Between two worlds (continued)

GIVEN THE VIOLENT PAST that haunts many in the older generation of Southeast Asians, a different kind of violence has seeped down to the youth: gangs and guns.

There are an estimated 15 gangs in Providence, with a total of about 300 members. They range in size from 10 to 50 members, usually a loosely associated group of kids that band together around a certain neighborhood or street. Many of them are explicitly Asian gangs, such as the Oriental Rascals and the Bad Junior Boys. Of the 23 homicides in Providence in 2002, four were gang-related.

Teny Gross is the executive director of the South Providence-based Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence. He and the institute’s street workers intervene in fights and try to stop gang violence before it happens. Speaking about Southeast Asian parents, Gross once told the Phoenix, "They thought they were coming to the promised land, and now their kids are being killed on the streets" (see "The peacemakers," News, September 5, 2003).

Dyna Kun, 31, was almost one of those kids. He’s a small man, but he has an imposing presence. He talks matter-of-factly about the time he spent in prison, and the weapons he used to carry for protection — nunchucks as a boy, and later guns as a young man. As a student at Nathan Bishop Middle School when he first arrived in Providence, he saw other Cambodians getting pushed around at school by people of other races. The gangs, says Kun, started as a means of self-defense. It becomes self-perpetuating, though, and soon young kids join gangs just because they exist. "My generation, we know what we’ve been through — other races against us," explains Kun. "The next generation came out, they don’t know what gangs are about — they start by writing on the wall, argue about girls. Now I see my people killing each other."

Kun was shot in 2002, targeted because of his gang involvement. His god-brother was murdered the following year. "I wondered why I didn’t die," he said. "I start to think about what I did to defend my Asian people . . . I want to work it out. Maybe it’s the reason I stay alive." And so, Kun considered an offer made by Gross. Get paid low wages — some weeks, Kun makes just enough to cover his gas money — and sacrifice much of your social life. It’s a consuming job, with no clear lines between work and play, colleagues and friends. "Sometimes I have a kid in trouble in school," Kun says. "Two or three kids want to jump him in Kennedy Plaza. [So] every day I pick them up from school. I don’t want them to take the bus. They could get in trouble on the bus."

Why is gang violence such an issue among Southeast Asian youth? There is a disconnect, says Gross, between the older and the younger generations of Southeast Asians. The combination of poverty and miscommunication between parents and children is "a wonderful breeding ground for gangs," he says.

Virak In is one of the Providence Police Department’s two Asian officers. He says many parents are angry by how difficult it is to communicate with their kids, raised as they were in a foreign culture. Parents, he says, are "doing everything in their power to try to get the kids to get along, and the kids say, ‘I’m all set, dad, I’m all set, mom.’ "

Long hours at factory jobs eat away at family time. Parents who do not speak English are less able to be involved with their children’s schooling, to help them with their homework, and communicate with their teachers. The issues that many Southeast Asian parents were equipped to deal with in their home country are totally different from the ones that face their children in Providence. Project AIDS Khmer’s Maliss Men explains, "Gangs, teen pregnancy — you wouldn’t find that in Cambodia."

Men says the issues go deeper still. Parents struggle to provide for their kids financially, but they’re often "not [emotionally] there. They’re haunted by the war." If your parents are not there for you, "You look to friends to be your other family." These friends, she says, are too often gang members.

It’s 1.5-ers like Dyna Kun who are well suited to make the streets safer for Southeast Asian youth. As a former gang member, Kun has the street cred to communicate with gang members. As someone born in Cambodia, he can speak Cambodian with parents of gang members and understand families’ hardships. But as someone who grew up on the South Side, he understands the role of police and politics in Providence. He says Cicilline cares about Asians, and he likes Police Chief Dean Esserman’s emphasis on community policing. In the hour or so that we stood talking on Superior Street a while back, a police officer walked by on foot — "I never saw that before," Kun says. Another officer, seeing a group of people gathered on the sidewalk and fearing a fight, pulled up in his car. Kun walked over and the two greeted each other by name. Everything, he told the officer, was under control.

MALISS MEN says she had an identity crisis when her family first moved to Lincoln. "I didn’t fit in," she explains, "I wasn’t one of them." It wasn’t until she was a student in URI’s Talent Development program that she learned how to "be proud of your own culture and be part of the larger culture."

The 1.5 generation is uniquely positioned to do just that. The question is whether members of the younger generation can strike the same balance, or whether they are instead poised to watch their culture recede into the distance.

Xue Khang of the Hmong United Association of Rhode Island says the biggest issue facing Hmong youth is how they are losing a grip on where they come from. "You live in the US, everything fades into American culture." More than three-quarters of Hmong kids don’t speak Hmong, he says. But the issues run deeper than even language or traditional music. The whole approach to life here is different. "The Hmong tradition says, ‘listen to your elders,’ " he says. In the US, the message is, "Be yourself. Do what you want." Economics, too, play a role. "Traditionally, Hmong like to stick together, so when hard times come, you help each other. Now, everyone’s chasing jobs, families are divided." Teaching the next generation of Hmong is one of the Hmong United Association’s main goals, and once a year it offers classes to teach the "younger elders" the traditions and the ceremonies of their people.

ThongKhoun Pathana laughs as he describes the line between the old and the young, American and Laotian. "I am the line," he says. "I’m in the generation gap. You have to fill both generations, the elderly and the younger generation. You have to understand them." And so, Pathana spends Sundays directing his temple’s Laotian Sunday school, teaching the younger generation traditional dance, Lao language, and the tenets of Theravada Buddhism. He also takes them on field trips to the Six Flags amusement park — something that the elders in his community do not understand, but one that he knows helps to win the hearts of his students.

Pathana’s office is dominated by a long Plexiglas case. Inside it is a model of a building, his vision for the future: part museum, part school, part community center, in the style of a Buddhist temple. It’s his dream to use his hard-earned architecture license to build a Southeast Asian arts and cultural center on the site of the Watlao. He envisions it as a place where kids will be able to connect to their heritage.

"Our children grow so fast into the pop culture," he says, "[but] I don’t blame them." As a member of the 1.5 generation, he knows how lonely it is to be not quite like your parents, but not quite like your same-age peers, either. In this conundrum, he sees his purpose. Speaking of the younger generation, he says, "As community leaders, it’s our responsibility to make sure they know they’re not alone."

Beth Schwartzapfel can be reached at beth_schwartzapfel@yahoo.com.