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Living in Two Worlds: The Asian Woman's Experience
by Pat Tanumihardja

Weaving is a tradition common in many Asian cultures: On a loom, nimble fingers interlace the warp, the vertically aligned threads, with the weft, the horizontal threads. Similarly, many Asian women in Seattle have been deftly weaving together the culture and traditions they grew up in with a less familiar way of life.

Phala Chea recalls the day she fled Cambodia with her family. She was almost 9 years old. “We were one of the lucky ones – we left on the day the communists came into the country. Basically with the clothes on our backs, we took off.”

After crossing the border into Thailand where they moved from refugee camp to refugee camp, Chea and her family arrived in the U.S. in June 1976. They had to rebuild their lives in an environment both alien and unpredictable. Today, Phala is a successful mother and clinical supervisor at the Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS), an organization offering social and behavioral services in a multicultural setting.

But for Chea and many Asian women in this country, whether first generation Asian Pacific American, refugee or immigrant, the road to success has been paved with detours and uphill climbs. These women have sought to reconcile Eastern tradition, modernism and Western ideals, struggling to find harmony between all three. Like heroines in a bittersweet tale, they have handled the transition with grace.

Looking Back

Sri Thornton, a personal banker with The Commerce Bank of Washington, grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, and had a successful career in Jakarta, Singapore and Holland, before settling permanently in the U.S. in 1980. She is grateful for the opportunities she has had in this country. “I do thank the United States for giving me this (opportunity), but I look back to what I got from home, the training,” she says.

Even after living here for over two decades, Thornton continues to reflect on her father’s words: If you don’t have good traditions and good values from where you come from, you will not be a successful individual. Holding her traditions and values close to her heart, Thornton has built a successful banking career and now handles loans, real estate and deposits for clients with high net worth.

“Compassion is a value from my family,” says Chea, whose father was an officer in the Cambodian army. My family has always fought for justice and (upheld) high principles.”
Her family owned land and was pretty well off in Cambodia, but she remembers both her grandparents and parents as “rescuers.” “That value has always been instilled in us – to help those who are less fortunate. It might have been unconscious all those years, but it really came to the forefront as I grew older,” says Chea, who now serves low-income clients in ACRS’s mental health department.

Former Seattle City Council member Dolores Sibonga was born in 1931 at the height of the depression. She grew up in the International District where her parents ran a restaurant. “I was so grounded through my experiences in the International District,” she says. “In a service business like a restaurant you have to deal with all kinds of people.”

Serving many immigrant laborers as a young girl, Sibonga grew up believing that everyone deserves dignity and equality, regardless of their social standing. “There is a spark of goodness in everyone,” she says. “Everyone has a special talent and my mom taught me to value that goodness in just about every human being. I never look down on anybody.”

Theresa Pan Hosley, a Tacoma business owner and community activist, grew up in Taiwan where she was taught to respect people who are older and have more experience. “It’s important to respect elders in the community and also take care of your subordinates,” she says.

She puts those values to practice in the two travel agencies and the machinery company her late husband left her. Her only goal is to run a profitable business so that she can take care of her daughter and son.

Family Life

Thu-Van Nguyen, a medical interpreter, brings together her Vietnamese heritage and her husband’s Jewish tradition. “(My husband’s) family is rich in Jewish traditions, but he is very supportive of my cultural roots,” she says.

Nguyen believes that as a parent she is responsible for raising her children with an awareness of their Vietnamese identity. “It is important for kids to know where they’re from,” she says. “I try to expose my kids to culture, traditions and values and I want them to be proud of it, to remember who they are.”

Although challenging, Nguyen says, “If you want to keep up with the culture, you have to do things to expose your kids – show your kids the traditions and values and have them appreciate it.” In addition to going to Sunday school at the synagogue, her two children attend Vietnamese cultural celebrations with her, especially the Tet festival during the Vietnamese New Year.

A Methodist church sponsored Chea and her family’s entry into the country, although the family never converted to Christianity. “We would be polite and go to church every Sunday because we respected them and were thankful,” she says. “And then when there was a ceremony at the temple we’d go there too.”

Chea, who remains a practicing Buddhist, tries to expose her 5-year-old daughter to her religion and culture as much as possible and brings her to the temple during holidays. “During New Year, we believe that a bodhisattva (like an angel) descends on the earth and takes care of humans. We offer fruit, soda, pastries, (sticky rice with pork and beans), and we would burn incense and candles,” she explains. “At the same time you would cook food and offer it to your ancestors. Or the spirit of the house.”

As a mental health worker, Chea understands that outsiders may view ancestral worship and other aspects of her culture as strange, but in a cultural context it isn’t. “I do it as part of my culture,” she says.

Every year, Thornton goes home to Indonesia to reconnect with family and friends. “I usually go back after Ramadan (the Muslim holy month of fasting) and also for family gatherings if required.” In the Islamic tradition, Ramadan is a time to ask for forgiveness from family members. “I will be among the family (and I say) I request your apology and I’m sorry ... That’s the main reason why I go home.”

As a Muslim, Thornton prays five times a day and fasts from sunrise to sundown during Ramadan. But she does it all privately.

