Jae Choi of the Korean American Citizens Action Committee calls them the
”1.5 generation.”
She is referring to the children of Korean immigrants whose parents came to America in the early 1970s. Though this generation was born in America, they don`t feel they have been accepted as Americans. But psychologically, intellectually and culturally, they are not really second-generation Koreans either.
”Many of this 1.5 generation resent their parents because they are working 16 hours a day and are never home,” Choi says. ”But the parents are doing that to make sure their children can go to good private schools and get the best education.”
Peter Porr, executive director of the South-East Asia Center in Chicago`s Uptown area, sees a similar pattern among Southeast Asian immigrants.
”A lot of these immigrants came to this country for their kids and not for themselves,” says Porr, who has worked at the center since 1981. ”They tend to overprotect their kids, to sacrifice too much. I don`t think the kids have the same inner toughness that their parents have.”
Julie Huynh, 20, agrees with some of that assessment. ”It`s true I feel overprotected, but I guess it`s because my parents are trying to preserve old traditions,” says the sophomore at National-Louis College in Evanston. ”They like to tell them how to live . . . to make sure they are the main source for their children`s values.”
Like many children of Southeast Asian immigrants, Huynh, whose family arrived 10 years ago, has learned to balance old Vietnamese tradition with her new American environment.
”When I am at home I do what my parents want,” she says. ”But when I am here at school or when I go out, I adapt to a different way of life. Even so, what my parents have taught me is still with me.”
It can be particularly hard for the first generation, who may not be comfortable enough with mainstream American more s to see their children abandoning tradition.
Roger Vardon, a self-employed computer consultant who also teaches advanced computer science at the College of Du Page, and Winston Khin, a medical doctor who works for the Ford Motor Co., are typical of the estimated 3,000 Burmese living in Illinois.
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Both are suburban professionals, concerned that their children make the most of life in the U.S., but without abandoning their heritage.
”Not many young people are coming here,” Khin said of the Burmese temple in Elmhurst. ”Many parents fear that their children are losing their culture.”
Nevertheless, Khin said, he is proud that his daughter, a senior at Loyola University in Chicago, will be going on to dental school and making an important and successful career for herself in the U.S.
Asian immigrants have to work doubly hard to achieve these kinds of goals, said Vardon, who volunteered for the Marine Corps and fought in Vietnam, even though he was not even a U.S. citizen at the time.
Burmese immigrants tend to be highly educated in their own country, but their credentials often are not accepted here.
”When I came here, I was very ambitious and demanding,” Vardon said.
”It`s a mistake. When you are a foreigner, you should be glad that at least you have a job.”
But if your tradition is rural, it can be even more difficult to adjust to a new and urban society. Having a common religion with the new society helps.
For $150,000, the Hmong of surrounding Du Page and Kane Counties were able to buy an Aurora American Legion Post that has now become the Hmong Alliance Church of the Christian Missionary Alliance. Some 70 to 150 Hmong attend services every Sunday, said church member Djoua Xiong. (The Hmong, whose home is in Laos, were staunch allies of the U.S. in the Vietnam War.)
”Traditional Hmong are animists,” Xiong said. ”But the converted Christians are very strong, and we try to lead the way. We feel we can minister to other Hmong who are non-believers.”
The church has a full-time Hmong minister trained at Canadian Bible Theological Seminary, and a youth group of about 40. The church also offers literacy classes so area Hmong can learn to read the Bible in their own language, Xiong said.
”It was very hard to raise the money with a small congregation of 40 heads of households,” he said. ”Most of the Hmong are factory and industrial workers, and the average salary is approximately $18,000. Only one in a thousand were educated in Laos and most of the older people here are illiterate or have a very low level of literacy.”
In fact, he said, getting the church organized may be the easiest part of life here in the U.S.
”The young people are having difficulty living in two worlds, that of their Hmong parents and the new American way,” Xiong said. ”The Hmong Christian kids are very obedient, but they are not totally assimilated and integrated into American society.
”I don`t know which way we should assimilate our children, but we would very much like them to be part of the melting pot.”
