Personal Narrative: My Hmong Family

I came from a first generation Hmong family whose parents knew minimal English. I was three years old when we immigrated to America. I hardly remember anything at the time. My parents and older sisters were unfamiliar with the English language, so help was always needed from others. As we settled into our lives in America, things became more familiar and my sisters and I were able to help my parents out more. We went to school and learned the English language and were speaking a different language other than Hmong in the house. Eventually, my parents decided to learn English and they were attending classes from a Hmong community in Sacramento. Though, this was not for long, my father did not want my mother to attend classes anymore and to

After experiencing how difficult language brokering is as a child, I have learned the English language fluently now. So, my future children will not have to experience what I have gone through. I want my future children to live a normal childhood and not worry about the adult life until they are an adult. In addition, I wanted to have an educational background because my parents never had one. I want my future children to have the knowledge of education and how important it is to go to college. Although, my parents never had the chance to go to college because of the language barriers, but they were never against education. They have supported me through education, but they do not know how difficult it is to attend college while still supporting the family. So, I want to be able to help my future children with education and guide them through it. Furthermore, I have become more Americanize by slowly adding the American culture to my Hmong culture. For instance, holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas has become a yearly celebration in my family now. My family never really had celebrated these holidays before, but growing up in America, we had adopted these culture variations. So, I can definitely say that I identified myself in the micro level as an educated, independent, Hmong American