Untangle

She: “I’m bringing *_* over. Either get decent or stay in your bedroom.”

Me: “Alright, I think I’m gonna leave. How far away are you? You’re in downtown now? Alright.”

The bus is my only friend in these parts. Carries me here and there with just a swipe of a uni-tone card. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t need to. Picks me up and drives me to where I want to go. Drops me off where I need to be. Symbiotic.  

That’s not true, now that I think of it.

My other friends are an MP3 player and a bookbag.

Carry a tune, carry a verse.  

“The children’s birth mothers will not be notified unless they ask.”

Suz at Writing My Wrongs rightfully points out and poignantly comments on the following paragraphs in the article by the Yonhap News Agency regarding the four adoptees murdered by their adoptive father:

The children’s birth mothers will not be notified unless they ask. They were all young, single mothers at the time of the children’s births, the agency said.

“After their children are adopted, they usually make a fresh start and our agency doesn’t reach out first. Only if they contact us, we will inform them what happened,” Hong said, adding that no phone calls were received so far.

Suz counters:

“Women who lose children to adoption get on  with their lives but they are never “fresh”. They are always, permanently wounded, always scarred. Never, ever the same. I know, I am one of those “fresh starters”.  Losing my child to adoption was and remains the greatest trauma of my life time.  Where exactly is that fresh start? When does it begin?”

You got what you wanted

Many people believe suicide is ultimately a selfish act. But, how would you characterize someone who murders people before putting himself to death? Perhaps the act of someone with a God complex who exploits the normalcy of day-to-day life in order to take the lives of unsuspecting loved ones who entrusted him with their best interests?

In the case of Steven Sueppel, simply killing himself would have been a blessing as opposed to what he actually did to his family. Not only did he allegedly steal from his employer, he actually robbed his wife and four kids, all adopted from South Korea, of life’s potential. His actions betray a selfishness that no amount of apologies or excuses, in my mind, can rectify the happy-go-lucky appearance he put on in front of his family, his peers and community.

No, I don’t know the Sueppel family from a hole in the ground.

What I do know, from what I’ve been reading in the news, is that Steven Sueppel was fired from his job and was to be put on trial for embezzlement and money laundering next month.

Sometime Monday morning Steven Sueppel killed his wife.

He then rounded up the four kids, placed them and himself in the family van in the closed off garage, rolled down the windows and started the van up. When the carbon monoxide wasn’t killing all of them fast enough, Steven Sueppel took the kids out of the van and went back in the house.

He then murdered each of the kids, starting with the eldest, possibly beating them to death.

Ethan, 10

Seth, 7

Mira, 5

Eleanor, 3

Who’s going to notify their parents back in South Korea that the children they relinquished for adoption are now lying on some medical examiner’s table and then, more than likely, will be given a Christian burial?

The adoption community continually pushes the feel-good theme that every child needs a home and that if these kids weren’t adopted out, they’d just be languishing in an orphanage in South Korea.

Well, the Sueppels got what they wanted; the adoption agency got what it wanted; and the adoption community also got what it wanted.

What did Ethan, Seth, Mira and Eleanor get out of the deal?

When will the world ever make any sense?

Hey you, pass me down that bottle, yeah
Hey you, you can’t shake me round now
I get so lost and don’t know how, yeah
And it hurts to care, I’m going down

Alice in Chains, Don’t Follow

Accused banker kills family

Sueppel left a long note in the family’s kitchen addressed to no one in particular.

He also left voice mail messages at the family’s home, at the bank where he once worked and at the law office of his father and brother.

One of the messages indicated Sueppel believed his family was in heaven, Steffen said.

The Ten Gratitudes

10 Things I’m Grateful to My Birth Parents for:

1. My wavy, curly hair.
2. My dark brown eyes.
3. My deep “radio-friendly” voice.
4. My near symmetrical skull.
5. My ability to tan within 5 minutes.
6. My quick coagulating blood.
7. My huge calf muscles.
8. My broad shoulders.
9. My full lips.
10. My low center of gravity.

