Sophannarith "Sonny'' Hong, 19, grabs a quick meal after working the late shift at Target in Long Beach, as his father Serey Hong, 48, watches television. Sonny shares a small two-bedroom apartment with his sister, Rosetta, and their father. (Stephen Carr / Press-Telegram)11/12/2006
Family: From Cambodia to L.B., father and son work to pay the bills and to understand each other.
By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
Long Beach Press Telegram
LONG BEACH - The tensions between the father and the son are ancient and familiar.
The son doesn't understand. The son doesn't appreciate. The son procrastinates.
The father doesn't understand. The father is overbearing. The father lectures.
In many ways, theirs could be almost any father-son relationship. But here is the twist.
The father, Serey Hong, 48, comes from the perspective of a victim and witness to the atrocities of the Cambodian genocide. The son, Sophannarith, or Sonny as he is called, is a modern American teenager.
Late at night they sit close together in the cramped $680-a-month apartment they share in a complex behind a single-family house near Long Beach City College's Pacific Coast Campus. Hong eats warmed leftovers from a lunch program he helps supervise for elderly Cambodians. The son, who has just returned from a late shift at Target, munches on food from Del Taco.
They barely speak. A few feet of physical space separates them. But how to describe the rest of it - the chasm that divides them?
"I sacrifice my life for (my son)," Hong says. "I build a bridge so (he) can go across. I don't know when he'll learn, but he's my son."
Meanwhile, the son doesn't know what his father expects of him. He is majoring in biochemistry at Cal State Long Beach, carrying a load of 15 units each semester and working 20 to 22 hours a week.
"I mean, it's a lot of work, and I'm just trying to hold it together," Sonny says. "I'm only an average student, and I'm trying to deal with my dad and all the pressure. I have to look past that and focus on what I have to do."
So the questions linger across the divide.
How can the son ever understand the life his father led, the insanity his father witnessed? How can he appreciate the fears, the guilt, the insecurities that his father will forever carry?
And what of the father? How can he understand that his son's world is not the same as his? How can he appreciate the pressures and temptations a boy faces growing up in a poverty-stricken, gang-plagued inner city?
How do the two get to the place where the father lets go and realizes that his and his son's visions and needs are not the same? Where he realizes that his best intentions for his son often drive them apart? And where the son accepts that the father's goals for the son come from a place of love, not dissatisfaction?
The tensions are ancient and familiar. But here they have a twist.
They also have a backdrop. And that is the struggle to make ends meet.
In Long Beach, 4 percent of single male heads of house and their families live in poverty. Until recently, Hong was among them. Although Hong recently got a second job that may technically lift him and his family above the poverty line, he still struggles to make the rent.
Seeking understanding On a weekday evening, Hong sits in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his son and his 16-year-old daughter, Rosetta.
Sonny is at work, cramming in as many hours as he can before fall classes begin at Cal State Long Beach.
Rosetta, a junior at Lakewood High, is sequestered in her room talking on the phone.
As Hong talks, he leans forward at the waist, and his words are laced with intensity and sincerity.
Hong survived the Cambodian killing fields, a time when between 1 million and 2 million Cambodians were either executed as enemies of the state or died of starvation, malnutrition or disease.
His last image of his mother is still vivid. He says one day she left to spend time with her mother in a neighboring town, and he never saw either woman again.
Hong and his brother, Hong Hor, were also separated by the Khmer Rouge. The brother survived and still lives in Cambodia. The two brothers have seen each other just once since Hong fled.
In 1979, after the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge, Hong returned to his home in Phnom Penh. In the house was a small black-and-white photograph of his mother, his last reminder of her. While in a refugee camp, Hong had an artist draw a picture of the deteriorating photo.
The artist and Hong became separated in camp while the artist had the photo, so the drawing is the only reminder Hong and his family have of his mother.
Several years ago, Rosetta scanned the drawing of her grandmother and colorized it on a computer. Hong e-mailed copies to his brother and cousins in Cambodia.
Since moving to Long Beach and gaining custody of his two children after a court dispute with his ex-wife, Hong has worked a series of part time jobs and studied incessantly.
And yet, for all his accomplishments and skills, Hong holds himself back.
As a young man in Cambodia, survival hinged on invisibility. Knowledge often meant death as the Khmer Rouge sought a pure communist state untainted by Western learning.
