Family Ties: Stories That Inspire

[0:03] Natalie Saldarriaga: Please introduce yourself. Tell us your name. Where you’re from and yeah. 

[0:09] Tiffany: Okay. Well my full name is Tiffany Chandra Keo. I’m from Long Beach California. Born and raised there, my whole life. I am currently living in Spain.

[0:22] Natalie: And how would you describe your cultural background?

[0:25] Tiffany: Big mixture. A very, very, big mixture. Especially because where I’m from, Long Beach, is a very diverse city. So, my background is Cambodian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and French from what I understand. But then also because both my parents grew up on the borders of Thailand and Vietnam. So we also celebrate a lot their cultural things. Yeah. 

[0:54] Natalie: And who is this story about?

[0:56] Tiffany: This story is about my lovely mother. 

[1:00] Natalie: When was this story told to you?

[1:05] Tiffany: Originally when I was… I want to say eleven. I asked my mom for a story for a family history project. And then, recently I asked her about it again to sort of refresh my memory. And to see how my memory compared to when I was eleven to now. And so, I got to know a more in depth story from my mother’s life. 

[1:31] Natalie: Okay, so go ahead a share your story with us. 

[1:35] Tiffany: Okay, well to start off my mom is a paraeducator so she works with, that’s her current job now. That’s what she’s been working as for over twenty years now in California. So, paraeducators they work with children with disabilities. My mother usually works with middle school aged students. So, my whole life my mom’s been a teacher and ever since I was younger she inspired me. I really wanted to learn. I loved school. I always wanted to be a teacher. I’m currently an English teaching assistant due in part to some of her influence. And in the future that’s what I want to be as well. A university professor so that’s also due to her influence. So, for my mother, let me see. How did it start for her… My mother was born in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge so she was born in the late sixties. Her birthdate isn’t exactly known because during the Khmer Rouge and during the genocide and dictatorship under Pol Pot everybody’s birth certificates everyone’s documented family history and everything… The books, just basically any form of written record was burned or lost or whatever. So, she doesn’t have an exact birthday, but from what she tells me is she was born in the late sixties… maybe 67’, 68’. And that was when it was partially overlapping with the Vietnam war going on with the United States and Vietnam. And then, in the seventies that’s when obviously Pol Pot went to or came into dictatorship and then there was the whole war and the genocide. So my mother grew up during war. She spent all of her life, all of her childhood in a war torn country. She says that when she was about four she used to live with her family and that’s when the war started and then her family, she’s one of ten children, big family. So, a farmer’s family but they were a little bit wealthy I would say. She eventually went to live with her grandmother when she was four because ten children, trying to take care of ten children during a war is not easy. And, so she obviously grew up during war and during war she told me there were bombings from the people who were fighting the war. And I asked her, “Who were they?” And she said, “I don’t know who. It didn’t matter who. Because it was the Americans, it was the Chinese, it was our own country.” Everyone was just bombing cause it’s a war, right? So she never officially got to go to school because around four is when you would typically start going to school, right? Kindergarten or pre-school, but she couldn’t. So she grew up with her grandmother and so her grandmother taught her a few things. Like how to speak and eventually when she was eight she went back to live with her family, but again this is during a dictatorship, a genocide. So instead of going to school she would go work in the rice fields. And that’s where, the typical the killing fields, from Cambodia come from are the rice patties. So she said she would work at eight years old, she would work eight to ten hours a day. And then they would walk for two hours from where they were staying, two hours to go to the rice fields and two hours back. So of course that doesn’t leave any time for going to school, right? Eventually, she said they were there for about three more years and so it was when she was eleven, her family was finally able to go to Thailand and they were in a refugee camp in Thailand. And that was actually the first time she ever set foot in an actual institution of education. In the refugee camp they would also teach you like math, Khmer, history, all that stuff, right? All the basic subjects. That was my mom’s first experience in a school classroom. In a school setting in a refugee camp. And, it was all in Thai so she had to learn Thai as well. So my mom’s originally from Battambang and so when she went to Thailand, obviously she didn’t know any Thai so she had to learn quickly. And, but she would also still study Khmer and she said that at the time though they weren’t allowed to learn English or French because the Thai government was… they didn’t have a good relationship. So she didn’t learn English or French really and so… I am trying to think now, let’s see. So she was eleven and they would evaluate you based on the grades that you would get at the end of you know a certain exam. So she said she jumped through all of primary in about a year. So every three months or so she would skip to the next level because she would get really really good marks. She would get the highest grades. She told me a funny story, her younger sister who’s three years younger than her was in the same class as her and would always fight my mom because my mom would always get better grades. And it was, causing problems in the school. Like my aunt, my aunt’s a fighter, she loves to fight. And so because of that my mom spoke to the principal and was like you have to separate me and my sister because I want to get really good grades and I’m doing really well, but my sister keeps fighting me at the end of all these exams. And the administrators were like, “Yeah okay yeah, we’ll do that, we’ll do that.” So they separate my mom and my aunt and so my mom kept doing better, better, better eventually. And