May Truong

Submitted by: May Truong
From: Orange County, CA/Houston, TX
Age: 28

Dear Mẹ,

While I was young, I never truly understood any of the hardships you had to endure with the dream of giving me a better life. I would idly listen when you told me stories in bits and pieces of your life during your time in refugee camps, the struggle to get to America, and the hard time you had adjusting to this new world. I saw a pain that I could not fathom as a child and  usually these stories were accompanied with a “see how lucky your life is”, so I unconsciously stopped listening out of annoyance. I have grown up just a little bit now and enduring my own set of hardships, I finally now understand your perspective, and I want to finally thank you. Thank you for being so brave and strong. Thank you for surviving and escaping to America. Thank you for giving me a better life.

Your decision to find your way to America even when it put your own personal life in danger has given yourself and me the freedom and the opportunity to voice our voices. You spent most of your life living here with just a green card, never feeling the need to become an actual American citizen. However, once you saw that Trump was running, you rushed to apply for citizenship, so even you know that times are changing and now it is the time to exercise your new right and ability to vote. You must vote to help protect immigrants that were no different than you and that are trying to give their children a better future like you did for me.