I Little Slave Enriched My Liberal Education Mai Doua Yang Nursing Major UW-Marathon County 518 S. 7 th Ave Wausau, WI 54401 I hereby affirm that this is an original essay and my own work.
When my family came to the United States, I was roughly three years old. I didn t understand why we came or how we even got here. I can remember that using the flushable toilets was one of my biggest fears. My cousins told me stories about falling into the toilet, but there seemed to be even scarier things about this place, America. Understanding the English language was definitely the hardest part of all. When I would get frustrated with school and English overall, I would ask my mother, Why are we here in a country where I have to learn a different language? My mother would tell me we had to come otherwise we would struggle even more in the country we came from. I didn t understand how we would have struggled. As I grew up, I realized that America is not a bad place after all; it provided me with a liberal education. According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU), liberal education can be defined as an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. One particular extracurricular activity at the University of Marathon County campus fulfilled many aspects of having a liberal education and made me realize how grateful I am to be living in America. I attended a book talk, I Little Slave, with Dr. Bounsang Khamkeo that made me have another perspective. Dr. Khamkeo s book, I Little Slave, is his own story of when he was a prisoner in Laos, a communist country, after the Vietnam War. After getting his political science major in France, Dr. Khamkeo returned to Laos to help rebuild his country. However, in the process, he was captured and put in jail for crimes he did not commit. Surviving only on one bowl of rice a day, Dr. Khamkeo tells how he survived through those long seven years. His willpower to survive and communicate his story to the world showed me that he wanted everyone to hear and share his story. Growing up, I only heard my parents talking about how the Hmong people helped the United States in the Vietnam War. The devastating images my parents still hold were never
talked about; therefore, our younger generation could never understand the hardship they had to go through. Once in a while, they will tell us stories about how they had to run through the jungles and swim across the Mekong River to get to Thailand. I usually found the stories fascinating, but I never really understood them. The questions why and how floated through my mind as I searched for the answers. Going into middle and high school and hearing people say Go back to your country used to make me sad and angry. The Hmong people secretly helped the U.S. fight the Communist Vietnamese. This part about the Vietnam War and Laos was not in any school curriculum, and if mentioned at all, the history books only touch base on some of the major issues. Therefore, many American people in my community did not understand why there were so many Hmong families surrounding their neighborhoods. After attending this event, I had a new perspective about the war and it taught me some things that I did not know. AACU state that, Liberal education provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world. Not only did I gain more knowledge about the Vietnam War, but also this event let me see the harsh conditions prisoners had to experience. What I really took out of this event was Dr. Khamkeo s words of advice. He said, I was never mad at the guards, instead, I forgave them for what they did to me. Hearing someone say this really got me thinking. Why would anybody forgive people who have tortured them for over seven years? I couldn t come to a conclusion, but I realized that he is able to say this because of the love he had for his country. Dr. Khamkeo stated that his number one survival tactic was assuring himself he had to survive to beat the Communists, and that the whole world runs on suffering, so he was not alone. His responsibility was to beat the communists. The ACCU also wrote that, Education serves democracy best when it prepares us for just the kinds of questions we face now: questions about
a wider world, about our own values, and about difficult choices we must make both as human beings and citizens. Because Dr. Khamkeo had a well-educated background, he was able to apply his education to help him survive. Dr. Khamkeo stated that the communist regime will always remain communists; however, in his mind, it will not work for all citizens. The way Dr. Khamkeo approached his sufferings made me realize that I can learn something about myself and my love for others. Having a liberal education helps me develop social responsibility such as making the decision to be engaged in my community and to be active in local and/or global problems. People of different races, backgrounds, cultures, and languages can indeed have stereotypes about each other, but the amount of people that attended this event showed that people do accept diversity in our community. I noticed that many people accepted Dr. Khamkeo s story and no harsh remarks were made. At the end of the day, we all live together productively and with common purposes. In the article, Impacts of Liberal Arts Colleges and Liberal Arts Education: A Summary, it stated that, Liberal education demonstrated a positive net impact on openness to diversity. Having activities that will get me exposed to diversity will benefit me. I can learn from this experience that I will always be surrounded by diversity and change, and with the experience I have had on this campus, I can assure my acceptance. This event surely surprised me because I only knew about how the Hmong people suffered, but never realized how it also impacted the lives of the Laotian people, such as Dr. Khamkeo. Although he was physically and psychologically tortured, he was able to pull through. He reminded himself that his family was waiting for his return and that they believed in him. The love he had for his family helped him psychologically although there was no way of contacting the outside world. He also gave an example of how much he wished to have salt with
his one bowl of rice. His determination to survive assured me that with determination, one can achieve anything. Michael Roth, President at Wesleyan University stated that, liberal education becomes a process on which to draw for continual learning, for making decisions in one s life, and for making a difference in the world. By having a liberal education, I can continue to learn, make good decisions, and understand that anybody can make a difference. This is a lesson that I will carry into the real world. This book talk has enriched my learning in many different ways. It brought a new insight to my unanswered questions. The book title I Little Slave speaks for itself. When speaking to the guards or officials, the prisoners had to use this phrase to address themselves before speaking. Relating to the title, I can see that the Hmong people would have been slaves if they had not fled to America, and had been captured. I now understand what my mother meant, the suffering of being a little slave.
Works Cited Impacts of Liberal Arts Colleges and Liberal Arts Education: A Summary. ASHE Higher Education Report 31.3 (2005): 87-100. EBSCOhost. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. Roth, Michael. What s a Liberal Arts Education Good For? The Huffington Post. N.p., 1 Dec. 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. What is Liberal Education? LEAP. Association of American Colleges and Universities, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.