then a few years she was in Thailand about three years. And then she was in the Philippines, she went to the Philippines. But while she was in Thailand, still she was doing really really well and one of her teachers. Her language teacher for Khmer, he on the side was an English and French teacher for like private classes. Like this is not official government sanctioned classes, right. And he my mom would sort of be like a teacher’s assistant for him. Because he would always be late for his classes and stuff. And then he was like, “Oh do you want to learn English, maybe?” And she was like, “ I can’t pay you anything. Like I don’t have any money. I have a family of ten. My brothers and sister, my mom, my dad.” And she says, “I can’t pay you.” And he said, “No that’s fine. You can be my teacher’s assistant and then I’ll give you all of my notes for English.” And my mom was like, “I don’t know the ABC’s.” She was you know, eleven, twelve, thirteen. She spoke Khmer, she spoke some Vietnamese, she was learning Thai and then on top of that English. Which is a completely foreign language. She’d never heard it before. And so she was learning her ABC’s. She picked up English and she told me this little side story where she asked her mom, my grandmother, if they had any money to send my mom to English school for like a month just so that she have a really good foundation. And my grandma said, “if we were to send you to an English school for a month that would mean our whole family would not be able to eat for two days. So, unfortunately I can’t do that.” So my mom was like, “Okay, that’s fine.” At twelve, thirteen she was like, “I’m going to get a job and earn money so I can go to English school.” And so she, would like go plant, she told me she would plant banana trees and she would go into like some more rice fields. Or she would do whatever sort of menial labor or manual labor to raise money so she could go to English school and she found a way. So she went to English school for like a month and that was how she was able to like basically get her good foundation for her English. So she was learning and her teacher was also helping her as well and then eventually at that same time though her family was applying political asylum in Australia and so the thing is from Thailand, they ended up leaving Thailand after a few years and she had to go to the Philippines and in the Philippines they were in another refugee camp. Waiting for the paperwork to process, right. Waiting to go to Australia basically and they are waiting and waiting. And so she’s learning again some more English in the Philippines especially because in the Philippines English is one of their national languages and she’s learning and stuff. Eventually they don’t go to Australia, they end up going to the United States cause it turned out my grandfather had family in the United States so they ended up going to the United States. She says she got to the United States in 83’. She was about sixteen when she got there. She said May of 1983. And so she was sixteen and they’re trying to put her into the school system, but she was too late. School is already over in June and so she had to wait another year. And so she started as a junior in high school in my hometown. She started as a junior at seventeen and so she didn’t really know any English, not really. She was doing really really well she was taking like math, history, science. Like all the typical subjects that we take as a junior and it was in a language that she didn’t really know and then she told me that she used to get bullied for it. Because even though she wouldn’t really speak because she said was too nervous to speak because her English wasn’t good. Like she could understand, but her English wasn’t good. And so, this is like what… California, the United States in the eighties. Like they’re not exactly the most politically correct at the time and so they weren’t really open to a lot of foreigners and so and imagine my mom she’s this foreign girl, doesn’t really speak English and she is doing really good well in all these classes. Like doing a lot better than her classmates and so then they would bully for it. Like make fun of her for it. And then eventually she graduates. So, I think she was like technically she was twenty when she graduated because of the age difference, the age jump, and the age gap and everything. And then she went to community college for a few years and then eventually she got her degree to be a paraeducator. But she always told me that throughout all of this was, she had a few teachers who would tell her during her journey, her grades are really good and if she focused that she would do really really well. And she was saying how, you know, at one point when she was in Thailand, she wanted to get a good job. So she wanted to work in the hospital because there were all these Peace Corp and like volunteer nurses and Doctors without Borders. And they would like talk to her in English, and stuff like that. That’s how she improved her English as well and at the refugee camp. And they sort of influenced her to want to work in the medical profession and so she wanted to work in like a hospital, but you had to know English for that. She was trying to convince her family, “If I work at this hospital as an administrator or doing whatever I can earn like five-hundred…” It’s baht, so in Thailand they use baht, it’s the currency that they use so she was like, “I can earn four times as much as what we have now and I can help feed the family,” and all this other stuff, right. But she was only fourteen and you had to be sixteen to get a job and so she couldn’t even work. And then eventually two years later she was in the Philippines and then she went to America so. At the end of it was though my mom would always tell me how she would if she ever had time she would just like go into a corner of where they were staying and like try to study. With the light of like the moon or whatever light she could find. Maybe even a candle and she would just like study as much as she could. Because that was sort of I guess her escape because on top of that she would also have to take care of her younger siblings and her older siblings because she was the responsible one and she’s the smart one. So, so that’s my mom’s story. And eventually she got to America, went to high school there, went to university there, and now she’s a teacher. She’s been teaching for twenty years. 

