How does the áo dài feature in the life of the Vietnamese Americans?

Below is a personal account by Bích Vân:

I can count on one hand the number of times that I have worn an áo dài, but looking back, these were the fives most significant times in my life:

My first memory of wearing an áo dài was when my entire family was baptized. Within a year of our arrival in Iowa, the Lutheran Church in the small Midwestern town that had sponsored and become a part of their community. Pictures of the baptism chow the pink, light blue, pale green and maroon áo dài we wore when the 8 members of my family and my aunt were surrounded by our sponsors.

At age 8, my lack of a figure made my áo dài look like two rectangles sewn together. Nevertheless, I was exotic in the eyes of my curious young friends. It felt as if I were shedding my past when I took off that áo dài and hung it in the closet. That maroon áo dài remained in the closet through grade school, adolescence, and high school' it was as hidden as my Vietnamese heritage was dormant behind my new American life. From that day on, there was a void on the wall in our house where the altar and incense urns had been. Thereafter, when asked about my religion, I answered that I was Lutheran. Little did I know that many thousands of miles away, a Buddhist altar was prominently displayed in my father's ancestral home.

The second time I donned an áo dài was in college. Like everyone else, I was trying to find an association to join. After experimenting with a sorority for a semester, I drifted to the Palestinian Society. This was followed by a brief dalliance with New Wave, a group of social and political activists, before I fortuitously saw a sign saying "Vietnamese Students Association" on the door at the Student Union. After several inquiries, I learned of the next meeting date. I was unprepared for the warm reception. With only about fifty Vietnamese in the town and a couple dozen Vietnamese students on campus, the Vietnamese Students Association was delighted to have another warm body to join their Tết celebration. I felt needed.

Since I could not sing or play a musical instrument, I was asked to join five other female members in a spring fan dance. The white áo dài I performed in was borrowed from one of the other dancers. I looked awkward and out of place among the other dancers because I was larger and taller. In addition to physical differences, our circumstances were different. By happenstance, my family had left Việt Nam in 1975, and, after a direct and uneventful trans-Pacific sea voyage, resettled quickly in the United States and assimilated. Most of my Vietnamese-American acquaintances had fled Việt Nam by boat in the 1980s for political or economic reasons; after a hazardous voyage, they had waited up to 2 years in a refugee camp in another Asian country to be screened for entry to the United States.

The other Vietnamese American had recently arrived in the United States through family sponsorship; their last celebration of Tết in Việt Nam was still fresh in their minds. Whereas their Vietnamese was fluent, I could only stutter a few words from lack of practice, for I had grown up in a town where my family was the only Vietnamese family. I seldom spoke Vietnamese to my parents. What linked me to my new Vietnamese American friends was the áo dài. Other connections I had with them had worn out through a decade of living in the United States. Participating in their efforts to maintain our Vietnamese culture and tradition, I was inspired to rekindle the culture that still permeated my house, but which was only discernible to my parents.

The third time I was dressed in an áo dài was on my wedding day. Several years earlier, my sister had celebrated a picture-perfect, traditional church wedding. On her wedding day, wearing a teal bridesmaid's dress, I stood next to my sister, who was shimmering in her beautiful white bridal gown. I knew I could not and did not want to replicate her wedding. On our wedding day, standing up at the altar, my husband and I were embraced by my family on the left wearing áo dài and my husband's family on the right, wearing suits and dresses.

For my husband's relatives and most of our friends, it was the first time they had seen a bride in red. My áo dài was hand tailored by my father from the traditional Vietnamese red and gold silk bridal-gown material, which a friends's daughter had purchased on a trip to Việt Nam. Because I had lived in a different town from my parents, I did not have time to try on the white pants worn beneath the áo dài. On my wedding day to my dismay, I realized that the pants were too short and did not fashionably cover my high heels. Although most of the guest were not familiar with how an áo dài was worn and did not notice anything amiss in my disclosed shoes, I still felt embarrassed and self-conscious. But these feelings soon dissipated when I heard the pastor's words, "... the matrimony of Darin and Vân, the union of the West and East..."

I was in my parents' hometown, Điện Dương, located a few km from Hội An, when I wore my 4th áo dài. I had been teaching English as a volunteer at the University of Huế. Each week, one to two students asked permission for a leave of absence to go to their quê hương (native land) for ngày giỗ, the death anniversary of an ancestor. In November, it was my turn to inform my students that I would go to my parents' home village for my grandfather's death anniversary. For several days and during the bus ride to Điện Dương, I rehearsed my Vietnamese speech, which the guard at our guest house in Huế had helped me draft.

