Published in Immigration Nation
Ho Chi Minh City, the most populated city in Vietnam, is one of the spiritual capitals for those of Vietnamese descent. The city is known for people such as Thich Quang Duc, the monk set himself ablaze in 1963 to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government under Ngo Dinh Diem. Of course, the city formerly known as Saigon was also a focal point in the Vietnam war. When it fell to North Vietnamese forces in 1975, it eventually led to the reunification of the north and south. It’s also the city that a now-American citizen named Tana Le once called home. Tana moved to America as a teenager with little English, working her way through high school, joining the U.S. Marines, and then heading to graduate school, seeking a Master’s in Communication at Florida Atlantic University. It’s quite a lot for someone who hasn’t yet turned 30. Tana says that she owes all of this to her parents. “They taught me that I can make my own life,” she says. “I wouldn’t be here without them.” She recounts the sacrifices they made in order to move to America. “My dad had his own company and gave it up for my future,” she explains. His business centered around recycling plastic and turning it into bags. In today’s world, my parents could have been rich with that business.”
Tana Le with her parents at her graduation from Florida Atlantic University.
At the age of 15, Tana and her family moved to America, flying into JFK Airport in New York City, and she remembers the sheer awe it brought her stepping out of the airport. “Everything was just so big, it was such a culture shock,” she recalls. Her uncle picked up her family at the airport and drove them back to his home in Philidelphia, Pennsylvania. Tana had one big obstacle in her way, however, and that was learning English “I didn’t even know how to ask for directions,” she laughs. She began American high school in ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages]. To help, she had a translating machine to help decipher conversations until her aunt took it from her. “My aunt took away my translating machine because she didn’t want me to use it as a crutch,” she recalls. Her aunt instead gave her a simple Vietnamese-English dictionary to use and study. “I made sure to memorize a new word every day,” she says. But it was hardly an easy transition. Tana laments her initial loneliness in America. “I didn’t have anyone to really talk to, all the other kids in the house were so young,” she says, including her 8-year-old brother. Other than her parents, the other adults in the shared household — combining two immigrant families — spoke Chinese, not Vietnamese. At school, she had trouble making friends because of the heavy language barrier until she started understanding the language a little better. “I made friends with someone from Ukraine, Korea, China, and Cambodia,” she recalls. These friends were made in her ESOL classes, and they all helped each other to understand the language a little better. After about a year and-a-half in Philadelphia, Tana and her family moved to Boca Raton, Florida. “I think [my dad] wanted to take care of the family on his own.” While in Florida, she tested out of ESOL after her second year in it. Then she met a recruiter for the Marines. “I had just graduated high school and had no goal for college,” she explains. “I saw it as my way to gain independence. Traditionally women in Asian cultures are married and have children very young, and I knew that wasn’t for me.” When she applied to join the Marines she didn’t meet the weight requirement, as she was too slight at around 90 pounds. and had to bulk up for the opportunity. “I was always the smallest person everywhere I went,” she says. She stood under five feet tall with a gun nearly the same size as her. When asked how her size and gender affected her military experience she recalls grappling with stereotypes as part of her personal battles. “It was like going to war every day,” she says. “I had to fight for them to treat me equally.” Basic training and the general demands of military life were no picnic, even for someone who has grown used to tackling challenges. “It was rough,” she summarizes. She had her ongoing struggles with learning American culture and then had to add the military lifestyle and culture on top of that. All of this, she says, made her stronger and ever more capable. “It definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone,” she says. Through her deployment of four years and seven months, Tana visited 10 countries, including Cambodia, the Philippines, Dubai, Jordan, Djibouti and Saudi Arabia. “The Middle East was the most interesting,” she says, because it “opened my eyes to a different culture.” One of her favorite parts was the help that she could provide in the countries, from building houses to passing out food. “There were a lot of humanitarian missions that I volunteered for, and others that they put me on because they knew I liked them.” Tana held onto that humanitarianism after the Marines, she says. “It cultivated my interest and passion for humanitarianism.” When done with her deployments, Tana decided to go to college and enrolled at Florida Atlantic University. She started in the nursing program at the school. But she was “not good at science and math, as opposed to the stereotype,” she quips. So she decided to major in Communication because she loved writing — and finding human connections within and across cultures. She saw it, in fact, as her way to help people around the world. When she graduated with a B.A. in Communication, a few professors urged her to move further with it, encouraging here to continue in the school’s M.A. program. And that is where Tana Le is now. At 27, she is an immigrant, a graduate student, a Vietnamese-American, an armed forces veteran — and a force to be reckoned with.