[14:34] Natalie: And what was your reaction? Personal reaction to hearing this story about her education journey?

[14:41] Tiffany: It explained so much about my mother. Because my whole life my mother, ever since I was a child my mother’s instilled this extremely strong love and affection for or affinity for learning, and always wanting to learn, and always wanting to read and education is always so important, and always doing your homework, and being grateful that you could go to school, and being able to study, and do whatever I wanted to do. And that education was going to help me in life, that it can really improve your life. Because as well I remember when I was growing up my mom was going to night school. Like finishing her degree, you know. And that to me is a big part of my childhood as well because I remember my mom would get home at like eight or nine o’ clock after her classes and you know. I’d always be like, “I hope mom’s okay,” because she doesn’t like driving at night. So I’d be like, “Oh I hope mom’s okay,” coming home at night from her class. And I remember our dad would like take care of us or we would go to like my grandmother’s house while my mom’s at night school trying to finish her degree. So, it’s very much impacted seeing someone work so hard for their education and then hearing about it also from her history and from her past as well . So she still had that same perseverance and tenacity that education is her way forward. And it is and so I was talking about it with her again last night just refreshing my brain and she mentioned how she’s just so grateful that her life now is as far away as what her life used to be. You know, forty years ago. She’s been in the United States for thirty-nine years, thirty-eight years… So, a very long time, but yeah. I felt amazed honestly. I was like, well I can’t complain about not wanting to study [laughs]. 

[16:45] Natalie: Do you see any of your mom’s personality in you and how you face challenges? Or do you seek her as an inspiration when you’re in those moments? 

[16:57] Tiffany: I’m trying to think… Let’s see… Definitely that knowledge is…Or I guess research, learning. Trying to figure out what’s going. Like trying to get as much of the facts as you can and the details that you can make a better decision about something. Yeah, definitely that like organizing your thoughts, especially when it came to when I was growing up as a student. And then also making decisions about, you know, what I wanted to do with my life or even just in my day to day stuff, I’m like how would my mom think about this? How would she do that? So she would get as much information as she could and then organize that and then from there she’d make a decision. So, she’s not a very impulsive person. She’s not rash. She’s very, she’s a deep thinker, and that was part of it. And then another part of it is always having these wonderfully inspiring conversations with my mom about topics like religions, we’re Buddhist, so you know growing up there weren’t too many Buddhist around us. Many people were… everyone’s mixed, everyone’s Christian or Catholic, or Jewish or Muslim or whatever, right. And so thoughts about religion or politics. Even like I remember being a young kid and like discussing my mom openly discussing all those things like that with me. And, just if anything my mom she was learning about something then she would try to teach it to me as well. And then so I feel like my foundation of how I view the world and my perspective in terms of using information as a way to figure out and navigate my way through the world is a huge part, huge in part because of her. So, I think that’s how I also handle things and that’s part of my personality and her personality as well. We like to collect information and then make a decision. Yeah.

