Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [44]
She described her childhood as happy. The family lived in one house, and when her brothers married they brought their wives home to live. Leah never had to work and had all the toys she wanted. “My brothers and sisters protected me and competed to hold me.”
When I asked her if she fought with her mother, she said, “Why would I fight with my mother? She gave me the gift of life.”
I asked her if she ever disobeyed her mother’s rules and she said no. She explained, “She is my mother and I owe her obedience, but it’s more than that. She knows what is good for me. Her rules will help me.”
Three years ago, because of Leah’s parentage, she and her mother were able to come to America. They would miss her siblings but felt they must move. Leah explained, “Vietnam is a communist country. There is no freedom and no money. I couldn’t even go to school beyond ninth grade.”
At first she and her mother lived in a small apartment with no furniture and wore clothes from Goodwill. The Refugee Center helped Leah’s mother find work at a local cannery, and now they have an adequate income, even enough to send money back to Vietnam.
At night, after her mother goes to bed, Leah writes letters to her brothers and sisters. Holidays, especially the Vietnamese New Year, are lonely for her. Still she is happy to be here. The high school is much better than the schools in Vietnam. She has made friends with some of the Vietnamese students. “The teachers are kinder and we have computers.”
I asked her about her days here. “I wake early so I can cook breakfast for my mother. It makes me sad to see her work, so I try to help her. Then I walk to school. After school I clean house and fix dinner. In the evenings I study and help my mother learn English.”
I asked about hobbies. “I like to listen to Vietnamese music, especially sad music. I write poems about my country.”
Leah considers herself too young to date. She told me, “I would never have sex until I was married. That would bring great shame on my family.”
When she is in her twenties she plans to date only Vietnamese men who promise that her mother will always be able to live with her. She showed me a class ring and a silver bracelet. “Mother bought me this. I begged her not to, but she wanted me to look like an American teenager. I could never leave my mother. My mother has given me everything and kept nothing for herself. I am all she has now.”
She and her friends speak mostly Vietnamese or French, and American teenagers leave them alone. She has yet to see an American movie. When we discussed American teenagers, Leah hesitated, clearly concerned not to appear rude. Then she said, “I don’t like how American children leave home when they are eighteen. They abandon their parents, and they get in a lot of trouble. I don’t think that’s right.”
Leah likes the freedom and the prosperity of America. She said, “It’s easier to earn a living here. I can hardly wait to finish school and get a job so I can support my mother.”
In Leah’s culture, autonomy and independence are not virtues. Vietnamese families are expected to be harmonious and loyal. The good of the family is more important than the individual satisfaction of its members. Children are expected to live at home all their lives (sons with their parents and daughters with their husbands’ parents). No one anticipates that children will rebel or disagree with their parents, and children rarely do disagree. Authority is not questioned, which may be tolerable when authority is wise and benevolent, but can be tragic when authority is malevolent or misguided.
These beliefs in obedience and loyalty allowed Leah to have a less turbulent adolescence. She didn’t need to distance from her family or reject family beliefs in order to grow up. On the other hand, she didn’t differentiate into her own person. She was unlikely to develop in ways different from her family. If she tried, she would have been discouraged.
JODY (16)
Jody was the oldest daughter of a conservative, fundamentalist family. They lived in an old farmhouse