With such vast cultural, educational and religious gulfs between groups, it`s no wonder Asian Americans have yet to join forces to wield political power in the U.S. But individual groups are beginning to organize.
Last year, the Bangladesh Association of Chicagoland was frantically raising money for cyclone victims in Bangladesh, not an easy task considering Bangladeshi Americans in the six-county Chicago area number fewer than 2,000, including foreign students.
Over the Labor Day weekend this year, that group and others will play host to a national Bangladeshi convention; it will be the first time the event has been held in the Midwest, a nod to the region`s growing Bangladeshi-American population. Past conferences have been held in New York and Washington, where most Bangladeshi Americans live, said Ashraf Ali, a former president of the association.
The Bangladesh Association of Chicagoland meets every other month for cultural and social occasions and addresses causes of both Bangladeshis and Asians in general, he said.
”Bangladeshi blood is linked very closely to India,” Ali said. ”We have relatives all over the place, and while the language, the food may be a little different, our culture is closely related to India and Pakistan.
”But now we are in this country, and the feeling goes first for America and then for our homeland.”
The tug between the homeland and the new land hurts some groups harder than others and can divide a culture on lines other than generational.
”I am very glad to stay here in the U.S.,” Cambodian artist Narath Tan said. ”The people here are very kind and friendly. After I arrived in Chicago (in 1984) and I met the people, I felt so happy because it was so different from the border and the killing fields.”
But Tan, who studied English for one month at Truman College before getting his first job as a machine operator, longs to return to Cambodia.
”It was the land where I was born,” Tan said. ”I will never forget it. I would like to go back one day to teach the children what is important about life in the U.S. and the new artistic techniques I have learned here.” An estimated 1,000 Indonesian Americans make their home in Illinois, said Paula Zina, 53, a former staff nurse at Cook County Hospital who is the founder and president of the Indonesia America Society in Illinois.
”We are primarily professionals, and because we don`t have the needs of some of the refugee immigrant groups, we have a lot more time and energy to attack the issues that touch all of the Asian immigrants, such as education,” Zina said. ”We are particularly active in the Asian American Coalition and the Lunar New Year Celebration.”
Even as Indonesian Americans make advances in U.S. society, they have not entirely left behind conflicts of the past, Zina said.
The 350 years of Dutch domination of Indonesia had led to intermarriage, but many of the resulting Eurasians, visible reminders of the Dutch rule, felt subtly forced to leave the islands after the independence of 1945, Zina said. Ultimately, 34,000 of these immigrants settled in the U.S.
Those same pressures still divide the Chicago-area Indonesian community today into several societies, some aimed at increasing trade and relations with the Indonesian homeland and others focused on assimilation and cultural preservation issues in the United States.
And if there are divisions within established Asian cultures in Chicago, there may be even a larger gulf between them and the newly arrived refugee communities.
”Many of the new arrivals, especially from Southeast Asia, have tremendous literacy problems,” said Porr of the South-East Asian Center.
”The level of education is low. Most Southeast Asians come from rural backgrounds, and we as a society resettle them into unfamiliar urban surroundings mainly because there is no assistance or support for them in rural areas.”
The Laotian community has found that its young people, many of whom spent years in refugee camps, need extra help and support to succeed in Chicago public schools. This year parents volunteered their homes for week-night sessions where Laotian children can get tutoring from a youth counselor.
Twice a week about a dozen children, ranging from preschool to 5th grade, come crowding into Houmpheng Pradichit`s two-bedroom apartment on North Kedzie Avenue.
Pradichit, a 45-year-old laborer in a Wheeling factory, comes home those nights to a busy apartment. In Laos, he was a primary school French teacher and a police officer, he said. He spent 13 years in a re-education camp and escaped by swimming across the Mekong River.
”I want the children to learn English and American culture,” he said.
”I come home from work and teach them a little. But they also teach me a lot of English.”
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Vanny Bounyavong, 24, the children`s counselor, works for Lao American Community Services, and before going each Monday and Wednesday to Pradichit`s apartment, she spends two hours at another Northwest Side apartment house teaching 18 other Laotian children, ages preschool to 8th grade.