10 Things I’m Grateful to My Adoptive Parents for:

1. Residing in a town “Where life is worth living”.
2. Instilling a hard work ethic.
3. Feeding me tater tots.
4. Giving me grandparents who showed me unconditional love.
5. Letting me decide whether I want to be “confirmed” or not (You Catholics know what I’m talking about).
6. Buying me art supplies.
7. Taking me to the museums, public library and planetarium.
8. Never asking me about my sex life.
9. Making sure I call them once in a while.
10. Regularly hinting that I should come back home, even though I know I never will.

Learn Your History

The original lyrics were written by Luu Huu Phuoc. A student during World War Two, his anthem caught on with other students, and thus was originally entitled “Call to the Youth” or “Call to the Students”. After independence, the lyrics were slightly revised by the first president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, who made the lyrics most inclusive of the entire population, not just youth.

Luu Huu Phuoc wrote the lyrics in what was later North Vietnam and, interestingly, sometime after he wrote these lyrics, he became a communist and fought against the South Vietnamese government. He wrote many communist songs after he adopted this ideology, including, ironically, the anthem adopted by South Vietnam after the control of the country’s government to the communists. [my emphasis]

VIETNAMESE LYRICS (Vietnamese script)

Này Công Dân ơi! Quố Gia đến ngày giǎi phóng.
Ðồng lòng cùng đi hy sinh tiếc gì thân sống.
Vì tương lai Quốc Dân cùng xông pha khói tên.
Làm sao cho núi sông từ nay luôn vững bền.
Dù cho thây phơi trên gươm giáo.
Thù nước, lấy máu đào đem báo.
Nòi giống, lúc biến phǎi cần giǎi nguy.
Người Công Dân luôn vững bền tâm trí.
Hùng tráng quyết chiến đấu làm cho khắp nơi.
Vang tiếng người nước Nam cho đến muôn đời.
Công Dân ơi! Mau hiến thân dưới cờ.
Công Dân ơi! Mau làm cho cõi bờ.
Thoát cơn, tàn phá, Vě vang nòi giống.
Xưng danh Nghìn nǎm giống Lạc Hồng.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

O People! The country nears its freedom day.
Together we go forward to the open way.
Remembering our centuries of history,
Brothers from North to South reunite,
With hearts young and pure as crystal
Multiply our efforts and do not spare our ardent blood.
No danger, no obstacle can stop us.
Our courage remains unwavering in the face of a thousand dangers.
On the new way, our look embraces the horizon
And who can repress the soul of our youth?
O People! Going until the end is our resolution.
O People! To give all is our oath.
Together we go forward for the glory of the Fatherland.
We fight for the immortality of the Lac Long race.

Could my dad have been a ‘Winter Soldier’?

Confessions of ‘The Winter Soldiers’ by Donald Jackson

Early this year Vietnam Veterans Against the War initiated what they called “Winter Soldier Investigations,” paraphrasing Tom Paine’s description of the winter of 1776 and Valley Forge: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

[found in Life, v71, n2, 7/9/71]

I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad.

Kurt Cobain, Serve The Servants

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“I always had this idea of a battalion of little bodies running toward me with rifles and screaming, sneaking around in dark pajamas with daggers. But what you see are civilians, old men, little kids. Once we were on guard at the Dongha Ramp, and for three nights running this little kid, about 3 years old, ran out of his hootch when our truck went by and screamed at us, giving us the finger and saying, ‘marines number 10.’ It means the worst, the lowest. We decided to rip him off. So the next night we all loaded up with big rocks, I mean like boulders, and when he came out, WHAP, everybody stood up in the truck and threw their rocks and the truck just kept going and I looked back and all I could see was this bloody little hump of flesh, this little bundle of flesh and shorts and blood.”

William Hatton, Bagley, Minn., Cpl., FLSG Bravo, Third Marine Division, 1968-1969

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Principal Vernon: You think about this. When you get old, these kids…When I get old, they’re gonna be runnin’ the country. Now, this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night. That when I get older, these kids are gonna take care of me.

Custodian Carl: I wouldn’t count on it.

The Breakfast Club

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“My company was sitting under some trees by a road between two landing zones, taking a break. This Vietnamese man came riding down the road on a small motorcycle with his wife and kid, and most of their possessions on the back of the cycle. Suddenly the dog handler released the scout dog, told him to go get this guy. The dog leaped over the handlebars and grabbed the guy. The wife fell one way, the kid another way, their stuff was scattered all over. The dog bit the guy’s neck and took a chunk out of his leg. Somebody went out and checked his ID, found out he worked for us. He got up with blood pouring out of his leg, gathered up his family and limped off.”