Hong not only learned to hide his abilities, he seems to have internalized the belief that he is somehow lacking - in ability, in intelligence, in worth.
So Hong gathers and hordes knowledge.
When he came to the United States, Hong had no English skills. He has since learned the language and become remarkably articulate, much more so than most of his countrymen. And yet, he habitually apologizes for language deficiencies.
He has earned a general equivalency diploma. He even passed the Postal Service entrance exam and worked briefly for a post office in San Juan Capistrano before he was forced to give it up because he couldn't find early morning child care for Rosetta when she was young.
At Long Beach City College, Hong earned an associate's degree in sciences, plus certificates in electronics and air conditioning and refrigeration. He has also received a certificate in custodial sciences from the adult school on Willow Street.
When it's suggested he could be an interpreter for the courts, he dismisses it.
"Oh, no, no. I am not good enough," he says.
He has similar reactions to suggestions that he go into one of the more lucrative professions he's studied.
When asked about rejoining the Postal Service, he says he doesn't think he could pass the exam again.
Instead, Hong works part-time as a playground supervisor at Edison Elementary School, for which he makes $11.70 an hour for a 20-hour week. He usually also works 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday at Burnett Elementary supervising the playground. Hong has been invited several times to apply for a promotion, but declined. He says he almost didn't apply for the job he now has because of his insecurity about his language skills.
"I'm still scared," Hong says. "The kids say I could be promoted to site leader, but I think `Maybe I can't do that.' That's why I'm discouraged all the time. You know in the Pol Pot (regime), they stepped you down."
Hong was recently hired by the Asian and Pacific Islander Older Adults Task Force to work with senior Cambodians, teaching them English, leading exercise classes and helping his boss, Aaron Va.
The job pays $800 a month, but it is still a struggle for Hong to pay expenses and rent. He sleeps on a rickety roll-out bed in the small living room of his apartment.
He doesn't have health insurance and worries incessantly that he is one injury or medical setback away from devastation. As a result, he exercises diligently.
"What will happen if something happens to me?" Hong asks. "What would happen to the money?"
Hong also despairs because it seems to him every time he makes an advance, there's a setback.
After he got the second job, he received a letter telling him he and his daughter were no longer eligible for food stamps. Hong says he'll fight the decision, noting that his schedule is not stable, and he doesn't get paid when school is out.
Still, it's another level of stress.
Hong says he only recently opened a bank account. Before, he cashed his checks at the market and never had any money at the end of the month.
And then there was Sonny's recent minor car accident that drove up the family's car insurance rates $40 a month. And so it goes.
Recently, Sonny delayed paying for his car insurance. Hong harped on him to put the payment in the mail. Eventually, on the final day before a late-payment penalty would have been imposed, Hong made the payment for his son.
For all the frustrations, Hong has to feel some pride about his boy. While some Cambodian kids have fallen prey to gangs and other temptations, Sonny is striving for something better.
He could have gone either way.
When Sonny was younger, he and some friends were caught spraying graffiti and sentenced to community service.
Sonny admits he had gang ties and says, "It was pretty bad back then."
Luckily, the arrest helped straighten Sonny out.
"I just started looking ahead and thinking this probably isn't the way to go," Sonny says.
Since then, Sonny has found a different circle of friends and left that life behind.
Hong says his daughter is excelling at school and is no problem.
During a visit to Hong's house, a reporter looked into Sonny's room. There, on a chair, was an open calculus book. And school wasn't even in session.
Maybe the father and son aren't as different as they think. Gathering knowledge Family pride.
By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
Long Beach Press Telegram
LONG BEACH - The tensions between the father and the son are ancient and familiar.
The son doesn't understand. The son doesn't appreciate. The son procrastinates.
The father doesn't understand. The father is overbearing. The father lectures.
In many ways, theirs could be almost any father-son relationship. But here is the twist.
The father, Serey Hong, 48, comes from the perspective of a victim and witness to the atrocities of the Cambodian genocide. The son, Sophannarith, or Sonny as he is called, is a modern American teenager.
Late at night they sit close together in the cramped $680-a-month apartment they share in a complex behind a single-family house near Long Beach City College's Pacific Coast Campus. Hong eats warmed leftovers from a lunch program he helps supervise for elderly Cambodians. The son, who has just returned from a late shift at Target, munches on food from Del Taco.
