Long Beach is home to nearly half a million Cambodian Americans – the largest Khmer population in the United States. Yet while taking classes at the Long Beach Unified School District, Savannah Thy said she rarely saw her own community represented in her daily classes.
“The only time I was taught anything about Cambodia was with the Khmer Rouge,” Thy said, referring to the communist regime that ruled the country in the 1970s. According to his history teachers, Cambodians were victims of genocide and war under this regime. There was no mention of the refugees who had formed a thriving community in Long Beach, nestled along the city’s Anaheim corridor called Cambodia Town.
“I believe there is much more to our culture than just this piece of history,” Thy said.
But now, students across California will have the opportunity to learn more about Cambodian Americans and other Asian communities through the Model Southeast Asian Studies Program, which is the first of its kind in the country.
Although not required, the state’s K-12 teachers can access dozens of suggested lesson plans on Hmong American, Vietnamese American, and Cambodian American history. online to integrate into their classes. The program is available to teachers now, in its entirety or in smaller segments.
“It’s really important to center the people who have lived these histories and these cultures,” said Mariko Manos, head of history and social sciences at the Orange County Department of Education, who led the creation of the California Department of Education curriculum. “For me, that’s what’s missing from our history books.”
The program offers dozens of lesson plans featuring Asian Americans living in the diaspora and the story of how they came to the United States – many as war refugees.
“Most Americans don’t really understand how the refugee community formed in the United States,” said Khatharya Um, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley.
Um, who was a child refugee, said the United States failed to recognize its role in Cambodia’s collapse during the Vietnam War, which contributed to her community’s historical trauma.
“We are here because you were here,” Um said, quoting the late activist and writer Ambalavaner Sivanandan on postcolonial migration. Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, and Hmong refugees are “the human legacy of the wars in which the United States was involved.”
Chan Hobson, a Cambodian genocide survivor, speaks during the “Stories of Resilience and Genocide Survival” speech at the Long Beach convention.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
What is important to Um in this Southeast Asia-specific program is the conscious focus of community voices. The Orange County Department of Education solicited feedback from Hmong, Vietnamese and Cambodian Americans in dozens of iterative listening sessions as the foundation of their research.
Last month, the Orange County Department of Education hosted a two-day academic conference at the Long Beach Hilton to roll out the Cambodian American Studies curriculum modeled after it. More than 500 people attended, coming from as far away as Florida.
“The beauty of this project is that it is built by the community and for the community,” said Tori Phu, one of the school curriculum specialists at the Orange County Department of Education.
Phu grew up in Santa Ana and visited Little Saigon every weekend with his family, but his parents were often reluctant to talk about their experiences during the Vietnam War. She hopes the program will fill a gap for refugee children like her, who have never heard the whole story.
“As you go through the program, you hear stories that could be related to your uncle, your aunt, your mother, your father, your grandfather,” she said through tears of joy.
Cambodian City President Sithea San conducts a video interview during the American Studies in Cambodia conference last month at the Hilton Long Beach.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
Teaching compassion
But Phu said the program also aims to engage students from all backgrounds who may identify with these stories.
“It’s not just for Vietnamese students or students born to Vietnamese refugees that there is a thread that can connect to other cultures as well.”
Tauheedah Graham, a fifth-grade teacher in the San Diego Unified School District, said the Long Beach conference broadened her perspective as an educator who is not Cambodian-American.
“As an African American, I know this is my story. Then I [listened] stories from the Killing Field…the year I was born [in] 1979,” Graham said. “I think it just reveals that we all go through so much trauma.”
Graham plans to share what she learned from the conference with her younger students.
Sithary Ly holds a postcard showing a man dressed in traditional Cambodian clothing playing skor thom drums.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
An opportunity to heal and demonstrate resilience
For many scholars and activists, it felt as if the new curriculum was a long-awaited recognition after erasure and neglect left Southeast Asian communities underheard and underserved. Income inequality is highest among Asian Americans, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center. About 1 in 10 Asian Americans live in poverty, but that rate rises to 17 percent for Hmong Americans and doubles to nearly 1 in 5 for Cambodian Americans.
“When you don’t know the different communities and what they’ve been through, we also don’t get federal funds to be able to fund different community initiatives,” said Laura Ouk, a writer on the Cambodian-American curriculum .
Chia Vang, professor of history and vice chancellor for inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, sees the three-pronged program as a testament to the resilience of Southeast Asian communities. His family resettled in St. Paul, Minnesota, home to the highest concentration of Hmong living in the United States.
“People never thought we could survive in this country because we came from a more agrarian background,” Vang said. “A program like this completely contradicts these predictions. In fact, not only have we survived, but we are actually thriving by telling our own stories in this way. »
As ethnic studies faces nationwide backlash, other states, like Wisconsin, could follow California’s lead. Last year, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signed a bill making Hmong American and Asian American studies mandatory in grades K-12.
Thy was raised by her grandmother, listening to stories about Cambodians and performing traditional Cambodian classical dances with the Modern Apsara company. But she added that many Cambodian-Americans have not had the same access to their culture and history.
“It’s very sad to see some children my age not being able to talk to their grandparents because of the language barrier,” Thy said.
But she’s excited to see younger generations, like her little cousin, have the chance to learn more about their community through the school program.
“I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a very long time and I just hope that the next generations can learn more about their culture,” Thy said.
Joy Okada, left, and Laura Ouk, right, pose for a portrait after speaking during the class “Cambodian American Studies in English: and Authentic Strategies and Approaches for Teaching Cambodian American History.”
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