Joseph Galbally, Philadelphia, Pa., Pfc., 198th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, 1967-1968

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Where was the money that you said you would send me
talked on the phone and ya sounded so friendly
Ask about school and my welfare
but it’s clear, you ain’t sincere
and, hey, who the hell cares
You think I’m blind but this time I see ya comin’, Jack
You left us broke, grabbed your coat
now ain’t no runnin’ back
Ask about my moms like you loved her from the start
Left her in the dark, she fell apart from a broken heart
So don’t even start with that ‘wanna be your father’ shit
don’t even bother with your dollars I don’t need it
I’ll bury moms like you left me all alone G
Now that that I finally found you,
stay the fuck away from me

Tupac, Papaz Song

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“We were securing artillery out of Route 19 between Pleiku and Ankhe and we were going to test-fire our weapons into the bushes – M-16 rifles and M-60 machine guns. The way we were set up, we were aiming at a village. I knew it, the platoon sergeant knew it and the platoon leader knew it. So I approached them and said, ‘You can’t fire over there because there’s a village there. You’re going to hit people.’ The sergeant just told me to get away. The lieutenant said, ‘So what?’ The next day they brought the wounded in. There were 43 at least hurt, I don’t know how many killed. I was a medic so I treated the wounded. I called for a helicopter to evacuate them to a hospital and they sent me a truck.”

Kenneth Ruth, Silver Spring, Md., Sp4c., Twelfth Air Cavalry Regiment, First Air Cavalry Division, 1966-1967

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I gotta take a stand. My old man pushes me around. I never say anything! Well, he’s not the problem, I’m the problem. I gotta take a stand. I gotta take a stand against him. I’m not gonna sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life, I’m gonna take a stand.

Cameron, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“We went mad when Pierce got blown away. A sniper hit him. The shot came from a village we had just passed, and I turned around and saw this old priest standing there. Somebody shot a gun right behind me and shoved that little priest right into this altar. Then we wiped out that village and another one, I mean everything – we shot people, pigs, dogs, geese, we burned every hut, it was just madness. All I can remember is shooting and torching and then, later, looking back and seeing all this smoke, two big clouds of smoke with paddies in between.”

Michael McCusker, Portland, Oreg., Sgt. First Marine Division, 1966-1967

 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Will: He used to just put a wrench, a stick and a belt on the table, and said, ‘Choose.’
Sean: Well, I gotta go with the belt, then…
Will: Nah, I used to just choose the wrench.
Sean: Why the wrench?
Will: ‘Cause, fuck him, that’s why.
 

Good Will Hunting

‘Misplaced Baggage’: The Blog

Today marks the occasion of the launch of a blog by Sumeia Williams, Anh Ðào Kolbe and me, Kevin Mînh Allen, called Misplaced Baggage. The impetus for this collaboration was the fact that we were born around the same time (1970s), in the same country (South Vietnam) and adopted by Caucasian parents in the U.S (prior to Operation Babylift). However, our experiences growing up as American citizens (with Asian faces) and our family and regional backgrounds are quite different. This is what sets us apart, yet also unites us. We have seen in each other’s creative work forces to be reckoned with and a talent for unmasking myths and creating stepping stones that bring us closer to….What? We still don’t know. And, that’s beauty of it. We have opened up yet another space for us to roam and explore. 

Our Mission Statement:

The first of its kind, Misplaced Baggage is the collaborative effort of three Vietnamese adult adoptees from diverse backgrounds. We were brought together through our interest in contributing to the Vietnamese adoptee community. Noticing a lack of critical representation, we came together to offer an alternate perspective on Vietnamese adoptee history and experience.

The title Misplaced Baggage is the brainchild of Anh Ðào Kolbe. Although it may hold a different meaning for each of us, collectively it represents our transient existence and the uncertainty through which we navigate.

