A Kindred Heart for Refugee Women

The war had already made her a widow. Now horror threatened again. Communist troops were on Saigon’s doorstep. The city she was raised in and whose kindergarten children she taught was in chaos. It would fall the next day, April 30, 1975. Frightened, Theresa Do rushed to the airport with her two young daughters, other family members and little else.

The Americans and their military planes were waiting. Final stop was the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton and the beginning of a new life and a new commitment. There were hardships, a painful period of adjustment to curious American ways and, over the years, success. It was an immigrant tale of hard work, pluck and determination right out of the history books.

While Indochinese refugees faced common obstacles, it was Do’s experience, both personal and through her work at the county welfare department, that women refugees often suffered more. They were more prone to isolation, had more difficulty adjusting, were more ignored.

And so several years ago, she founded San Diego’s Refugee Women’s Assn., a nonprofit, all-volunteer group unlike any other in the county.

Starting was one thing, getting it going was another.

Among the group’s goals are advocating women’s rights, women’s self-sufficiency and women’s mutual assistance. In a culture where women were taught to be submissive to men, this attempt at coaching American-brand assertiveness was viewed with some skepticism, particularly by males.

Some men who brought their wives to the initial gatherings would make condescending and sarcastic remarks, pointedly demanding to know if Do was trying to break up families, or pushing women to divorce their husbands or, just as bad, attempting to transform their women into American clones.

“It was very delicate,” Do (pronounced Doe) said. “Being a refugee is hardest on women. They are isolated while men go to work and children go to school. Many have problems adjusting to this country. Refugee women don’t understand what freedom is. They get confused and this can lead to family problems. Children get Americanized so quick that parents can’t keep up. The husband-and-wife relationship suffers.”

Do sent out 100 letters inviting women to the first Refugee Women’s Assn. meeting in 1983. Ninety-nine showed up. The other woman wanted to attend but couldn’t.

The women elected officers and volunteered a day a week to take calls.

Today the group has about 400 members, prints 5,000 copies of a monthly, multilanguage newsletter and is involved in numerous activities, including helping refugee women find jobs and assimilate, providing a friendly ear and, just as important, promoting the preservation of Indochinese culture.

The organization, composed entirely of refugee women, represents four main Indochinese communities--Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian and Hmong.

Through its newsletter, the group presses the Indochinese community at large to recognize its responsibility to help new arrivals, such as former political prisoners who might have trouble reunifying with families whose members have adapted to a new way of life. Or it might urge those who provide health care to give special attention to women who have suffered lifelong emotional trauma after being raped and sexually abused during their refugee journey.

“Refugees have lots of problems but only their own people can help them emotionally,” Do said, citing a key reason for her group. “Only our people can understand the (native) way of life and things. We understand our own people better.”

The low-profile organization goes about its work quietly, ringing up small but important accomplishments for those inside the Indochinese community. For example, it printed 20,000 911-emergency calling cards in four Indochinese languages telling refugees how to ask for a policeman, a fire truck or an ambulance, a task recognized by the city in 1988, when Mayor Maureen O’Connor presented Do and her group with a special award.

Ruben Rumbaut, San Diego State University sociologist and an expert on Indochinese affairs who directs the nation’s longest-running study of refugee settlement in the United States, said it is hard to underestimate the importance of groups like the Refugee Women’s Assn. that work within the refugee community and provide leadership.

“Our own research has shown the pivotal role of women in the refugee community,” he said. “Official policies tend to miss that and instead focus on the husband or the head of household. The message is that women are somehow less important. In my opinion, that’s misbegotten. It’s bad policy because it ignores the absolutely central role of women in helping families meet their economic and emotional needs.”

It’s estimated that nearly 50,000 Indochinese live in the county, including about 30,000 Vietnamese, he said. Rumbaut says the county is now home to the largest Laotian community in the United States, numbering 12,000 to 15,000 people.