[19:06] Natalie: And in your household were these stories of your family or your family’s stories were they shared openly by your parents?

[19:16] Tiffany: Not really. No I would say. Like for my mother at least the history that she can remember about her family only goes so far as her great-grandparents. Or not even her great-grandparents, sorry. Her grandparents because she said that they were you know. Most people in her family were just working class they, her mom’s side of the family they always had like land. They worked the land. They had like a farm and so they’d always do that. My grandfather’s family, my grandfather’s a musician and his family before him they were also farmers. And so, they’re very people of the land and so. It’s sort of the same thing like the same so she told me that she doesn’t really know too much about her… anyone after or before her grandmother. And the same thing applies for my father’s side of the family. As well as, again when you’re in a genocide and even before that. You weren’t really, you know when you’re just a farmer you don’t record. You don’t document your life history your family history and so they’re not very educated you know. Like they didn’t, like most people didn’t really go to school they just worked the land. And you’re going to work the land till the day you die. It wasn’t really expected for you to go to school or to get an education or anything like that. My mom told me a part of also why she wanted to learn so much is because when she was, when she was young her mom… no sorry yeah, her mom’s brother which is her uncle he was a scholar. Like he was like a really good scholar. He went to this monastery and all these things like that. And she would look up to him because he was the only man in the family and he was a scholar and he was like very well educated and she said that she actually saw… Because once the genocide started picking up and the war and everything. The government was ethnic cleansing all of the educators and anyone who had, was a doctor, teacher, or lawyer. Anything with any sort of elite background or education. And so she told me how the day she was with her little baby sister and the soldiers came like the special forces came and they put a trash bag over her uncle’s head because he was a scholar and they killed him. Because they didn’t want him to be, you know, resisting whatever propaganda they were putting out, especially because Communism and all that. She says that that stuck with her that they killed him because he was an educator. Because he was a scholar and so she said that part of it was why she wanted to learn so much. Is to see if she could get away from that as well. Ain’t that crazy?

[22:18] Natalie: Do you think storytelling is important within families?

[22:24] Tiffany: Oh, for sure. Now that I think about it. I’m trying to think if any family hangout or family reunions did we ever talk about it. Um, in terms of our family history, no. People wouldn’t really share about our family history too much. To be honest I didn’t even know certain things about my grandparents until the last five years. Like for example that my mom’s dad that he speaks Thai apparently because when he was younger his parents sent him to Thailand for five years to avoid serving in the military and that’s how my grandfather speaks Thai. I mean I just discovered five years ago that my grandfather speaks English [laughs] because I was never allowed to speak English with him. I always had to speak in Khmer. Which is the good thing. The good thing about my family is they still talk about… it wasn’t so much family storytelling like family stories as it was growing up I’d always hear our family talking about lessons from Buddha. So, it was more that just more than hearing about my great-grandparents or any of my aunts or uncles that passed away. I didn’t hear anything about them or any of the family we still had behind in Cambodia. Like I never heard about them, not really. But I would always hear about you know in this life we live this way cause Buddha says it’s like this. Or cause Buddha recommends we do that. And to be honest its actually quite a very like Buddhist thing is to live more in the present and so it actually, that makes a lot more sense especially because my family didn’t really talk about the past because it’s true for us the past is the past. It’s over and done with and we take whatever lessons that we pass down through the generations and things like that. It’s not so much the stories as it’s the lessons and how I guess Buddhism plays a part in our lives. Because my family is very, very, Buddhist. Yeah, that’s my biggest memory. So, story-telling in terms of family not so much but story telling in terms of life lessons and Buddhism and how it works all together and how we should be moving forward in the present and things like that I feel like have also had a big impact on me.