Review of ‘Agent Orange: “Collateral Damage” in Viet Nam’

A couple years ago I used to write book reviews for a local Asian-American newspaper that had an awesome literary supplement. However, as soon as I started on this venture, the funding for the supplement dried up and two of my book reviews were never published. Until now. I’ve posted both below, unchanged. Enjoy.

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Agent Orange:  “Collateral Damage” in Viet Nam
By Philip Jones Griffiths
Trolley Ltd., 2003
Hardcover, $39.95

For as long as I can remember, the coffee table book has always been popular because of its large array of appealing photos or graphics based on a particular topic with the bare minimum of text.  It used to be a book the whole family could look through at their leisure and then shelve to make way for the next new coffee-table-book-as-Christmas-gift.  However, I’ve noticed that more and more heady topics are being addressed in these oversized books, as photojournalists/essayists have taken on star status among the politically-aware crowd.  With Agent Orange: “Collateral Damage” in Viet Nam, Philip Jones Griffiths, born in Rhuddian, Wales in 1936, seems to be one of those veteran photojournalists who has been able to plant himself in social turmoil and record the aftershocks.

This isn’t Griffiths’ first foray into (visually) documenting the Vietnam War.  Before this book, he came out with another photo collection called Vietnam Inc. in 1971.  Setting the tone of “Collateral Damage” is the cover, for what overwhelms you is the stark darkness of it.  Gray vertical and diagonal lines crisscross each other and seem etched into the blackness.  Look closer and it will become apparent that it’s a satellite photo of South Vietnam and the gray lines indicate the Agent Orange spray patterns.  “Collateral Damage” is not startling in an aesthetic sense, but rather in a morally-outraged one, as it brings to bear (in print form) the consequences of that infamous chemical defoliant that was used in excess in South Vietnam.   

From the outset, Griffiths introduces the aftermath of technological superiority with overhead shots of smoldering foliage.  In the postwar photos “American grass” (the shrubbery that replaced the destroyed trees) sprouts decades later and children watch over newly planted tree saplings.  The requisite photos of bloated baby faces on top of their malformed bodies suspended in formaldehyde at the Tu Du hospital are blown up for the reader’s revulsion and inspection.  Next in line are the living casualties of Agent Orange.  The range of emotions that are expected to well up inside a person could fluctuate from lividness to sheer pity.  Griffiths’ camera captured his subjects face to face, obscuring nothing, their eyes (or what’s left of them) appealing to the audience’s humanity.  They reaffirm for the audience the monumental task of holding up a mirror to the past in order for the present to confront its selfish ahistoricism.

Each major section in the book has a brief introduction to prepare the audience for what they will see.  At the end of the book, the story of how and why Agent Orange was developed is presented.  Since the audience has already looked through all the photos of the stillborn, handicapped and suffering human beings, the majority of them children, an even more damning context buttresses the supposed feeling of outrage.  The reader will find out about dioxin, the lethal bi-product of Agent Orange, which Dow Chemical Company and the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments teamed up to downplay and then ignore the birth defects, liver cancer, skin ailments and other harmful effects that were to be inflicted on the general population and military personnel.

Interestingly, all of Griffiths’ photos are in black and white, even those that depict Vietnamese (and Cambodian) victims currently living out the legacy of Agent Orange.  This anachronistic visual effect makes these people a permanent fixture of the past, forever indigenous to a war that they did not personally experience and yet are bearing the brunt of.  Their physical deformities and chronic illnesses serve to underline a cruel karmic spiral that will not close until the crimes against them are redressed. 

But, do they believe their lives are a crime?  What becomes slowly evident is that the book lacks the photographed subjects’ own accounts of their lives and how their debilitating medical conditions affect their self-worth and their outlook on life.  Not to mention, those babies in jars have become icons to warn future generations of the costs of war and the lingering effects of Agent Orange in one part of the globe.  But, to continually put these dead babies on display is to demean their shattered infancy and to excite an immature audience’s proclivities toward gore.  The fear is that these unwilling still-lives stop becoming teaching tools and start becoming objects of morbid entertainment. 

I understand that Griffiths’ intention for this book is to light a fire under (American) society and bring about debate on how we construct and deal with history and our national self-image.  Perhaps I’m being overprotective, but I just do not want to see these controversial images become a feast for the eyes that attract/repel our imagination.  Eventually, this book may lose its original attraction to the buyer, but will excite the dinner guests to no end.  Because what is a coffee table book but something one can peruse, flip directly to the interesting sections and then leave on the table to collect dust?