Muslim communities often encourage non-Muslim spouses to convert. However Thornton’s husband, who is Caucasian, still practices his own religion. “I don’t believe in converting people unless he or she wants to be converted, and I respect people from different races, religions and backgrounds,” she says. “As my father told me, we are being created equally in this world; it doesn’t matter what you believe in.”

The Workplace

Kay Hirai, owner of Studio 904, believes that her childhood in Japan ingrained in her an appreciation for teamwork, a value that she has incorporated into her business. “You have to get everybody together to win ... it wasn’t about you,” she explains.

When Hirai first started out in the salon business, she was very unhappy with the industry standard of commissions and tipping. “You had to make it on your own; people were stabbing you in the back and they weren’t doing anything to raise others up. I just wasn’t cut out for that.”

“I had a vision that I was going to do things differently and there’s going to be teamwork and service for the clients,” says Hirai. She wanted a mission-driven business that was based on inclusiveness and would “bring everybody else forward.”

Today, Hirai’s two salons, one in Pioneer Square and another on Mercer Island, are founded on honesty and integrity. Her 30 employees earn a wage based on personal performance. Plus, she endeavors to attract a diverse workforce and promote social responsibility. She has won numerous awards including National Minority Female Entrepreneur of the Year (2004), and the City of Seattle’s Corporate Kindred Spirit Award which recognizes businesses that exemplify the values of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Over 20 years ago, Nguyen began utilizing her language skills as an interpreter at Pacific Medical Center. “This was 1980 and there were lots of refugees in Seattle,” she says. “Patients came and they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t speak English. I know I’m so lucky and I’m so attracted to try to help them.” So much so that she put her plans for medical school on the back burner. Instead, she found her calling helping people navigate a medical and social system that was unfamiliar and confusing to them.

Around the same time, a group of women (including Nguyen) led by Nguyen’s mother, Emmanuelle Chi Dang, decided to set up the Southeast Asian Woman’s Alliance (SEWA). “We felt we needed to do something to help the refugee community. At the time it was mainly the Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese.”

What materialized was a welcoming place where refugee women could socialize and learn English and parenting skills. Their domestic violence prevention program protected vulnerable women and helped families stay together. Domestic violence is a big issue in Vietnam and many other developing countries, says Nguyen.

By connecting these women to the U.S. system and providing a safe haven for them, Nguyen and SEWA made a big difference in the refugee community. Renamed Refugee Women’s Alliance (ReWA), the organization has since grown from a small, informal alliance of concerned refugee women to one of the largest private nonprofit refugee and immigrant service providers in the Puget Sound area.

“I would never have guessed that I would be involved in civil rights but that’s what I felt was consistent with my values,” says Sibonga, who started striving for equality and representation for minorities in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

After graduating with a degree in journalism, Sibonga and her husband ran the Filipino Forum, a community newspaper serving Asians and Asian Pacific Americans. The turning point came when Sibonga got caught up by accident in a demonstration at the airport and was arrested. After going to trial, she was found innocent of criminal trespass, but the experience was harrowing enough to jolt her from her comfort zone. She determined that “law is the way we can begin to change things in this country in order to provide better representation for all people.”

At the age of 39, Sibonga entered the University of Washington law school and in 1973 became the first Filipina to pass the bar in Washington State. She spent the next three decades fighting for the cause of the Asian and Asian Pacific Islander community.
In 1978, a position became vacant on the city council and Sibonga’s friends urged her to run for the position. “Practically the whole Asian community got behind me and lobbied the council, and I was able to get the appointment,” she says. “I was the first woman of color on the Seattle City Council.” Sibonga stayed on for three terms, stepping down in 1990.

In the Community

“When you’re given the opportunity, take the opportunity as best as you can and return it to the community as best as you can,” says Thornton, who sits on the boards of PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) and the Bellevue Community College Foundation. In the aftermath of last December’s tsunami, Thornton did not forget her community back home, worked with Uplift International to supply medicines and supplies to doctors in Indonesia.

According to Hirai’s recipe for success, you should “always give some money away.” Much to the chagrin of her accountant, Hirai does just that. “I remember my CPA telling me, ‘you seem to be really charitable. You can use that money yourself. Why are you doing that?’” Needless to say, Hirai ignored him and developed a business model that gives jobs to troubled youth and immigrants, and provides employees with opportunities for growth in their personal as well as professional lives. She also regularly contributes to charities by donating revenues from the sale of her hair-care products. She gives free hairstyles to single mothers looking for work, and developed the “You’re Looking Good” program that gives low-income students free haircuts and manicures to improve their self-esteem.

Pan Hosley values contributions to the community and leads by example. As president of the Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation, a citizen’s group which aims to heal the deep rifts caused by racism and anti-immigrant sentiment that resulted in the expulsion of the Chinese community from Tacoma in the late 1800s, she is currently fund raising for a park that will be a symbol of this healing process and promote understanding among many cultures.

“People are afraid, and they don’t understand Chinese customs and traditions,” she says. “Part of my responsibility to work on this project is for people and children to learn more about our culture.”

