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My Immigration Story

I recently blogged about a Ted talk given by Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook's COO) about women leaders in the workplace.

A good friend shared another Ted talk that has inspired me tonight - this one given by Vietnamese Australian Tan Le about her immigration story and the bonds between three generations of women in her family.

As a child of Vietnamese boat people, so much of this talk resonated with me - the struggles of growing up poor in Australia and straddling between two cultures, incidents of racism growing up, feeling like an 'outsider', finding yourself in foreign situations not knowing how to use the cutlery (!), feelings of hesitance about ease or entitlement or privilege for my own children someday... But such experiences have made me who I am today and for that I am so ever grateful and thankful for my amazing parents.  As Tan so beautifully puts it,

"It is okay to be an outsider, a recent arrival, new on the scene — and not just okay, but something to be thankful for. … Because being an insider can so easily mean collapsing the horizons, can so easily mean accepting the presumptions of your province."






Comments

mmanera said…
Inspirational! Thanks for sharing Phoung x

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