Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Spotlight - Karen Luong

Today's Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month?spotlight is brought to you by our Karen Luong , attorney and co-lead of Husch Blackwell 's Psychedelic and Emerging Therapies practice group.

????: "What does AAPI History Month mean to you personally?"

??????????:?"As the first generation daughter of refugees of the Vietnam War, AAPI History Month means reconnecting with my heritage and my family’s history, which is rooted in conflict, desperation, and the ingenuity and fortitude that comes from necessity.?

In 2007, I went back to Saigon with my father, who took me to the places he and my mom used to go on dates (she has since passed away) and showed me the neighborhood they used to live in, and the bullet holes that still riddle the telephone poles there.?Touching these holes and looking down the street where so many lost everything, even their lives, I remember my mom explaining how they set off on a boat and were picked up by a Hong Kong cruise ship, which provided them passage to a refugee camp.?She told me how she took an empty bowl and walked among the passengers asking for a bite of rice from each to fill a bowl so she and my father might have something to eat.?How they eventually met the captain, a kind man who gave her his coat, and my mother kept it until she got to America, only discarding it one day when she looked and realized it was in tatters.?How embarrassed she was when the staff at my daycare asked her one day why she wore the same thing to drop me off every day because she only owned one work outfit to go to the office job she was so proud to have landed.?

What those before me experienced is something I can’t fathom, but those experiences are an indelible part of my past.?When I think of the hardship my family endured during this time, and the bravery it took to come to a new country, learn its language, and build from nothing, I’m in awe that just a generation later, here I sit as an attorney at Husch Blackwell , with so many opportunities before me that would have been impossible had they not cast off on that small boat, destined for who-knows-where, so many years ago.?

I think it is important to re-tell and remember these stories because they speak to the perseverance of an entire generation and the hope that that generation held for us – and through this frame, we can more clearly see how far we have come, and how much more we can yet achieve."?

?? Cholon neighborhood, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam.?This is a photo Karen took of the neighborhood her father and mother grew up in, during the 2007 trip she mentions.

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