UNAPOLOGETIC AND UNRELENTING IMMIGRANT HOPE
UNAPOLOGETIC AND UNRELENTING IMMIGRANT HOPE
By Mayra Flores
“Hope is a complicated thing for me.”
Elizabeth Nguyen lives at home with her elderly parents. She works three jobs - as a physical educator and trainer for people who have had cardiac events, as an English teacher for children and adults, but primarily Japanese students, and as a fitness instructor. “I enjoy the variety,” she says. “I like a lot of things and I have a very hard time sitting in a box.” For her, the pandemic changed only her travel patterns, but never her fearlessness - or drive. She continued teaching virtually, and in the fall, she embarked on a new endeavor - a soap-making business: Opera Soap Co., LLC.
“I like a lot of things and I have a very hard time sitting in a box.”
She’s a jungle witch, or at least that’s what she says to me with glee in her voice. She grows countless plants - many that she plans on using in her soaps once they’re mature enough to harvest. The catalyst for this latest venture - in the midst of a global pandemic - was a personal one. She has sensitive skin and as a gardener, she washes her slender hands a lot. Add the amount of hand washing and sanitizer due to COVID precautions and her hands were getting dried out. “I’ve always wanted to have my own business,” she says. “The 2008/2009 recession taught me that I couldn’t survive comfortably in the corporate world because of the stress of always being under the ax. Journalism taught me to always have a backup plan and to ask the right questions.” This drive to create, build up and grow something from nothing comes from her immigrant roots, her parents’ struggles and successes. They think she takes too many risks, she tells me. But so did they.
“This drive to create, build up and grow something from nothing comes from her immigrant roots, her parents’ struggles and successes.”
Both her parents came to the United States from Vietnam. Her father, a Vietnamese citizen, had worked with the US Army Green Berets as a translator. When Saigon fell, he escaped with his family. They snuck out in the bottom of a hollowed-out ambulance and made their way to Guam, then Puerto Rico and finally San José. Her mother, an agricultural engineer, was not as lucky. She attempted to escape, was caught and sent to a labor camp. Her second attempt was successful, with the help of an Austrian embassy, a trip to Cambodia and then a letter from a Senator in Chicago. At 5’0, 95 pounds Mrs. Nguyen carried rocks in a labor camp, escaped a war-torn country and started her life over in another country. My mother is magic. She’s the strongest person I know,” Liz says.
“At 5’0, 95 pounds Mrs. Nguyen carried rocks in a labor camp, escaped a war-torn country and started her life over in another country.”
The time spent sheltering in place has been good for her garden, her entrepreneurial spirit and family life but the social unrest and most recently violence against the Asian community has Liz on edge and her voice trembles as she talks about it.
“Kung Flu. Wuhan Virus. Chinese Virus.” Even her Japanese students began feeling targeted, being asked whether they were Chinese.
“Then we started seeing the assaults. And it’s not like a young person is getting assaulted. It’s someone’s grandma or grandpa who didn’t do anything to hurt you.”
Liz lives in the East Side, in the home her parents first moved into when they arrived in the states. They spend most of their days indoors and avoid venturing out for fear of violence but she doesn’t think it will last.
“I think there’s hope for everybody,” she says. “I always have hope in my ability to get back up.”
“I think there’s hope for everybody.”