The Survivors

To start, I was really moved by the article "Scared, yet Undefeated: Hmong and Cambodian Women and Girls in the United States" by Sucheng Chan. I can't even begin to imagine the horrible atrocities these women witnessed, endured, and then finally survived. And the fact that many of these women end up living in the most impoverished communities in America, struggling for welfare in a society that deems them "lazy" and "unworthy" of such public assistance seems vastly unfair seeing as the majority of these women would not have come to the U.S. had the Vietnam War never occurred. I really liked how this article included all of this history, as it is not something they typically teach us about it school. It also seems unfair that because they are labeled as refugees they must go through "layers of bureaucracy, each there simultaneously to aid and control them" (263), as opposed to immigrants. It must be even harder to have to deal with this on top of being separated from your country and many loved ones. Probably the hardest part of this article for me to read concerned the "blindness" that many women had after such traumatic events. I can't think of anything sadder than going blind because the world had been so grotesque that you just couldn't bare to look at it anymore. Lastly, I highly recommend the book "Stay Alive, My Son" by Pin Yathay to anyone interested in learning more about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It's a very moving personal story by a man whose family was affected by this horrible regime.