**P.S. Sume at Ethnically Incorrect Daughter posted her thoughts on the damaging legacy of this homegrown chemical a while back, here and here.

Review of ‘Blood and Soap: Stories’

Blood and Soap:  Stories
By Linh Dinh
Seven Stories Press, 2004
Trade paperback, $16.00

You’ll Never Be The Same

Blood, that most ancient of symbols, has been offered up to purify and redeem the fallen; many believe it was sacrificed to absolve the sinners of the world and make them right again under the eyes of a higher being.  Blood also has its more sinister and fatal connotations when it gushes uncontrollably, when people become “blood-thirsty” or “blood-suckers”, when blood rots to black.  Soap, as we know it today, is a fairly modern invention; it is utilitarian and somewhat of a killjoy.  One uses soap to scrub off the ecstasy of a wonderful meal, to clear away the gaiety of a joyous celebration or to cover up the carnal sweat of midnight sex. 

After having finished reading Linh Dinh’s second collection of stories, Blood and Soap, I felt I was standing in the aftermath of literary mayhem and simply dazzled by the splatter.  Soon thereafter, whenever I would be doing the most mundane, routine things, like getting on a bus, opening a door, or stepping out into the sun, splashes of Dinh’s narratives flashed back at me: “A war is a working man’s university.”

Dinh does not waste his words and, thus, guarantees that you won’t be wasting your time reading Blood and Soap.  The majority of the stories place solitary protagonists in places and situations that closely resemble what we understand to be reality, but which has been pushed off-kilter by either the characters’ own hands or the forces that Dinh pits them against.  “A TOURIST WAS STABBED TO DEATH LATE LAST NIGHT IN CENTRAL PARK!” screams one of the characters from inside his apartment as he learns to overcome the silence of being foreign in the eyes of society from a New York tabloid.  He inhabits the titillating gruesomeness of big-city crime, which wouldn’t be so funny to the reader, if it weren’t for the fact that this guy wants to learn English so much that he emulates the screaming tabloid headline by yelling back at it. 

The book has built-in narrators who sneak in through your pores and the soft underbelly of your subconscious to guide you past those open windows where something out of the corner of your eye catches your attention and you just have to backpedal in order to confirm what you can’t believe you thought you just saw.  (“Melissa?”)  Dinh makes it easy to observe and sympathize with each character’s humanity, no matter how inhuman it turns out to be. 

Dinh has written a collection of stories so potent that if you flinch for just a second, you could lose all perspective and balance, and end up blaming the book for leading you astray and locking you in with your own degradation.  His screwy fables and parables serve to replace the reader’s own delusions, prejudices and neuroses with the author’s. 

“To acquire someone else’s taste is a moral act.  A bigot loves his mom’s cooking and nothing else.”

Many of Dinh’s stories borrow at will from the sacred halls and galleries of history, and then turn them upside down and inside out (“Viet Cong University”).  Dinh spreads reality so thin that he seems to be rewriting it on the parchment of his imagination.  Elvis Phong is brought back to life with the help of a DJ reminiscing about Phong’s mastery of epic moments in Vietnam’s modern history through rock ‘n’ roll songs.  Follow the narrator and you will find out that Phong wrote a song called “Thoi Vao Gio” (“Blowing In The Wind”) and a seminal album called “Dia Trang” (“The White Album”).  The translations of the titles make you titter and think either Elvis Phong and the narrator are both insane or you have just stepped through a crease in time and into an alternate reality.  Dinh’s relationship with his birthplace can be compared to a plane hanging in midair after takeoff.  “Destination is not at all important, only departure.”

Blood and Soap will cheer up your sense of irony and confuse your sense of decency.  What lessons his stories seek to impart are actually anti-lessons and instead serve as un-teaching tools that impart a wisdom that will leave you queasy:  “A woman colludes with God at the beginning of the joke by giving birth.  A man at the end of it, by killing.”  Dinh skillfully pulls you into his lesson plan and then turns on the lights, so that you find yourself in a room caked with blood, holding only a bucket of water and a bar of soap.