Mixed

Hello and welcome to the Harrisonburg 360 podcast. I'm your host Zoe. The Harrisonburg 360 podcast is an attempt to capture and record narratives of immigrants living in the Harrisonburg community. Using past and present voices of Harrisonburg immigrants, students in our JMU English class have collaborated to create a space focused on the importance of listening to each other's voices. Every person deserves a chance to share their story, and we as a class are privileged to share these stories with you in hopes of expanding perceptions of what it is meant to be an immigrant in Harrisonburg. Each week, Harrisonburg 360 is produced by different team of students. This week's episode "Mixed" was produced by Emily Graff, Grace Killer, Isabella Paza, Oliver Sigich, and Zoe Rublin. In this week's episode, we'll dive into the experience of being a child of immigrants. The family dynamics that falls within immigrant families and interracial couples, and what it really means to be a mixed race. Isabella, the narrator of this episode, is a current Jamie's student and a mixed second generation immigrant. Her mother is Cambodian and her father is Italian, and she has grown up in a multi-generational household. Her unique experience has been shaped in many ways by her family dynamics and the support and pressures that dictate her relationships with family. Our interview with Isabella has been threaded through with a discussion of a piece of literature we read in our class. We came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this. By Aki Obejas. We were able to find many connections between Isabella's experience and this short story. In this discussion, we will be drawing parallels between the Cameroag, the political group which spearheaded the Cambodian genocide led by Pol Pot during the late 1970s, which killed between 1.5 and 2 million citizens. And the Cuban Revolution and subsequent rule of the Communist Party of Cuba under Fidel Castro, beginning in 1959. Both Cambodia and Cuba experience a shifting government towards communist regimes which utilize brutal and repressive strategies to exert control. We were not equating the Cameroag and the Cuban Revolution as we do not wish to minimize the pain experienced by and harm done to each individual affected by those respective movements. We only wish to demonstrate the ways literature can reflect human experience and how we often find bits and pieces of ourselves in words written by someone we will never know. This week's literary discussion is we came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this by Aki Obejas. So we came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this is about the narrators experience immigrating from communist Cuba and the expectations and experiences she had with her parents as they wanted her to succeed when she came to the US and talks a little bit about religion and her experience kind of as a female immigrant and so I guess with that being said we will just kind of hop right in. Yeah, one of the quotes is "exchange my green sweater for a little grey flannel gym jacket with a hood and an American flag logo." So we chose this quote to reflect or symbolize like assimilating within a new culture which is something like my mom had to do but also something I've had to do in between both of my cultures. Yeah and it is always fun to see other halfies around because my friend Zoe knows someone from her high school who works at the comfort team named Jimmy and he's like half Korean half white and I was just like just to know that there are other people who are like me is very like comforting because when you're an interracial kid sometimes you are like the other when you're around one or the other. So if I'm around like Asians I'm white but if I'm around white people I'm Asian so that's always an interesting experience. I didn't feel very dysphoric about it at home or with my family that much because we're just people who embrace our culture in general. So my Italian side too like we fully embrace like being Italian we make bread. We make a ton of pasta, a ton of the other dishes, the pizza elas, that sort of thing and it's the same with my Cambodian side too like we do the holidays. It can be a little alienating to be an interracial kid when you're only around one group or when one group treats you differently because you're just because you're mixed. We also chose this story specifically because most of it really focuses on the pressure from the narrator's parents like what they specifically want for her and like those family dynamics are something that we also talk about in the podcast. I guess the mom kind of suspects in the story the mom suspects that she'll be well to do enough to have someone to be doing everything else for her that she wouldn't have to do the cooking or the cleaning or the basic like societal norm for women. Isabella has felt some of these pressures about who she has to be. My mom told me growing up I had to be a doctor. So for a long time I wanted to be a pediatrician but as I got older my dad was talking to me in the car once and he was just like hey you know you don't have to be like that kind of doctor. There are other things you can do with your life. You seem to like reading and writing. You can just be like an English professor or something and I was just like whoa I could do that with my life. Yeah so there's a lot of emphasis on success. We also spent some time during our interview discussing the pressures Isabella's mother was met with. During the Asian community in general especially those outside of the United States and Canada. There's a lot of colorism so because my mom's from South East Asia and not just East Asia which is like Chinese, Korean, Japanese. There is a lot of like discrimination like even there with that. So that gets a little rough and my mom when she started dating my dad was actually considered like the black sheep of her family because she was gonna marry a white man. Yeah it's I think about it now and I just crack up about it. Like at that time I'm sure it was a little difficult but my mom is the kind of person who does not give a single shit about what other people say. So but now that my parents are like comfortable and successful sort of thing like you know materialistically they have a big house they have three kids like successful semi successful at least kids were all well two of us are in college and others in high school and like nice cars that sort of thing my aunts will now be like wow he treats you so well and my mom's like I