up, but Battle Creek Junior High was [where] I was beaten severely one time. I was afraid of going into the bathroom, because each time I went to the bathroom I was pushed, I was shoved, [and] I was ganged up on. Then one time a boy really, really beat me up. Broke my glasses, pretty broken, pretty bruised, and teachers didn’t acknowledge it. I eventually had to learn self-advocacy and I went to the principle and said “I’m scared, but I want to come to school. This kid did this to me.” Brad Maner was the assistant principal who became the principal that hired me into St. Paul school system. He talked to me and said “okay, we’re going to help you feel safe.” He called the mother of this kid who beat me up and had a conference with her. I don’t know what went on, but my mom met with the assistant principal through an interpreter and after that, nothing else happened. I think it took for me to really want to go to school enough to say “hey, you know what, I can’t come to school feeling scared every day like this. I need to feel safe. So could you help me?” That took some guts now that I look back on it as a teacher, because I think that [for] many kids their solution to it would just be to skip school.

"We were constantly beat up, bullied, and teased."

I went to Como Park High School2 in the late eighties and nineties. It was rough. There were a lot of Hmong kids in gangs. It was a collective protection system so that we could go to school and we could feel safe. We were constantly beat up, bullied, and teased. I think I may have been protected by some gangs at some point, because I was beat up outside of Washington3 one day and some boys came to my rescue, but I was not ever a part of it. I found a small cohort of friends who were first generation or 1.5 generation. I found like-minded people who understood me, who came from the same background as I did, who were girls, and we didn’t have to explain [things to] each other. At first I thought “oh, Minnesotans want to know who I am” and eventually I understood that some Minnesotans wanted to remind me that I am not one of them. I became pessimistic about how welcoming Minnesotans were towards me, but I did find people who I could just not talk about it and not talk about my anger in being what I felt was alienated and disenfranchised. Most of my best friends from high school went to Ivy League colleges and went into the private sector and have become enormously successful. I think that was because we found each other, thank god. There were some teachers at Como Park that I think were prejudice. They excluded us. I think that our class was the first class that really felt like we wanted to own the school. All of that was not so much because we really felt invited or included, but because we thought well we aren’t going back to Laos, this is it. So if this is the high school experience then we want it. One of my mentors and teachers Mr. Magnuson has told me that we were the first class that began to take ownership of the school and form that sense of identity within the school and it helped.

(Picture 3) The high school that Chong Yang-Thao attended.

"She couldn’t give me any material thing, but she gave me confidence."

My mom is my greatest mentor and greatest teacher. She told me that I was the smartest person and if I wasn’t making the grade it’s because I wasn’t trying. She couldn’t give me any material thing, but she gave me confidence. I tried at everything and that intrinsic motivation, that first and foremost is my mom, second is my friends, they buoyed me, they carried me, and finally my sense of shame. Shame in terms of my poverty, me being the stepchild of a polygamous marriage. I wanted to spite that step-family. It was like my middle finger, I wanted to say “fuck you” to the step-family. This is what I can become and you will see me. That was a huge driving force. My hatred, my anger, that deep sense of shame of my poverty, and the patriarchal system that I was raised in that told me that because I was a girl I was absolutely worthless.

(Picture 4) Chong Yang-Thao and her mother. 

I really value the precarious situation I was in as a teacher to always take into consideration the situation of every student no matter who they were because I could be that person, that could propel them or could hold them back. I was always alright in Mr. Magnuson’s eyes. I thank my mother for my life, she gave birth to me she gave life to me, but Mr. Magnuson gave me my selfhood. He helped me self-actualize and I could do that for my students.

"...we know better. We should know better."

I’ve always tried to sort out what the stereotype of Minnesota nice means. When I was young, kids were explicit with the bigotry and the racism, the spitting, the racial uppercuts, [and] the physical violence. The adults were subtle. I have so many of those moments where people [looked] at me that made me feel very diminished. I don’t know if that’s gone away. I think I’ve become desensitized to it. I’m not sure, but the change has come in that  Minnesota is more diverse now. People like me are not a novelty anymore. I’ve had moments where I can see people were uncomfortable with me and I would try to overcompensate by being friendly or watching my English and making sure that it’s perfect. I know I am not blind to racism, I am not blind to bigotry, I am not ignorant to whiteness and white privilege. It’s hard to compare when I was a young kid to now because it was a product of my youth, my newness to the country, my lack of education, and my extreme fear. [I am] a forty two year old woman, comfortable in my skin,, educated, [and] having access. It’s different, then I see our Karen4 students and it’s like 1980 for them again. Maybe it’s not different. For my Karen students it seems like they are going through the same thing and we know better. We should know better.

"You have to speak up."

My mother had always protested and she taught us that. I knew about self-advocacy. In advocating for myself,  asking questions, and having a real sense of justice and fairness. When I do see [something], it’s hard for me to bite my tongue, to withhold my concerns or opinions because I’ve always thought that part of being a teacher and being a public servant and being a good person was that you don’t stand by and watch bad things happen. You have to speak up.

My students give me hope. What gives me hope is the belief that there are more good people in the world than there are bad people. My students are my greatest sense of hope. They always will be. And if I ever leave teaching someday, it is not from the lack of belief in my students. It is in the exhaustion, the system, and for self-preservation because eventually I’m going to have to help myself.

(Picture 5) Chong Yang-Thao with her husband, three
daughters, and mother at her daughter's graduation.

Footnotes:
1. This is a guess seeing as her birth was not recorded.
2. Como Park Senior High School is located in St. Paul and is a public high school.
3. Washington is referring to Washington High School, another high school within St. Paul Public Schools.
4. Many Karen people have been coming to Minnesota as refugees fleeing Burma (also known as Myanmar) and Thailand. Many Karen students attend school in the district that Chong Yang-Thao teaches in. Source.

Pictures

1. Rallis, Donald. Northern Laos, Showing the Location of Luang Prabang. Digital image. World Regional Geography (Geog 101). University of Mary Washington, 3 July 2012. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.

2. Thailand - Ban Nam Yao - REFUGEE CAMP / Vluchtelingenkamp. Digital image. Delcampe.net. N.p., 16 Apr. 2009. Web. 7 Sept. 2015.

3. Como Park Senior High School. Digital image. Como Park Senior High School. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
4. Yang-Thao, Chong. Family Photograph circa 2015. Provided October 11, 2015.
5. Yang-Thao, Chong. Family Photograph. Provided October 11, 2015.

Story Facilitators:
Rebecca Phi, Lydia Neus, and Taylor Morgan