Word: houstons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Houston, Indochinese immigrants have become an economic presence, sometimes virtually the only sign of vitality in otherwise depressed areas. Many own or manage 24-hour convenience stores in predominantly black neighborhoods. Says a black Texas Southern University maintenance man who stopped in for a snack at a Vietnamese-run store: "For the first time you can buy fresh meat right in the neighborhood. It's the idea that a foreigner can come in here and move up so quickly that disgusts people." City Councilman Anthony Hall sees the immigrants as models, not enemies. Says he: "They have pooled their resources...
Dressed in 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...
...easier for them when they go to work." His three daughters, Hanh, Tien and Trang, are now known as Hannah, Christina and Jennifer. Food too can be a sensitive issue. "My brother wants to become American all the way," says Imelda Ortiz, 17, who left Mexico for Houston at age one. "He tells my mother to cook American food like meat loaf and potatoes. Instead we cook rice and beans and fajitas (skirt steak...
...knowledge, they make good money," explains Vong Ly, a Hmong tribesman from Laos who now lives in Banning, Calif., with seven of his nine children, ages eight to 17. Medicine, law, engineering, business and computer science are the favored fields. Le Trinh, a Vietnamese-born Chinese who arrived in Houston five years ago, will enter Texas A&M in the fall to study engineering. "It's not my favorite subject," she admits. "I love teaching, but that pays...
...unusual closeness of immigrant families makes this struggle for autonomy painful to both sides. High School Junior Imelda Ortiz plans to study engineering in college. Her parents expect her to attend the University of Houston while living at home, a pattern set by her two sisters. But Imelda wants to enroll in the University of Texas at Austin. "I'm afraid to go out on my own," she admits, "but even though it may turn out bad, at least I'll learn, right? I'll realize what is or is not for me." Le Giau and his wife Therese expect...