[24:58] Natalie: That’s so interesting, that way of thinking.

[25:00] Tiffany: Isn’t it? Right. 

[25:01] Natalie: You’re bringing the past into the future, but not in a direct way. It’s kinda like what have we taken from that experience. So interesting. 

[25:10] Tiffany: Even to this day we don’t really talk about past family members. We talk about like the lessons that we learned in temple or from the monks or from Buddhism and how they can apply to us now. I feel like that makes a lot more sense now growing up. Now that I’m older. I’m just having an epiphany right this second [laughs]. Because Buddhism is definitely heavily about the present. We don’t focus on the past so much. That makes sense. Now. 

[25:43] Natalie: And, do you see yourself reflected in history? In what you read and you see and what you grew up reading and seeing? 

[25:53] Tiffany: In terms of mainstream history, no. Like in the textbooks that we grew up learning from, I mean… the only times they would ever really mention Cambodia would be when they would discuss Communism and dictatorships. Whenever we learned all the different kinds of governments that exists and democracy, republic, whatever. And how like Cambodia used to be a monarchy and then there was a coup and that abolished the monarchy and then it became a republic. It following in the footsteps of China which is the poster child for Communism and all of that and we would study, you know they would bring up Pol Pot. The good thing is because of where I grew up, Long Beach, there’s a very large population of Cambodian immigrants or children of Cambodian immigrants. You know, Cambodian ancestry and so we would talk about it a bit more because it was a lot more heavily depicted in our city because you know there’s restaurant and stores and like every donut shop was basically owned by a Cambodian immigrant. So you’re bound to hear about it and so everyone had Cambodian friend or something. And so where we grew up we would talk about it a bit more because you know it’s kind of part of the foundation of our history. Our city’s history, but when I got to university for example when I would take like Asian studies classes they would really focus more on the East Asians or they would focus on the Islander Asians. Malaysia, Singapore the Philippines or China, Japan, Korea. Even North Korea gets talked about way more. They are a modern-day dictatorship, but you know like the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot that was a genocide. That was a very recent history. That was only forty, fifty years ago and millions of people were killed. A whole country’s infrastructure and history completely wiped out burned to the ground and you’ve got all these bodies just lying under all these rice paddies. People are still just planting more rice paddies on top of because you have to move forward. It’s the base of our current country’s history right now. In terms of like seeing myself reflected in history not so much. Only in small paragraphs [laughs] in a history book. Or if you know somebody decides to ask me about it, but aside from that not really.

[28:39] Natalie: And do you think history is accessible to everybody?

[28:44] Tiffany: Yes and no. Yes because we have the internet. So you can easily you know Google search anything or you can find the answers on the internet or what not. But, it’s the lack of motivation to do it. Or the desire to think deeper into it. I think the only people who I’ve come across in my life outside of my hometown like especially as we have been traveling. As I’ve been traveling the last ten years. If I say, well first off everyone thinks I’m Filipina which I am not [laughs]. But I get that a lot and so then I say “No, I can see why you think that, but I’m Cambodian.” And then they realize, “Oh Cambodia is very close to the Philippines.” Or sometimes they’ll be like, “Cambodia? Where’s Cambodia?” And then I’ll be like “Oh do you know where Thailand is?” And like, “Yeah I know what Thailand is,” and I say “Oh, it’s right next door.” When people ask me, usually it’s people who are familiar with politics or who enjoy history of the world. They’re the ones that when I meet them they are a bit more educated than the normal citizen. But typically when I say that I am from Cambodia or things like that people don’t really know, but it is technically accessible. People just don’t want to, or people don’t think to access it. 

[30:16] Natalie: Do you find that recently or in the last few years people are wanting to learn more about their own culture? And kind of step away from the main narrative of history? 

