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As a young girl in the United States, Catzie Vilayphonh once thought she was Vietnamese — an assumption she simply based on the people around her. She was actually born in a refugee camp in Thailand, to the west of Laos, the small country from which her family hails.
“Growing up, there was nobody around to tell me where I was from,” the resident of Eighth and Porter streets said. “People would just call you Chinese. Some of my teachers didn’t even know where Laos was.”
Her confusion represents the identity crisis countless Asian-American children suffer as they struggle to reconcile the disconnect between their parents’ culture and the one they are growing up in. Despite their heritage among a diverse variety of nations, society groups them together as “Asian Americans.”
As a poet and spoken word artist, Vilayphonh, 31, aims to create a feeling of identity among Lao Americans in Philly and explain the mass exodus from Laos through a writing, performing and filmmaking workshop, entitled “Laos in the House.” She fears that if an intergenerational exchange doesn’t happen soon, aspects of Laotian culture will be lost forever.
“[Laotians] have been in the United States alongside Vietnamese and Cambodians for years,” she said. “They’re doing stuff and we’re not. There’s no sense of community. This project will connect generations and preserve our culture. If we don’t continue it, who will?”
For more than 40 years, Laotians like Vilayphonh’s parents have immigrated to the United States at a high rate, and much of that movement is attributed to a leftover threat from the Vietnam War. During the war, the United States dropped an enormous amount of bombs on Laos, many of which did not detonate on impact and still pose a dangerous and contaminating threat to civilians and the environment today.
“I want to do this project to raise awareness, because the problem is still there and the U.S. government is doing nothing about it,” Vilayphonh said.
Realizing that she had a story to tell by participating in writing workshops with Chinatown’s Asian Arts Initiative and then finding the voice to tell it through the Yellow Rage poetry group, Vilayphonh plans to draw on the precedents set by others, like those who organized the inaugural Lao Artists Festival in Elgin, Ill. in August, to guide others.
“I feel alone, like I only know a couple Laotian artists, and then here’s this little town that was able to put together a whole festival,” she said. “I’m only one person, but when people find out, I know they’ll get involved.”
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Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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