Bounyavong, who studied three years at a university in Thailand, is currently studying for her American high school equivalency degree.
”I am looking for an assistant to help me with that class,” she said.
”I walk in the door and ask how many need help with their homework. Then 18 hands rise up in the air.”
Some immigrants simply embrace their new culture without a look back. With 17 letters in his name, Manop Suesuntisook, an immigrant from Thailand, didn`t mind that his first boss in the U.S. gave him a three-letter American nickname.
”I like them to call me Sam,” the 49-year-old owner of several Mobil gas stations said of his non-Asian American customers and friends. ”It`s easier for them.”
For most others, it`s not that simple.
Pakistani Americans Rashid and Batool Shaikh and other Chicago-area Muslims spent most of March in observance of Ramadan-no easy task for adults, let alone children, in a largely non-Muslim society.
Rashid Shaikh arrived in the U.S. about 20 years ago as a student, and Batool Shaikh came from India to marry him.
During Ramadan, which lasted this year from March 6 until April 3, Muslims fasted from dawn until sunset. The Shaikhs used a prayer calendar to mark when the fast, or sawm, was to begin each day and when it could be broken.begin each day and when it could be broken.
Each day, the Shaikhs would have a small meal before sunrise, pray and then go through the day as usual, but without food and always on their best behavior. Rashid Shaikh, 46, who works independently in insurance sales, would go out to lunch with his clients but not eat.
His eldest child, Hasan, 12, would go to his school cafeteria at lunchtime and talk to his friends as they ate. He had a couple of friends at his school, Rogers Elementary, who fasted too. Although young Muslims are not obligated to fast during Ramadan until they turn 15, Hasan Shaikh has been trying it, mostly on the weekends, for three years. Though the sawm is meant to be a time to reflect and practice a self-discipline that will carry into the rest of the year, Hasan Shaikh concedes he has been doing it for fear of being outdone by his younger cousins, who also fasted for part of the month.
His four younger brothers and sisters do not fast, but participate in the prayers, with the exception of Anan, 2, who could barely stand to have her head covered with a scarf during prayer time.
The family prepared for sunset prayers by laying out prayer mats facing east, then washing their hands, arms and feet. They lined up and prayed in whispers, alternately prostrating and rising.
Batool Shaikh then would serve the main meal to break the fast, perhaps a traditional rice and lamb dish called biryani, or fresh chicken with tomatoes and ginger.
Then the children could watch ”The Simpsons” and the whole family could have dessert.
Pressures to conform to the new culture are never far away. For example, the Windy City is a tough place for a woman in a sari. The cold can cut easily through the delicate, silky folds of the traditional Indian garment, and a good breeze can untuck the pleats from the waist, sending the front flapping. Yet many Indian-American women in Chicagoland still view the sari as all- purpose clothing that takes them through girlhood, marriage, pregnancy, formal occasions and day-to-day living.
This is good news for the numerous sari stores along Devon Avenue between Western and Washtenaw Avenues, where most of Chicagoland`s estimated 60,000 Indian Americans shop for items from their native country.
At India Sari Palace, 2536 W. Devon Ave., an infinite variety of colored silks, cottons and rayons lean in long rolls against the walls or lie in bolts on counters. Some of the material is sold by the yard, but most comes in 6-yard, 45-inch-wide sari lengths.
Wearing a sari looks easy but takes some getting used to because there are no hooks, buttons or zippers to hold it all together. Also, the wrapping method can differ from region to region, said Lakshmi Menon, an Indian-American free-lance writer who has lived in the U.S. for 25 years.
Menon finds the sari a practical piece of clothing because it does not restrict movement. ”I can walk easily, and I can still run for the bus,” she said. ”I can do everything in it.” And during pregnancy, there`s no need for maternity clothes. ”We just use fewer pleats in front,” she said.
Although Menon always wears a sari around the house, she rarely wears one in public anymore around Chicago, only partly because of the weather.
”I never felt the need to wear anything other than a sari,” she said, until she moved to Chicago from Kentucky 15 years ago. ”There`s so much of an assumption that just because one wears clothes from one`s native country, that we just got here,” she said.
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Next: Moving toward assimilation.