Student finds enlightenment in an embrace with her heritage
By Cynthia Banham
November 25 2002


Happy to be Australian ... Thao Nguyen has overcome her identity crisis.

When Thao Nguyen was 10 years old she always prayed to God that one day she would wake up with blond hair and blue eyes. "It seemed you'd be more accepted if you were white," she says.

Now 22 and in her third year of a commerce/law degree at Sydney University, Nguyen says she had an identity crisis between the ages of 10 and 19, when she would try to surround herself with only "white" friends.

Ms Nguyen was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, her parents and older brother were born in Vietnam, and her younger brother in Australia. The family came to Australia as refugees in 1980.

Her struggle with who she was was partly triggered by her first trip to Vietnam aged 11. She was thrown into confusion after reading on her passport that her nationality was Australian. "I thought Australia was white and I never called myself Australian."

Today, however, she is happy to do so.

The lesson she learnt from her teenage years was that while migrants have a responsibility to understand the culture of their new home, "it's important to cherish traditional values because that's what you are".

Ms Nguyen "got in touch with herself" after taking a year off from her studies and visiting Vietnam to do some humanitarian work.

"It was a very enlightening experience and a turning point where I realised I had a sense of who I was. I wasn't completely Vietnamese in an Australian society, nor completely Australian in a Vietnamese society. I was a hybrid of the two and that was OK."

Ms Nguyen believes Australia is a tolerant society, though one lacking in understanding.

To her, the most important social issue facing the country is "the notion of multiculturalism, and immigration and refugees all tied in together".

Australia is at a crossroads. In her home suburb of Bankstown, she says, there is an increasing amount of graffiti that says "Lebanese go home" or "Vietnamese are criminals".

"You feel it; people are looking at you differently. It's really scary. A lot of people don't realise, but at a grass roots level things are changing.

"Either we embrace foreigners and multiculturalism or we proceed along a path of division."

Source: www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697986276.html

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