My SEAGrad speech

Born and raised in the United States, I have always idolized the perfect “American family” on TV, a contrast to my own family. Growing up, my mother worked everyday leaving at 7am and coming home at 10pm at night, while my grandma took care of my siblings and me during the day. My ideal vision of two parents coming home from work early to spend time with their children was not my childhood reality.

It was not until college that I realized that this was not just the story of my life, but the lives of many others as a result of the war. Through joining organizations like REACH, the Asian and Pacific Islander Recruitment Retention Center, and the Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC), I finally understood my Vietnamese-American identity. These organizations helped me mature as a person and share with others what I had learned: we are the aftermath of a war that had nothing to do with us but everything to do with us, a war that was not our fault, a war that placed Southeast Asian faces on a continent far from its origin. We are our own community, a diaspora of Southeast Asians in the U.S. searching for a better life and struggling together in the process.

As a result of the War in Southeast Asia, also commonly known as the Vietnam War, our grandparents, our parents, our aunts, our uncles, our siblings are looked down upon on a daily basis for talking with an accent. They are the minorities that are discriminated and stereotyped in a country in which they don’t look like the majority. They are the laborers that we, their children, blamed and resented for not spending more time with us because they, not wanted to but needed to work long hours to raise us.

But let’s not forget that these people are the few who daringly risked everything to leave the country with only faith and hope in their pockets. They are also the courageous activists who chose to take a stand, who refused to succumb to the chains of unspoken injustices, unexplained imprisonments, and unjustified killings. They are the sacrificing solders, the courageous fighters, the daring heroes, the resilient survivors that have crossed oceans, skies, fields, and war zones to get us on this stage.

SEAGrad is a unique graduation that does more than celebrate the graduating individual. It commemorates the Southeast Asian community’s struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs and passes the spotlight to our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our aunts, our uncles, our grandparents, our friends, our community members who have sacrificed for us and are just as deserving of the achievement that we, as graduates, are standing on stage and taking credit for today.

This black gown I am wearing is stitched together by the sweat and tear drops of my family’s sacrifices and this cap I wear on my head is the crown of hopes and dreams they have endowed on me to be something great.

Our parents are living proof that freedom and higher education are privileges that not everyone is granted. College is one of the few ways to learn about our history and culture and change the course of our futures. As graduates of UC Berkeley, we are in a place of privilege. We have received the precious opportunity to encounter passion all around us, to mold our talents through community organizing, and to be empowered through dialogue. We, as graduates of the #1 public university in the nation, are expected to be great.

However, great does not necessarily mean making the most money or obtaining the highest position of power. Great is like the Southeast Asian refugees in this room who have proven to us everyday that it’s not what happens to you but how you deal with it that makes you great. Great is passion, is sacrifice, is serving, is living for something bigger than you. My friend once said, “You don’t just find passion. You create it. It’s trying your best and believing that your actions matter to someone, even if you don’t know who yet.” As the resilient survivors of war have done before us, let us, the class of 2009, rise above the gruesome shadows of history and commit our lives to moving forward and making positive change for the future.