make half the money. Yeah my mom gets a little upset. As we continue our discussion we dove into the father and Obaea's piece was markedly anti-communist after having escaped Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution. Our interview is about the experience of having known family members who escaped the Camero Rouge communist regime in Camerovia. My grandparents were with my mom and her siblings escaping from the Camero Rouge which is the genocide in Cambodia where Paul Pitt I think was his name. He was the leader of the genocide trying to bring communism to Camerovia or something by killing all the people who were smart pretty much and I didn't learn a lot about it until I grew up so like until I became like a teenager and especially recently since I've had my uncle come over like my mom's older brother he like they talked about it a bit like and with some other members of the family like they wouldn't like they would ask hey is there anyone who wants to be like a teacher or a nurse or like someone to help the kids and if they volunteered to go they would be killed pretty much. Yeah hard stuff yeah so my mom's side of the family does have trauma and my mom actually used to be afraid of storms until she was like 25 until like she and my dad were together because it would remind her of like the bombs like when they were escaping. Isabella spoke a bit more during the literary discussion about how being aware of the Camero Rouge genocide and negotiating that knowledge with what she knows with experience by her family members has affected her. To come my Rouge and my mom's experience and my uncles and some of the older generation they haven't really talked about it but I know some things and I usually get it through like my dad telling me like I mentioned in the podcast my aunt was putting no concentration camp and yeah it's not mentioned very often but it is kind of just hanging in the air a little bit in a way and especially I had to do a project on the Camero Rouge when I learned about it I was like wow this fucking sucks. And I basically just had to come to terms with like, "Wow, I know people who have lived through and escaped this." And without them, like, really telling me much about it. Which I've never asked because it's a rude one, and they live like the people who live different lives now. But yeah, it is sometimes I think about that, or if I'm talking to one of my odds or uncles, like my older aunts and uncles especially, because they were old enough to remember and still remember. As we concluded our literary discussion, we asked Isabella what her experience of this story was like, as a child of immigrants reading from the perspective of another child of immigrants. I liked, I just liked the story period, but with, again, like the pressure, the expectation, like those definitely hit the hardest. And especially from immigrant parents, it's different. From, like, I guess, people who are already quote-unquote, like living the American dream, because the way that, like, your parents or your family have already sacrificed so much to move to a whole new place, and create new lives for themselves, and, like, specifically for you, is a certain, like, has its own pressure to it. Because not only do you, like, want to live up to your parents' expectations, of course, but you want to surpass them in a way to make it, like, worth it to them and to yourself. We will leave you with a few words from Isabella on what it feels like to recognize the unique conditions of a very existence. People used to ask for my mom's hand in marriage, like, to my grandparents, like, not even her. So, that's always, like, a bit of an interesting thought, like, wow. If my mom did not say no to an arranged marriage, I would not be alive, sort of thing. And it is my chances of being alive, like, anyone's chances of being themselves and alive is very slim. And my mom specifically is so slim because my dad was adopted, and my mom is an immigrant from Cambodia, like, she had to flee from the Khmer Rouge. So, both of them had to grow to specifically Rhode Island and meet each other there, and then, like, continue a life together for me to exist. I do think about that sometimes. My dad and I like to talk about it a lot. Yeah, my dad, funny story. My dad, when he was a teenager, I think, or just when he was younger, the Italians in Cranston, Rhode Island wanted to paint, like, the middle of the roads, the Italian flag. But the Cambodian community that also lives in that area, like, Cranston, were like, well, if they get to paint their flag, we get to paint our color, like, our flag as well, like, our colors, which is red, white, and blue. And my dad, when he was a teenager, was just like, what? Like, why did these people even care? Like, they got canceled because they didn't want anyone's flag pretty much. Like, what even is Cambodian anyway? Yeah, when my dad was a little douchey teenager, and now he's married, he's married to Cambodian women with three Cambodian children. So, yeah, he told me that story one day, he was just like, yeah, be humble, stay humble. You never know where you're gonna end up. Yeah, with my parents, they're both, like, also accepting of, like, each other's culture as well. So, my dad eats Asian food, and my mom eats Italian food, like, that sort of thing. And we both, we do, like, just about all the holidays. And the fact that we're, we're an American family too. So we do, like, we celebrate Christmas, even though it's not like, it's like, Christian holiday, just because it's a part of pop culture. So we just, we still celebrate Christmas, because we're American. Thank you for joining us today on Harrisonburg 360. We're grateful to Kate Morris, Bodine, Emil, Sarah Rothmollett, Here's to Melody Dienia, and Harrisonburg 360, Facebook at Harrisonburg 360, Twitter at 360, Harrisonburg, Instagram at Harrisonburg 360, for helping make this episode possible. Thank you for joining us today on Harrisonburg 360, or grateful to Isabella Pezza for helping make this episode possible. Our host today is Zoe Lublin, interview with Isabella Pezza, was conducted by Emily Graff. A research and content producer is Grace Kieler, and our audio producer is Oliver Sigich. Join us next time for Lost in Translation, the story of Jamie Kinesz, a generation 1.5, El Salvadorian, immigrant who's unique experience with education, translation, and finding pockets of belonging, shed light on the value of community in the face of adversity. [Music] Harrisonburg 360, Mill People, Real Stories, One Community.