[30:26] Tiffany: Oh, for sure. For sure. Especially when all those you know DNA testing kits came out. Like years ago, right? Like I know it was a huge thing and a lot of people were trying to get their DNA tested and then other people were like, “No I don’t want the government to have my DNA.” It’s like the government technically already has your DNA [laughs].  But, no a lot of my friends from all different ethnic backgrounds. More so in the United States, it’s not really common outside of the United States to do that which makes sense because the United States is the the epitome of a melting pot of different cultures and different nationalities and all that stuff. So, it’s definitely more common in the United States, but I do have a lot of friends who either are mostly children of immigrants, as most of us are. And they would do all these DNA tests to find out that they are you know 23 percent from the Iberian Peninsula or if they are Hispanic or they’re like 13 percent Chinese if they come from you know the more Asian countries. It was like a weird breakdown. It’s weird to think of it because I’ve some friends for example one of my best friends she’s Cambodian. She was born in Cambodia, she was raised in Cambodia for a few years, and then she moved here when she was in primary school. But the thing is ethnically she’s Chinese and so she’s very, very, Chinese looking in terms of that, right. But the thing is that I’m ethnically more Cambodian than she is, but then she’s more Cambodian than I am in the sense that she speaks the language more fluently she was born there. She grew up there, you know. But the cool thing is that even though she was born and raised there and I was born and raised in America, but because of the cultural background and the influence from our families we can speak Khmer to each other, we can talk about different foods or dishes or things that our parents talk about or say or things that happened in America or things that happened in Cambodia in relation to our cultural background. But it is interesting to think that if she were to take a test she would be Chinese, right. But she’s culturally Cambodia. Whereas you know I am ethnically Cambodian and mixed and Chinese or whatever, but culturally I am a little bit of everything. I’m American, I was born in America, raised in America. So I’m very American, but at the same time when people look at me that’s not the thing that they see. They don’t see my nationality. They see my ethnic background and so a lot of, a lot of people ask about that and yeah it’s weird to think that. No, it’s not weird I guess. It’s cool to think that people are trying to dig deeper into their roots and see where they’re coming from. I mean it doesn’t, it’s not going to drastically change your life I don’t think. But it’s a good way to sort of get a better footing about who you are in the world. Because to be honest everyone’s still trying to find their identity. Everyone’s always trying to figure out who they are, where they come from, where they are going. Where they’re at. It’s just like another way to figure out who you are. I think it’s a lot of people are definitely trying to figure out where they come from which is cool. 

[34:09] Natalie: It’s interesting how the world perceives you and how you think of yourself can sometimes be so different…  

[34:17] Tiffany: Especially…   

[34:18] Natalie: Go ahead…

[34:18] Tiffany: Sorry, I was just going to say especially if you’re multi-lingual. Right, like if you speak different languages. I guess that’s the thing. That’s such a typical immigrant, a child of immigrant story. Is you have you’re essentially forced to grow up in two different cultures at the same time. Whether they are similar or not so similar. But you have to straddle however many worlds you have to you know like even for me and my friends growing up. A lot of us are Cambodian, but we’d also celebrate Chinese holidays and Vietnamese holidays and we’d celebrate Thai holidays. Also, American holidays and we would go to temple, but then we’d also go to American school. And at home we would eat all this beautiful, wonderful, delicious tasting asian food and then at school we would have like chicken nuggets, and like hamburgers, and like sloppy joes [laughs] and stuff. So it’s understandable why you would be confused because that’s such a specific story to being raised outside of your quote, un-quote original country or your homeland, you know. But what were you going to say? Sorry. 

[35:31] Natalie: I was going to ask you if there’s anything about your culture that you would like to learn more about or know more about?

