Calling Each Other Home
Vam is a 22-year-old Hmong college student who is deeply connected to their cultural and spiritual heritage. His story is one of friendship, connection, and calling back the parts of you that have been lost.
Vam's Story
It was 7:30pm on a Tuesday. Classes and activities were done for the day. Cabbage and pork soup stewed on the stovetop. A familiar warmth and a heaviness filled the air of the small college apartment. Simple mementos and free posters lined the walls, a reminder of the nomadic humility that we each carried with us from our ancestors.
There were things we couldn’t talk about in formal spaces, online, or in class. It’s things that others might cancel us for because they didn’t understand that we’re trying to dissect and understand this shit that’s happening. It’s not so black and white these things. And neither were we.
I ladled the steaming soup into two bowls and handed one to each of my friends. Care and love for our people had brought us together a year ago, and now those intentions sealed a commitment to our own humanities. Outside, anti-Asian hate spewed on the streets, the pandemic raged on, and people everywhere fought about cops and Black lives. In this small, quiet apartment—away from the chaos—we cried together. We laughed together. We took turns holding space for each other. We commiserated about community, frustrated by the ignorance of our own people. We tried to make sense of the disappointment we felt, the harm, and the desire to be heard. Our bodies ached in anger and grief.
In the day, we were losing our way. The system tried to take everything away from us, using us in its money-making machine. It stripped us down to nothing and tried to build an empire on greed and power. It stole a part of our spirit, just like it did to our ancestors. It killed our sensitivity, our ability to connect to one another, and left us to die in the war. Cruelty and violence, sustained by politics and money, charged forth with no regard for death or the remnants of survival.
But in the evening, we took stock, we sat, we ate. We became intimate with our souls. We reclaimed the spaces of harm. We were held and comforted by each other’s embrace, precious moments of security and immense pleasure. And only together did we try to breathe life back into our spirits and call each other home.
About Vam
Vam, a fifth-year sociology and ethnic studies major, calls the Black and Brown communities of eastside Saint Paul home. With an immigrant mother and refugee father, Vam grew up poor. As a queer youth, he struggled in finding community within their Hmong communal spaces. The cycle of patriarchy, misogyny, anti-queerness, and ageism of Hmong culture left them feeling resentful and rejecting, trying to seek refuge in white spaces throughout high school.
When Vam went to college, they began taking sociology and Black studies courses. Through those courses, they learned about how Black people try to make meaning of Blackness, a concept originally used to justify enslavement, and breathe life into it for liberation. As Vam engaged with Asian American studies in their second year, they realized how humanizing and liberating learning about Asian Americanness can be to Asian Americans too.
When the Atlanta shooting that killed six Asian American women happened in March 2021, Vam was in their third year of school. He was deeply struck and saddened by this incident. It was an incident that retold how the U.S. continued to build its nation on the violence against feminine Asian American bodies. An ongoing reminder of the relevant Asian American experiences and histories they learned in their classes – histories of representation, war, migration, legality, and anti-Asian violence. American citizenship and U.S. identity had come from having an “other,” and so much of that “other” was being Asian American. In a constant cycle to prove your worth and your citizenship, one must participate in this project of alienation we call “America.”
A professor that Vam had during the time of the Atlanta shooting said to them: “You know, Asian Americans so often are we comfortable being sidelined or being the logistics or supporters of other people, other people’s movements, including our own. Do we center ourselves? Do we put ourselves first in speaking for or in claiming Asian American, even in non-Asian American spaces?”
This was a game-changer. It was radicalizing. The decentering of Asian Americans and anti-Asian hate pushed Vam to care more about Asian American issues. A yearning, a hunger to understand and contextualize Asian American humanity brewed in their body, growing their awareness of what it means to them to be Asian American.
Between the Asian American studies courses, late nights, communal meals, and healing sessions with friends, Vam’s sense of Asian Americanness took on a whole new meaning. If they wanted to step away from the political conversation about U.S. capitalism and people of color, if they wanted to separate from empire-making, then they would have to imagine the purchase of their own livelihood, their own ways of connecting, their own ways of nurturing. It was only in these very intimate spaces, these very spiritual spaces, where the spirits could be free to express, free to be mad, to argue with each other, to be heard, to be hurt. Through all these things, they could create a new language and reclaim a sense of being and feeling, finally, Asian American.
Vam took a year off from school between 2022 and 2023 to work and save money for school. They worked with community organizations and have grown in their love and care for their Hmong people. Now more than ever, they love their community. They love being Hmong, though they recognize and resist the oppressive practices that drove them away in the first place. Being Hmong is their breath. With being Asian American, Vam hopes that collectively, we can all learn to breathe.
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