They barely speak. A few feet of physical space separates them. But how to describe the rest of it - the chasm that divides them?
"I sacrifice my life for (my son)," Hong says. "I build a bridge so (he) can go across. I don't know when he'll learn, but he's my son."
Meanwhile, the son doesn't know what his father expects of him. He is majoring in biochemistry at Cal State Long Beach, carrying a load of 15 units each semester and working 20 to 22 hours a week.
"I mean, it's a lot of work, and I'm just trying to hold it together," Sonny says. "I'm only an average student, and I'm trying to deal with my dad and all the pressure. I have to look past that and focus on what I have to do."
So the questions linger across the divide.
How can the son ever understand the life his father led, the insanity his father witnessed? How can he appreciate the fears, the guilt, the insecurities that his father will forever carry?
And what of the father? How can he understand that his son's world is not the same as his? How can he appreciate the pressures and temptations a boy faces growing up in a poverty-stricken, gang-plagued inner city?
How do the two get to the place where the father lets go and realizes that his and his son's visions and needs are not the same? Where he realizes that his best intentions for his son often drive them apart? And where the son accepts that the father's goals for the son come from a place of love, not dissatisfaction?
The tensions are ancient and familiar. But here they have a twist.
They also have a backdrop. And that is the struggle to make ends meet.
In Long Beach, 4 percent of single male heads of house and their families live in poverty. Until recently, Hong was among them. Although Hong recently got a second job that may technically lift him and his family above the poverty line, he still struggles to make the rent.
Seeking understanding On a weekday evening, Hong sits in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his son and his 16-year-old daughter, Rosetta.
Sonny is at work, cramming in as many hours as he can before fall classes begin at Cal State Long Beach.
Rosetta, a junior at Lakewood High, is sequestered in her room talking on the phone.
As Hong talks, he leans forward at the waist, and his words are laced with intensity and sincerity.
Hong survived the Cambodian killing fields, a time when between 1 million and 2 million Cambodians were either executed as enemies of the state or died of starvation, malnutrition or disease.
His last image of his mother is still vivid. He says one day she left to spend time with her mother in a neighboring town, and he never saw either woman again.
Hong and his brother, Hong Hor, were also separated by the Khmer Rouge. The brother survived and still lives in Cambodia. The two brothers have seen each other just once since Hong fled.
In 1979, after the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge, Hong returned to his home in Phnom Penh. In the house was a small black-and-white photograph of his mother, his last reminder of her. While in a refugee camp, Hong had an artist draw a picture of the deteriorating photo.
The artist and Hong became separated in camp while the artist had the photo, so the drawing is the only reminder Hong and his family have of his mother.
Several years ago, Rosetta scanned the drawing of her grandmother and colorized it on a computer. Hong e-mailed copies to his brother and cousins in Cambodia.
Since moving to Long Beach and gaining custody of his two children after a court dispute with his ex-wife, Hong has worked a series of part time jobs and studied incessantly.
And yet, for all his accomplishments and skills, Hong holds himself back.
As a young man in Cambodia, survival hinged on invisibility. Knowledge often meant death as the Khmer Rouge sought a pure communist state untainted by Western learning.
Hong not only learned to hide his abilities, he seems to have internalized the belief that he is somehow lacking - in ability, in intelligence, in worth.
So Hong gathers and hordes knowledge.
When he came to the United States, Hong had no English skills. He has since learned the language and become remarkably articulate, much more so than most of his countrymen. And yet, he habitually apologizes for language deficiencies.
He has earned a general equivalency diploma. He even passed the Postal Service entrance exam and worked briefly for a post office in San Juan Capistrano before he was forced to give it up because he couldn't find early morning child care for Rosetta when she was young.
At Long Beach City College, Hong earned an associate's degree in sciences, plus certificates in electronics and air conditioning and refrigeration. He has also received a certificate in custodial sciences from the adult school on Willow Street.
When it's suggested he could be an interpreter for the courts, he dismisses it.
"Oh, no, no. I am not good enough," he says.
He has similar reactions to suggestions that he go into one of the more lucrative professions he's studied.
When asked about rejoining the Postal Service, he says he doesn't think he could pass the exam again.