“In many respects, (the women’s association) is dealing with an issue that is expanding in scope,” Rumbaut said, noting that many of those who came in the years after Do were far less sophisticated and bound by more conservative rural traditions.

Margaret Iwanaga-Penrose, executive director of the Union of Pan Asian Communities, an organization that offers an extensive and comprehensive array of social services, said the Refugee Women’s Assn. fills a need.

“They offer recognition and visibility to refugee women who then serve as models for other refugee women. It gives them a voice in male-dominated cultures,” she said.

To understand the Refugee Women’s Assn., you have to know Do, a small, tautly muscled woman of 50. She often wears the ao doi, the traditional dress of Vietnam. Her delicate features and gracious manners mask a fierce energy.

She needed every ounce when she arrived at Camp Pendleton penniless and with barely passable English. She came with nearly 20 of her brothers and sisters and her parents. The rest of her siblings--23 in all--would be part of the leaky armada of boats that later fled Vietnam.

Do was educated in Catholic schools and was relatively well-off. She was a kindergarten teacher in Saigon and also taught French to high school students, skills that didn’t count for much in her new country.

As part of the first-wave of refugees, most in her family were able to find jobs such as dishwashers and waiters.

She eventually heard about a job at the county welfare department, which was beginning to feel the effects of the sudden Vietnamese migration. Do was hired as a case aide, the lowest job on the ladder, and became the first Vietnamese refugee hired by the county. Her job: translate for other refugees seeking aid.

“I didn’t know how to speak well. I used sign language, I wrote things down on paper, I did what I could to make them understand me,” she recalls today, her accent thick but her words clear and precise.

Life was equally chaotic at home. At first, a La Mesa church took the large extended family in. Later, as the family found jobs, they moved out and lived en masse in small apartments.

“We had 20 people in one apartment. We slept on the floor. Everyone would leave early in the morning and come back at night so the landlord wouldn’t know,” she said, laughing at the story.

To learn and improve her English, Do went to night classes at Hoover High School. She also took work-related training classes and began taking and passing various job exams. She became an eligibility worker and kept on going. It took three years, working full-time during the day and attending classes at night, but in 1983, Do earned a masters degree in social work from San Diego State University.

“It was very hard,” she said. “While it might take an American student a couple of hours to read a book, it took me all day. I read with a dictionary next to me to look up the words. I studied into the early morning and then got up to go to work.”

It was while working at the county and doing her thesis work on homebound Vietnamese women refugees that Do became convinced she needed to help in some organized way.

“(Indochinese) women would come to my office at the county all the time. I knew their problems and their needs,” she said.

“Theresa just took up the cause. She went ahead and organized her group,” said Gwen Plank, director of refugee and immigrant services at Catholic Charities, which gave Do support. Though Do seems so much a part of the American mainstream now, Plank said, “she hasn’t left her people or her culture behind.”

Do’s work has attracted attention.

She was named to the state Department of Education’s Advisory Council on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs; she received a migrant and refugee services award from the federal government; she conducts a Vietnamese cultural awareness class at the Police Academy; she speaks to groups of new refugees; she promotes Indochinese culture to young American-born sons and daughters of refugee parents, an effort she says is very important to the Indochinese community’s long-term stability and psychological well-being.

“It’s good to integrate but at the same time we have to preserve our culture,” she said. “We don’t want our children to forget. If you don’t know who you are, you get confused when you get older.”

Do no longer works for the county. She left a couple of years ago and started her own graphics and printing company. She remarried. One of her daughters is an electrical engineer and the other is in medical school.

“It’s very difficult to get Vietnamese women involved without their husbands. We are used to being kings of the family in Vietnam,” said Nguyen Van Nghi, a founder of the Indochinese Mutual Assistance Assn., who met Do in 1975 when she helped him get settled. “She’s had to work very, very hard to keep the organization going. Other women would have given up. We don’t agree on everything, but I believe in her sincerity in working with the community. What’s she’s done is very good and positive.”