[35:40] Tiffany: Everything. And, it’s not a cop-out answer it’s literally because the history of Cambodia has essentially been erased due to this dictatorship. Due to the dictatorship. Cambodia, a long long time ago used to be a massive kingdom and then eventually over the years it broke apart it broke down and all that stuff, right. So, in terms of that the history is still there because that’s a bit more about a world known history. Like I mean Angkor Wat is the biggest still in-tact temple in the world. And it’s like the number one most visited monument in the world, right? So everyone knows Cambodia for that. For Angkor Wat, it’s literally on our flag [laughs] it’s so representative of our country and like our culture. But anything, I want to say, like before the sixties in Cambodia is basically, is between the ancient period of the ruins and the kingdoms and all that and then up until about sixty years ago. That history is basically gone because like I said. If you have no history, if you don’t have the written documents and things like that and you’re just and people aren’t really talking about it either you, it’s almost like it’s a blank slate or it’s sort of blurry. There’s like there’s bits and pieces here and, but overall if you ask any person from Cambodia or anyone with Cambodian ancestry they wouldn’t be able to tell you the history of the country much less their family. In the past like one-hundred years and even then that’s being generous. So, yeah. It’s difficult. 

[37:44] Natalie: And, in the future if you have children do you think you’ll be sharing these stories with your family [about] your mother? 

[37:55] Tiffany: If I decide to have kids [laughs]. If I decide to have kids or even if I decide not to have kids but to like my friend’s children or to my nieces and nephews, right. Which is happening now because my cousins are having children, so you know. To my nieces and nephews definitely. I mean, because a lot of I mean as in most cultures food is such a, is such a, what’s the word? It brings together everything because history and food is also history. And, then when you’re having a meal, like a home meal and you get to start talking about, you know that’s when the older generation tends to start spewing all these stories about you like, “When I was younger.” You know, right? And you’re just sitting at the dinner table just having to listen to it because you’re eating. But it’s cool because it makes people relax and open up which is amazing. Which is what I love about food. I mean the best conversations I’ve had with anyone in my family about our family at least and about our history and about Cambodia it’s always been over food. Because I’ll ask because I’m always so interested. Even when I was a kid I was interested like, “Mommy, daddy, why is the food that we eat at home different then the food that like you know, Nicole eats at home or why is it different from like the food that like Yesenia eats at home?” you know. Like why is, I was alway so curious, why is that? And then, my parents would explain it to me like, “Oh where we come from there’s this and we use these ingredients because it’s more common,” and you know the French colonized Cambodia for a while as well and that’s why with our curries, in India you eat curry but you eat curry with naan, that’s the bread that they eat it with. And in Thailand they eat it, usually they eat curry with rice. In Cambodia we eat curry with a baguette. In Vietnam and Cambodia we eat curries with baguettes because that’s the influence that was how we were colonized and stuff like that. And even now, one of my favorite sandwiches in the world is called Banh Mi, which is a Vietnamese sandwich but it’s also very, very, very, extremely popular in Cambodia. And amongst Cambodians and it’s a baguette and then you put mayonnaise and pate and you put a little bit of soy sauce and all these like…and that’s the French part, that’s the European influence. And then all the filling inside of it like the pickled vegetables and the cured meat and stuff that’s very much more South East Asian. So, it’s the combination of both and that’s the history. You know. And so,  I think, I know I’ll be definitely telling my whoever the little children in my life are going to be, through food like I’ll be cooking for them because Cambodian food is amazing. Like, South East Asian food is honestly the best. I will say it right there. I claimed it. But I remember growing up, learning about how to make it and the ingredients, and why we use these ingredients because it adds this flavor to this food. And it comes from this part. That’s how I was taught about the food I grew up eating. So I definitely want to do that for my kids or for my nieces and nephews because that’s what I do now with my friends. Like when I tell my friends.. you know me. I cook. I cook well and so the thing is any time I have like a family party, and my friends always asking me, “Are your parents going to cook?” I’m like yes, “they’re going to make Cambodian food?” Yes, obviously. “Alright cool, I’ll be there.” Right. Like pizza, hamburgers, cool. French fries, cool, right. But you can have that any day. But like Cambodian food it’s not common. It’s difficult to find even in my hometown of Long Beach where there is this huge Cambodian population. It’s still not that easy to find a good Cambodian restaurant. So that’s what I want to do as well. I want to open up a restaurant. Hopefully, if the world lets me. If the universe lets me. I still don’t know where because I would want as many people to eat as possible because it’s so good, and actually Cambodian food and culture is actually becoming a bit more popular now thanks to like social media which is quite nice. So, it’s really cool to see that. To see my own culture sort of popping off and I guess being parallel to the mainstream narrative, but still being able to stay in its niche and be appreciated and not get bastardized by like I don’t know some website on the internet that teaches you how to eat Asian food coming from a non-Asian person, but it’s like a little weird to take, but yeah. So definitely, I’d definitely be talking about it. But for me, food has always been the avenue in which I share my history and my culture. 

