Cultural Mosaics

          American culture values individualism. An Individual is a center of the universal circle with spinning communities to the self, such as family, extended family, neighbors, friends, learning environment, religious organizations, and workplaces. The widespread and diverse loops tangle with one another to build a solid, silky cocoon to conceive and develop a human identity, to shield the individual, and decide the person’s fate. The relationship between a person and a community is the reciprocal status: individuals form a community; a community nurtures individuals as a self-center.

          Family is the closest community that a human naturally attaches to at first. Researchers say that a fetus feels and interacts with the mother and the people surrounding her. The mother’s emotions and temperament transmit to the unborn baby. Music and poetry are staples of Vietnamese culture.  The rhyming verses calmed me down, so I did not hit my mother’s belly from within. The lullabies called me to leave my mother’s womb to crawl the Earth in order to participate in our family’s bookish worships and to practice the Vietnamese social rites. The melodies cradled and carried me to Lala Land. The bookshelves nurtured my creativity, fed my hungry caterpillar mind, and sowed the seeds of charisma. The charisma gradually sprouted, grew, and harvested a ripened literary fruit.

          The hurricane of liberty whirled me and the aesthetic fruit to the United States and dropped us on the dry Rocky Mountains in California. The artistry fruit hit the rock and cracked it down into many pieces. Day by day, I watered my writing passion with rainy tears, fertilized it with hardships. The American society patiently cultivated the promised tree with education and kindness. I absorbed the Western culture and the American prominent values: independence and individualism. I solely split the Vietnamese cultural tree, but deep down in my uttermost veiling the Vietnamese value: an orientation toward family.

          Individuals and communities build the concrete bond that relies on each other. Individuals engage with communities to develop physical needs, to strengthen social skills, to regulate emotional competency, and to stimulate potential. Communities need individuals to exist and to structure social laws, morality, and cultural trends.

--San Jose: Friday, October 31, 2014