The guard had advised me to placate my relatives by explaining why I didn't marry a Vietnamese. He suggested I tell them I had searched for many years, but there were no Vietnamese men in Iowa. So, as precious years passed, what was a girl to do? I had to settle for a Caucasian American. "Xin thông cảm (please sympathize with me)".

Sitting in my áo dài in Hội An while waiting for my cousin to arrive to take me to Điện Dương, I remembered the last time I was in Hội An with my father. In 1995, after an absence of 20 years, my parents, my youngest brother and I returned to Việt Nam and to my parents' home village. We rented a van and traveled from Hồ Chí Minh City to Điện Dương and to Hà Nội and back to Hội An. In my father's mind, he was still Vietnamese, but everywhere he went, his appearance deceived him. His shorts, T-shirt, cap, sneakers, and his sturdy children told the locals he was no longer one of them. They called him a "Việt kiều" or "Overseas Vietnamese"

Hearing this term and the manner in which it was uttered startled and visibly offended my father. He was a man of principle. There could be no gray. He was Vietnamese, and no adjective could precede or follow this. He was particularly upset at young Vietnamese children calling him a Việt kiều. My father had lived most of his life in Việt Nam, had buried his parents here, and had lost his brother and his village. He had fought in and had intimately suffered from the ravages of a war the youths of today cannot know.

One day when I came out of the hotel in Hội An, I saw a crowd congregating around a man. At first I didn't recognize him. He was dressed in the traditional black áo dài and white pants at ancestral ceremonies. "Let's see if they'll call me Việt Kiều now", my father muttered as he marched down the streets in his áo dài, trailed by my cousins, brother, and me. He made a peculiar sight, carrying his briefcase in one hand. But I didn't hear anyone call him Việt Kiều. They were probably too surprised to say anything.

Not long thereafter, I returned for my grandfather's death anniversary. My cousin arrived and took me by motorbike along a narrow, pot-hole infested road to Điện Dương. The village had visibly prospered since my family's visit in 1995. My cousins were all doing better. In place of the tin corrugated huts that had been destroyed by a storm the previous year stood 2 new, one-story cement houses. After the death anniversary ceremony, my cousins escorted me to light incenses at my ancestors' graves.

Once, in the United States, I had upset my father by questioning his giving money to my cousins to build the graves and put money in cement slabs for the dead when my cousins were homeless. With the money my father sent to them, my cousins erected the tombs, and only later, with additional money from him, built their homes. Walking to the cemetery, we stopped along the way for my cousins to make introductions and chat with relatives. Each visit to a thatched but was a discovery of another relative. In Iowa, I was only aware of my family and my aunt. Meeting so many Điện Dương inhabitants who were related to me and hearing stories about my grandparents and ancestors whom I had never met led me to understand better the priority placed on honoring the dead and revering one's ancestors.

The 5th time I wore an áo dài was after 2 days of strategic dieting. At the suggestion of Huế friends, I had an áo dài made at Chi's Tailor Shop. It was a green áo dài with more curves than I actually possessed. I soon learned that preparation and sacrifice was part of the art of looking attractive in an áo dài. Knowing that on Teacher's Day I would be expected to wear an áo dài, I canceled meals starting the night before, and with my husband's assistance squeezed into my áo dài. It fit like a second skin and showed the body of a thirty-year-old woman enhanced by a padded bra.

Friends counseled me to slow down my brisk pace if I had any hopes of looking graceful in an áo dài. In Huế, one of my favorite sites was the young girls on Monday and Saturday biking in their white áo dài, looking like white ribbons fluttering across the Perfume River. They had done it so gracefully and naturally that I had not noticed how they arranged their áo dài. When I got on my bicycle to go to the Teacher's Day reception, I realized that I needed instructions on how to ride with my áo dài.

Arriving in my áo dài at the banquet, I was surprised to see that many of the Vietnamese teachers changed to dresses or slacks after the Teacher's Day celebration ceremony. One of my colleagues whispered, "I can't eat in an áo dài". How true! I was famished, and the many compliments on how pretty I looked in my áo dài could not keep me full. After Teacher's Day, I returned to Chi's and requested an áo dài that I could eat in, rather than look good in.

 At the end of June, the green áo dài I wore on Teacher's Day was placed in the closet when I returned to the United States after 2 years of living and teaching in Việt Nam. That áo dài joined the other 4 already suspended in my closet. I have worn each áo dài only once. Each of the áo dài brought me a step closer to my roots, but each one also marked an end to a phase of my life, from America to my quê hương. The five áo dài will wear out with time, but the memories of wearing each áo dài will last forever.




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