[42:59] Natalie: I think those are all the questions I had for you. But is there anything you want to add about your mom’s story or just anything in general?

[43:08] Tiffany: Yeah, so the reason why I chose this story for my mom or with my mom is because she’s still learning. Even now my mom goes to the library and she still has her library card and she goes to check out books about whatever she wants to read about whatever she wants to learn about and I remember it was always so cool that my mom would be like, “Do you want to go to the library today?” And I’d be like, “Yes!” And it’s still I would say kind of rare especially now-a-days where most kids want to be on the Internet they want to be on YouTube or they want to be on Instagram. They want to be on their iPads and their phones and they’re not as interested in books and learning at a slower pace. Because when you’re on the internet you get overwhelmed with so much information that it doesn’t even stick. Or sometimes you get overloaded and then you know these weird random facts, but maybe they’re not as in depth as you want them to be. My mom taught me growing up that education… for as long as I can remember my mother and I bonded because my mom and I are the more academics and then my dad and my brother were more the sporty kind. They would always go and play sports together and then I would always be with my mom at the library. And so, my mother seeing how education literally changed her life and how she grabbed that opportunity and she ran with it. She flew across the world with it and she didn’t let anyone bring her down. Especially because back then it was a very, very, very, patriarchal society. And our culture is still a technically patriarchal, how do you pronounce that [laughs]. It’s a lot of patriarchy so it’s always the boys do this and the girls have to, you know my mom growing up she had to take care of the kids, she had to change diapers, she had to cook, she had to clean, she had to learn how to sew. The typical woman’s role, right. And she’s like, “I don’t want to do that.” Or she’s like, “I can do it and I like to do it, but I want to be helped.” So in that aspect I feel like my mom has always had more of an opened mind, even especially growing up because she’s the one that went to school in America. She’s the one that studied, she works in a school surrounded by children everyday and she’s always talking to me. She’s always watching the news. She’ll send me messages or articles about random things that she learned and she’ll send me photos of things that she’s reading or some new thing that she’s learned. And my mom’s almost sixty and I think that she has this hunger for knowledge for learning and education because she doesn’t want to be back working in the rice fields eight to ten hours a day. Now, she just loves learning that’s why growing up I never understood when people were like I don’t like reading or I don’t like school. Like I love school [laughs]. I love reading to this day and it’s all thanks to my mom. Like my mom and I wherever we go we’ll always have like a book with us and that’s because of her and so her story of literally, she didn’t step foot into a classroom until she was eleven in a different language at that. She managed to escape a genocide, escape a war, survive being persecuted, and working which was essentially like slavery, like child labor. And she made it to America and she used education to pull herself up and give her family and give herself a good life. And that’s why I told her like, “The reason why I can be here in Spain and do what I do and do whatever I want to do is because you did what you had to do and then you did also kind of what you wanted to do.” Even now my mom tells me that she wants to go back and get a degree in psychology or something like that. My mom is almost sixty and she wants to go back to school and I love that because she’s always giving me the inspiration that I’m never too old to do something. Which is amazing because it’s so true because you are never too old to do something unless like physically you cannot do it. But mentally, if you’re still good mentally I don’t see why not. So, I feel like that’s the best thing, best lesson I’ve learned from my mom is that you’re strong enough if you have the will and the perseverance to do what you want and that education isn’t, it’s not just like formal education either. It’s just like learning from life and learning from people. And traveling is always the best education. 

[48:26] Natalie: Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing her story. 

[48:31] Tiffany: Thanks for having me. It’s so nice to talk to you and be listened. 

[48:36] Natalie: You too [laughs]

[48:38] Tiffany: And be heard, sorry. 

[48:39] Natalie: Let me stop the recording.