My brother from a Vietnamese mother

Self Editor’s Note: Our Man in America believes in the power of the storyteller to make humans see humans in others. Here is a story about parallels between his up bringing in Kenya, and that of Lac Su, the Vietnamese author of  the memoir, “I Love Yous are for White People.” Check out his interview with Lac Su on New America Now, New America Media’s radio program on NPR station KALW 91.7 FM.

FIVE years ago if you’d have told me that I’d be sitting in a bar like I was on Friday night, drinking, acting silly, laughing and sharing stories with Vietnamese men, I would have told you to get the (expletive) out of may face.

I lived in San Jose, Calif., in an apartment complex across the street from a shopping center predominantly occupied by Vietnamese immigrants. My apartment was the party house, where my friends who lived with older, bible-banging relatives came to sin. During most weekends we went across the street to the supermarket to buy groceries, beer — lots of it — and chicken, beef, goat, or whatever unfortunate creature we felt like barbecuing that day.

We hated the Vietnamese cashiers for almost always checking the authenticity of our $20 bills. (They inspired a joke I tell every time a cashier examines my money: “It’s real. Trust me. I made it in my garage.”) Despite what we thought was discrimination, we went back again and again, as that was the only place we could go with $20 and come back with enough to feed Africa’s needy children.We often wondered how the Vietnamese had come to own shopping centers — something we thought only white people could do. Unable to find answers, and perhaps to excuse our lack of ambitions, our drunk selves concluded that it must have been the Vietnam War.

“You see, to make up for the ills of the Vietnam War, America brings them here and gives them hand outs,” one of us — most likely me — had figured that out. “That’s why they all drive nice cars.”

In 2003, my ancestors and the “living dead” (those among my departed kinfolk whose lives existed alongside mine) sent me an alcohol- and marijuana-related epiphany that got me rethinking my purpose in America. By January of the following year — after eight years, on and off — I was back in college at California State University, Hayward.

That’s where I met a Vietnamese classmate named Loc (not to be confused with Lac). Although my encounter with Loc was involuntary — study groups rock! — we became good friends. Soon we were hanging out after every school day, playing pool and irrigating our throats at Foxes Cocktail Lounge, a nearby bar owned by a Kenyan.

(Loc, if you are reading this, please call me, brother. I have grown up, so let’s make that shooting range trip I kept postponing).

I left Hayward and went to graduate school at UC Berkeley to hone my writing skills. Can you tell? Well, if you can’t, let Gillian Mackenzie, my literary agent, tell you. It’s through Gillian that I met Lac.

“I think you should meet Lac Su,” Gillian said. “Your stories are strikingly similar.”

The beauty of good stories is that they make the keen reader realize that human experiences are the same. Over the last five years I have met brothers and sisters from Asian, Latino, Caucasian, Arab and African-American mothers, whose stories have touched and inspired me.

Lac and I were born a world apart.

But here is an excerpt from “I Love Yous Are for White People” that made me cry. He is trying to sleep but his brother and sister fighting over a remote.

Ma walks back into the kitchen and Vinnie and Bo start up again in front of the TV.

“Give me back the remote!” Bo yells.

“No, it’s mine. I got it first!” Vinnie snaps back.

“Ma!”  Bo tattles.

Ma screams, “Give that thing to your sister. Now!”

“She always gets what she wants…” Vinnie whines.

Ma goes back into the kitchen. Vinnie must have snatched back the remote because Bo keeps wailing. Her high-pitched screams grow louder and louder until I can’t take it anymore.

Something snaps inside of me. I leap out of bed and rip the door open. I storm down the hallway and take a left into the kitchen. Pa doesn’t even look up from his newspaper. I open up the cabinet where he keeps his whipping rods and take hold of the one that unleashes the worst pain—the mini-blind rod. I head straight for Bo. All I can see is her mouth, open wide and bawling at the top of her lungs. I grab her by the hair, yank her to the ground and unleash a blinding windmill of blows against every part of her body. I beat her until I’m out of breath, and then I stand there, shaking. Pa looks over at me for a moment with a banal expression, then returns to his newspaper.

Something comes over me like a train in the distance that is barreling down upon me. I realize one thing—I am my father. The thrill of beating Bo turns over into guilt. I can no longer hear her cries. Now, all I can see is her helpless face, the terror in her eyes and her tears—massive clear droplets running down her face, over her chin and onto her neck. I drop the rod to the ground like it doesn’t belong in my hand and leave the room.

Now look at this scene from my memoirs:

I become like my father and join him in forcing knowledge into my two brothers and sister. We beat and whip them, pluck their ears, slap and kick them – my father during math lessons, and me during English and Kiswahili lessons. The younger of my two brothers is Ralph. He pronounces the “ph” in his name and in our cousin Phillip’s correctly, but when I ask him to read a story, he keeps pronouncing the word “elephant” as “elepant.”

When on the next night Ralph reads flawlessly from a list of “ph” words I compiled earlier in the day when he was at school, I know — like my father — that my violence towards him is justified. I ignore the thought that Ralph could be wishing I were dead, just like I wished when I was Ralph’s age that my father could die. Outraged, I respond the only way I have known since I was a child – with a whack on his head – as the poor boy cries in agony.

I was once an eleven-year-old, so I know exactly how he feels. The pain from my knuckles sinks deep into his head. He wants to scream but doing so would multiply the abuse. He wants to let tears roll freely down his cheeks, hoping that would relieve the heat in his head. But the risk of tears falling on his homework, hence more punishment, is great. I want to stop hitting him, but I need my father’s approval. I need him to tell me that for once in my life I’m doing something he is proud of. But knowing him, I doubt those words will ever come out of his mouth. I take his silence as acknowledgment and continue to torture my brother.

Listen to Our Man Interviewing Lac Su on NPR.

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