The Intersection of Identity, Values, and Politics: One Vietnamese American Lesbian’s Perspective

Written By: Uyen Le

I was born in Saigon, Vietnam. My family was eligible to come to America when I was seven years old because my dad was a prisoner of war in the Communist prison camps for over five years as a result of the Vietnam War. As a Vietnamese American immigrant woman, I cannot think about American progress and success without thinking about how this success was achieved through foreign policies that destroyed women’s lives and livelihoods. This internal conflict makes me feel like I am standing on the shoulders of women (and men) before me who were under-paid, under-appreciated, over-worked, raped, and abused, and still somehow managed to get up the next day to do what they needed to fight for themselves, their families, and their communities. For this, I am forever grateful and I feel that this is where my dedication to and drive for social justice work is rooted.

Today, I am a 25 year old progressive Vietnamese American lesbian with a graduate degree in city planning. I have chosen to dedicate my work and passion towards working with low-income communities of color to help folks empower themselves to improve American society for all. I believe that the only way to ensure an equitable future for America is to focus efforts on those who tend to be the most under-resourced, discriminated against, mis-caricatured, and invisible in mainstream American society.

After my family moved to the United States, I remember going with my dad one day to his work when I was 8 years old. My dad worked at a sweatshop in an un-marked warehouse for a clothing distributor, because even though we were on welfare, the money was not enough to support my family. I recall thinking ‘Wow, it’s odd that most of the women are at the sewing machines while the men are ironing the clothes.’ Then, I thought, ‘Well, there may be clear gender differences, but they’re essentially all people of color working here, and they’re getting screwed by the same system that demands them to work for long hours to get paid less than minimum wage in the underground economy which they’ve got no choice but to work in.’ I also remember heavy bags of clothes that my dad would drag home, and my whole family would get together and cut out the loose pieces of thread from the clothes for about 5 cents per garment. Even though sewing is generally considered “women’s work,” my whole family pitched in, and it was through this period of growth and adaptation that I interpreted gender roles to be inextricably linked to class, immigration status, race, private business, and government policies. Today, whenever I smell newly bought, un-washed clothes, I am immediately taken back to those days when my political and identity consciousness was first formed.

I think the phrase “A Woman’s Nation” though worthy of celebration, can also be misleading. I do not want to make the assumption that because women now make up half of the officially documented workforce that this indicates that women hold just as much, if not more power, than men in American society. It is still mostly men who are the professors, CEOs and managers, while women are still overwhelmingly the administrative assistants, the entry-level employees and domestic workers. I think we, as a nation, need to celebrate accomplishments as they come, but we also need to utilize this momentum to redouble our efforts at ensuring equality for all.

As a woman who is part of a bilingual, bicultural, 1.5 generation Vietnamese American cohort, I am still trying to interpret and define the gender norms, expectations, and roles that have been presented to me. My personal experiences, whether they were when I was 8 years old, or two years ago when I came out as a lesbian to my traditional Vietnamese American parents, teach me that this complex relationship between gender, ethnicity, race, class, and immigration status cannot be resolved by any narrow statistical interpretation of gender equality, but only through thoughtful and unending dedication to the beautifully simple concept of equality for all.