Last in Translation

Besides Kryptonite, one of my very few weaknesses is that I don’t speak Vietnamese very well at all. I’m a second generation Vietnamese-American so my inability to speak my parents’ native language should be understandable, but it’s still something I’ve been sort of ashamed of.

Growing up, my paternal grandparents didn’t favor me too much because I only spoke English around the house. They felt that this was totally unacceptable — I wasn’t Vietnamese enough for them — and it deeply hurt me. Because of that, I spent my childhood years as a self-loathing Asian, resenting the different problems I had to face that all my white friends at school had no concept of. On a nightly basis, I would wish upon every star in the sky that when I woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror I would see Fred Savage.

As you could probably guess, I get self-conscious whenever I speak in Vietnamese, which has made it difficult for me to learn and improve. I do speak Vietnamese to my parents, but it’s actually a half-assed, half-breed version which I’ll call Vietglish.

During the Vietnam trip, I avoided speaking the language as often as possible. In restaurants, I let my parents order my meals. In hotel lobbies, I would look away from hotel clerks so that he or she wouldn’t greet me with “Hello sir,” thereby obligating me to say “Hello” in my fucked up American accent.

The fear of looking like a fool in Vietnam turned me into a mute.

But I didn’t feel bad about being a mute until we visited my dad’s childhood nanny in Saigon. It had been over 30 years since he’d seen her, but she had been like a mother to him while he was growing up and my dad never forgot that. You could definitely see the type of kindness in her eyes that would never laugh at someone for being poor at speaking Vietnamese, yet I still somehow refused to try to communicate. She rubbed my dad’s arm to tell him how much she missed him, making my mom cry and my sister fight tears at such a touching moment.

I felt bad again a week later when we were in Hanoi. The northern Vietnamese dialect is much more different than the dialect that I attempt to speak, so I really had difficulty understanding people there. I can’t tell you how many times I almost shit my pants whenever a waiter turned to me and asked for my order. Anyway, we were at an old village that my grandpa grew up in, and as usual, I kept my distance from all the people we were visiting.

Finally I understood why my dad is so shy around all my white friends.

But even while feeling incredibly uncomfortable in the sea of northern Vietnamese chatter and turning my backs to everyone like an asshole, all of the poor old farm men and ladies in that village still came after me with welcoming smiles across their faces. They knew from the lightness of my skin that I most likely didn’t speak a lick of Vietnamese, but they didn’t care. They patted me on the back and rubbed my shoulders and told me I was tall. They felt my hands and said it was smooth. One lady, she kept rubbing my chest as if it would bring her good luck.

I watched my grandpa as he proudly led us through the village and I watched my dad as he took pictures of the beautiful things he was seeing in the village, and I thought to myself, This is all great, but I wish I could REALLY “get” it.

Before, I had lots of foreign-born Asian friends always urging me not to forget my roots: “Don’t forget where you came from and who you are.” I always thought it was a stupid thing to tell me, because I’m just as American as Fred Savage. And besides, I’m reasonably Vietnamese for someone being born in Iowa. I eat pho. I beat my eggs with chopsticks. I’ve kept my last name, Nguyen, without altering it to an American-sounding “Newman”.

But the reason I felt bad those two times in Vietnam had nothing to do with ethnocentricity. The reason I felt bad is because I wished I could connect to my parents and grandparents on a deeper level. It was sad to me that my dad had a touching, emotional moment with his childhood nanny and I wasn’t able to tell her how much I appreciated her taking care of him when he was little. It was sad to me that 4 or 5 smiling, excited village people that my grandpa grew up with were all talking to me at once, and yet I understood none of them.

And so, because of that, I’d like to change my New Year’s resolution from learning how to swim well to learning how to speak Vietnamese well.

And that’s that. Sorry for the long post. This will be my last blog entry on Vietnam for awhile. I don’t know about you, but I’m all Vietnammed out for now. Tomorrow’s topic will be about diarrhea, I promise.