Instead, Hong works part-time as a playground supervisor at Edison Elementary School, for which he makes $11.70 an hour for a 20-hour week. He usually also works 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday at Burnett Elementary supervising the playground. Hong has been invited several times to apply for a promotion, but declined. He says he almost didn't apply for the job he now has because of his insecurity about his language skills.
"I'm still scared," Hong says. "The kids say I could be promoted to site leader, but I think `Maybe I can't do that.' That's why I'm discouraged all the time. You know in the Pol Pot (regime), they stepped you down."
Hong was recently hired by the Asian and Pacific Islander Older Adults Task Force to work with senior Cambodians, teaching them English, leading exercise classes and helping his boss, Aaron Va.
The job pays $800 a month, but it is still a struggle for Hong to pay expenses and rent. He sleeps on a rickety roll-out bed in the small living room of his apartment.
He doesn't have health insurance and worries incessantly that he is one injury or medical setback away from devastation. As a result, he exercises diligently.
"What will happen if something happens to me?" Hong asks. "What would happen to the money?"
Hong also despairs because it seems to him every time he makes an advance, there's a setback.
After he got the second job, he received a letter telling him he and his daughter were no longer eligible for food stamps. Hong says he'll fight the decision, noting that his schedule is not stable, and he doesn't get paid when school is out.
Still, it's another level of stress.
Hong says he only recently opened a bank account. Before, he cashed his checks at the market and never had any money at the end of the month.
And then there was Sonny's recent minor car accident that drove up the family's car insurance rates $40 a month. And so it goes.
Recently, Sonny delayed paying for his car insurance. Hong harped on him to put the payment in the mail. Eventually, on the final day before a late-payment penalty would have been imposed, Hong made the payment for his son.
For all the frustrations, Hong has to feel some pride about his boy. While some Cambodian kids have fallen prey to gangs and other temptations, Sonny is striving for something better.
He could have gone either way.
When Sonny was younger, he and some friends were caught spraying graffiti and sentenced to community service.
Sonny admits he had gang ties and says, "It was pretty bad back then."
Luckily, the arrest helped straighten Sonny out.
"I just started looking ahead and thinking this probably isn't the way to go," Sonny says.
Since then, Sonny has found a different circle of friends and left that life behind.
Hong says his daughter is excelling at school and is no problem.
During a visit to Hong's house, a reporter looked into Sonny's room. There, on a chair, was an open calculus book. And school wasn't even in session.
Maybe the father and son aren't as different as they think. Gathering knowledge Family pride.
5 comments:
congratulation Sonny and Mr. Hong.
So Far, you are in the right track of becoming somebody, Sonny. Keep doing what you are doing now and you will be successful in life. For Mr. Hong, I can understand your frustration of trying to bridge yourself with the children. The article is very well defined of how different you are between you and the son (taco and rice.) However, you have done a marvolous job raising these two kids. Most men do not get custody of their children, you must have shown exemplary model to convince the most biased custody stystem to award you the kids. Congratulation!!!
For your humble putting yourself down, I think the majority of it was of culture. Khmer like to be humble, we do not want to claim that we know what we know, instead, work behind the background. Another possible problem is that "We have been living in the suppressed society for a very long time." It is unkhmer to talk back or to protest against authority. I know at least that is what "I am operating myself on." I know if is not good to keep silent or to hold myself back, but I do it anyway. You figure it out. It will take lots of practive to express our thought and opinion. The last possible problem is that Mr. Hong may suffer of depression (divorced, went through traumatic experiences in Cambodia and separated from family,) or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These two problems can be alleviate by the mental health workers.
Good Luck to Mr. Hong's family. I will keep my eye on you.
Sincerely,
Anonymous who do greatly care about his fellow Cambodians.
I am proud to read this story knowing that Cambodians abroad are striving and struggling for a better life. I am more proud of being Cambodian than ever knowing how this story relates to all of us, refugee and immigrant alike.
Mr. Hong and son story is a refreshing change from all the crap on Defamation suit and counter suit.
The majority of the cambodian-Americans would be able to identify with this struggle and applaude the tenacity of wills and endurances. So dear friend, we call out to you... "One more leap, one more sacrify and more diploma... and perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel."
Just one more push...
I was a medical eligibilty worker of a County in California.
If Serey Hong has low income ,he could apply for the medical benefits for himself and his two children since they are under 21 years old.
Contact LA county for more informations and he may elegible for some other assistances.
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