2018 #MinneAsianStories: Hello, Neighbor
From the Burmese Jungle to the Promised Land
By George Thawmoo, Saint Paul
I was born and raised in the jungle in Burma. I wasn’t a recognized citizen of Burma. I was an outcast. I belong to the Karen “resistance group.” When you belong to a minority group in Burma, life is pretty much predetermined. Your fate is sealed. It means you will be persecuted at every opportunity. The Karen are fighting for justice and equality. But the Burmese are seeking to defeat, destroy and dominate. We were outnumbered and outmaneuvered. Our bases were overrun. We had no choice but to leave and we all became refugees. It was 1997.
Life as a refugee was dehumanizing. You ate what you were given. You lived like you were told, behind the visible and invisible fences. It was humiliating. You have no freedom. You were harassed by the Thai security personnel on a daily basis. They destroyed our women. There was no dignity. We were the unwanted with nowhere else to go. In the refugee camp, you are subhuman. You lived at the mercy of others.
After years in Thailand, we finally saw a ray of light. The U.S. government and its people opened up their arms to allow us to resettle. Life with dignity. We’ll be able to dream the American Dream like others. They say you can be whoever you want to be if you work hard. Those words empowered me, energized my spirit. I seized the opportunity and never let go. I was optimistic. Now, I will be someone that I was never before.
It’s been eight years since I first set foot in the US. Life wasn’t easy. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. Reality set in. Now the American dream seems too lofty to reach. I didn’t know then the existence of the invisible rules, the economic ladder. I didn’t know the history of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, Rosa Parks, and Jim Crow Laws. I didn’t know that Black, White, Brown and the in between are created unequal. No one has told me about Roe v. Wade. No one had told me about mass shootings and how vulnerable our children are in school. No one told me about Brown v. Board of Education and the achievement gap. No one told me about covert and overt racism. No one told me about Japanese Internment Camps and the Chinese Exclusion Act. No one told me that this land once belonged to the Natives. I didn’t know about the Trail of Tears and Reservations. Who could have believed that this great nation had only one Black president? Who could believe that this great nation never had a female president while countries like Burma, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines all had? I thought America is cultural melting pot where everyone coexists in peace and where everyone dreams the American dream undisturbed.
It feels like Déjà vu all over again. There is no such thing as the “perfect” place. However, I am grateful for the new life that I have been given from the American people. I’m now a new American, a free man and I must do to the best of my ability to contribute to this society.
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