Word: brothers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Most Asians either have some knowledge of English before coming to the U.S. or quickly acquire the rudiments of an English vocabulary, often by methods bordering on the draconian. Son Nguyen, 18, a Vietnamese-born high school graduate in Houston, recalls that his brother-in-law required him to memorize one page of an English dictionary after school each day. More conventional teaching techniques are available throughout the U.S. in federally sponsored language programs. Those fortunate enough to have studied English at home can often make the transition easily. Cal Tech Senior Hojin Ahn, 24, a native South Korean, arrived...
Sang Kook Nam, 37, and his wife Seon Kyung, 35, respectively a mechanical engineer and a nurse, arrived from South Korea in 1974 to live with Nam's brother in Michigan. Nam pumped gas for the first year, saving enough to open his own filling station, then a body shop, then a used-car dealership. His wife, meanwhile, started a jewelry store. In 1979 the Nams sold their businesses and set out for Los Angeles, where Nam attended dry-cleaning school and within six months made a $20,000 down payment on a store. That has since expanded...
While other 18-year-olds agonize over which pretty dress or funky pair of shoes to buy, Juniace Sene Charles worries about "what this month's electricity and water bill are going to be." The petite teenager, who came to Miami with her mother, younger brother and sister from Haiti two years ago, is the family's financial mainstay. Every day when classes end at Edison High School, she rushes to her job at Wendy's on Biscayne Boulevard. Her take-home weekly salary of about $75 is augmented occasionally by her mother's earnings from babysitting. "I'm chief...
...light cords and deck shoes, with sunglasses dangling from his sweatshirt, Son Nguyen, 18, seems like any other carefree high school graduate in Houston. "But if my mother saw me today, she would be shocked," confesses Son, who fled Ho Chi Minh City at age eight with a younger brother, his older sister and her husband. "I wouldn't be her boy anymore. I would be an American stranger." Still, within the two-story brick house he shares with eight other people, Son becomes a model Vietnamese youth, industrious, responsible, deferential. In that household, Vietnamese is spoken, Vietnamese food...
...agonizingly aware of the traits that mark them as foreign. Among these: their names. Jorge Orellana, 8, the son of immigrants from El Salvador, says classmates in a Chicago school taunted him with the words "Mexican kid." He now introduces himself as George. Son Nguyen's 16-year-old brother asks new acquaintances whether they want "my American or Vietnamese name." He is Tien to his family, Tim to others...