On Stereotypes

“Many of us were raised as lotus blossoms,” says Sibonga, laughing. “Those days are gone forever!” She agrees that “Asian women are taught to defer to other people, to venerate age and defer to men in many ways too,” but she also feels you can fight stereotypes.

“I had a strong role model in my mother. She was the driving force in the family; she was the one with the ambition. I learned through her that I could achieve anything.”

Hirai has struggled with stereotypes from all angles. In the beginning, her Japanese-American husband found it very difficult to accept her passion and drive, causing some struggle in their marriage. Hirai remembers him asking many times: “Why aren’t you like everybody else?”

In addition, an internal voice nagged at her. “I’d have so much guilt because I’m not the typical traditional wife or mother,” she says. But her therapist helped her stay true to what she really wanted. “There’s one comment he made to me: ‘If you did that or if you went here is the Japanese community going to run you out of town on a pair of chopsticks?’” she says laughing. Hirai realized she didn’t need to seek approval from anyone except herself.

Assunta Ng, publisher of the Seattle Chinese Post and the Northwest Asian Weekly, deplored the stereotypes in her native Hong Kong. “Sons come before daughters and girls had to do all the housework at home,” she says. “It wasn’t fair but I never questioned it (growing up).”

But Ng wanted to have a better life. “I felt that my future was at stake. I didn’t see that my family would allow me to go anywhere. I would not be able to excel or explore my potential had I stayed at home.”

The Challenges

As much as she values her present success, Thornton feels she has had to work extra hard to get here. Not only did she have to prove that she could make it in a foreign setting, she had to compete in a male-dominated workplace. “To excel I’ve had to work harder than my peers, especially when I’ve just begun my career, until I can establish my name,” she says. “I had to push it to say that I am successful, I have the ability to perform as good as they are, maybe better.”

Growing up in a community where the ‘group’ always came first, Sibonga found it hard to put herself at the forefront of her political career. “My campaign advisors would say to me, “You have to say ‘I’ not ‘we,’ but I was always taught to relegate yourself to the background.”

“In politics you have to say, ‘I achieved something,’” she continues. “That is still very difficult for me to do, to put myself forward. I’d just as soon rather push someone (else) forth.”

Sibonga always thought of herself as a shy person, but she knew she had to overcome her shyness. “I found when I got out of law school I could be as competitive in the courtroom as everybody else,” she says. “I just tell myself that there’s a message that you want to deliver and the best way to deliver it is to do these certain things. It’s the same way with politics.”

Hirai went through many ups and downs to create her dream salon. “Financially it was really, really tough. And being a minority, being a woman, not understanding business, not having the education (was also tough).”

People told her that her ‘Pollyanna’ outlook wasn’t practical. “They told me, ‘you might as well go into social service or something. Forget about business. It’s a cutthroat thing, it’s about bottom lines, you’ll be driven to make a profit.’”

All these comments created a conflict within her and Hirai had to summon up every ounce of determination to stay focused. “The Japanese culture really built my discipline to succeed and not give up,” she says. “I think I would have really thrown in the towel if I didn’t have those values instilled in me.”

“I think most people underestimated me,” says Ng who was faced with negative reactions from the Asian community. “A lot of people didn’t want to see me succeed. I thought to myself, ‘I wouldn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed if I can’t do it. If I can’t do it, what’s the big deal?” Ng, who was young and optimistic at the time, didn’t take her critics seriously. Today, the Seattle Chinese Post and the Northwest Asian Weekly reach out to the Asian Diaspora in Washington with a combined circulation of more than 15,000.

Weaving Two Worlds Together

Just as she switches easily from one language to another, Chea takes what works for her from both cultures. “I’m not assimilated but acculturated,” she says, explaining that both cultures have helped her grow as a person. “Western culture has taught me that it’s okay to be a woman and be strong. My Cambodian heritage has shown me compassion and humbleness. I have no issues with either of them and appreciate and integrate both.”

“You’re a woman, you’re an Asian, but you’re also a member of the local community, and you also have to integrate into any national or international activities you might have,” says Sibonga. We all navigate multiple spheres, but she believes in adhering to the values that are important to you. “To me that’s family. Family always comes first and then community and then career.”

Life is compromise she says. “In politics you recognize what’s important to the other person, what pushes their buttons and then you try to shape your arguments so that you can satisfy what the other person’s needs are,” she says. “I guess the way I’ve lived my life is I’ve recognized what’s important to me first and then what’s important to other people, and then reconcile those things.”

Pan Hosley finds stability in her cultural heritage. “You would be floating on the surface of water if you didn’t have roots,” she says. “It’s given me strong self- confidence and I’ve been able to make better decisions when it’s required, and I’m able to deal with issues that happen on a daily basis.

“Chinese culture is not perfect,” she says, “but I find a way to pick ones that help me grow.” On the other hand, Hosley likes the openness and community-mindedness of Western culture and adopts what fits for every aspect of her life.

“I have lived in the richness of both cultures, and I believe we can learn from one another,” she says.

Pat Tanumihardja writes about food, culture and travel, and enjoys delving into the multicultural fabric of the world we live in. A well-acculturated immigrant herself, she lives in Seattle with her husband.

©2005 Caliope Publishing Company