Phi Lam My Father Research Paper

Phi Lam, my father, is a fifty year old Vietnamese refugee from Vietnam who fled his war-torn country in search for a place of safety and opportunity. In order to learn more about my own culture and how exactly I came to be an Asian-American, I have chosen my father to be my interviewee. It all started in 1975, when the Viet Cong won the Vietnam War. With my father’s family supporting the South, despite the North’s victory, he was forced into a rough life. His family was split; the men in the family was sent to (what they sugarcoated) “re-education camps”, while the women and children were sent away to an isolated area in the humid jungles of Vietnam called the “economic zone.” There was not enough food, medication, and clothes to go around for the family. Due to this fact, my father usually starved because he wanted to give what food was left to his younger siblings. Facing these horrid conditions, my father then fled to Malaysia, where he took residence in Pulau Bidong for about seven years before moving to America. This is his story. He was born in Saigon, …show more content…
Core countries often provided more economic opportunities, along with education, and thus he moved to America, the country that comes first to mind when you think of core countries. In his immigration story, he also mentioned leaving behind his loved ones, demonstrating distance decay and time space compression. With his family and friends left on the other side of the world, contacting them was difficult because he had little money to call them since he was too busy trying to take care of his new family. When his younger sister, Duyen, came to America and taught him about calling Vietnam on the computer, contact between him and his family and friends became easier and more