Narrator: Su Co

Summary: Su Co, a Vietnamese war refugee and Buddhist nun, continues telling her story of her experiences in various holding centers, her religious work in the Buddhist faith, and her immigration to the United States.

Topics: Conditions on Age, Cultural Adjustment, Education, Employment/Service, Family, Gender, Historical Context, Identity, Immigration Process, Language, Religion

Outline

Section 1: (00:00-9:49)

• Historical Context: Su Co spends time in the refugee holding centers of Banthad and Saiburi.

• Religion: Being a Buddhist nun, Su Co is respected and looked up too by many others in the camp. She leads chants and mantras daily for other residents of the holding center.

Section 2: (9:50-22:56)

• Immigration Process: Su Co travels to the Panat transit center and is asked to interview with officials who are in charge of the immigration process. She is told to utter several chants to prove she was a nun.

• Immigration Process: Su Co describes life in the Panat transit center, her personal study of Chinese, Thai and English, leading chanting, and the practices of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people.

• Gender: Su Co describes the separate houses and different gender roles of the monks and nuns, as well as her own specific responsibility to carry and bring water for the monks to use, but also collaboration in cleaning responsibilities between monks and nuns

• Religion: While the Vietnamese monks and nuns do their chanting in the Buddha Hall, the Cambodian monks and nuns do their chanting within their own homes.

Section 3: (22:57-37:41)

• Identity: Police and Panat officials treat Su Co with respect, likely reinforced by her status as a nun

• Immigration Process: Su Co spends one year in the Panat transit center

• Family: Su Co’s brother, who lives in Colorado and is her only American relative, sends $100 a month over to support her.

• Religion/Trauma: Su Co describes the experience of a young Vietnamese woman whose brother drowned during a shipwreck in their escape, who felt extremely guilty and prayed to the Buddha for forgiveness, with Su Co’s help.

• Employment/Service: While at Panat for a year, Su Co utilizes her language skills to help with translating services for other refugees and their appeals processes.

• Immigration Process: On February 1st, 1991, The U.S. Embassy finally sponsors Su Co’s flight to Colorado and she comes to America

Section 4 (37:42-56:36)

• Immigration Process: Su Co describes how she almost chose to immigrate to Switzerland instead of the United States. She recounts the helpful people along the way who enabled her to immigrate, and how her language skills and connections made through that aided her situation.

• Religion: Su Co describes how she believes that ceaseless her faith in the Buddha preserved her in her immigration process to America.

• Cultural Adjustment: Su Co describes a comedic story of her first interaction with a drug-sniffing dog when she lands on American soil, and likewise her amazement at the abundance of snow, and how supermarkets in America differ from back in Vietnam.

Section 5 ( 56:37-1:14:41)

• Immigration Process: Su Co recounts a harrowing story of how she almost got left behind on her bus ride from Colorado to California.

• Religion: Su Co lives in California for a few months, serving and living at a Buddhist temple, which especially serves other Vietnamese refugees and Buddhists

• Immigration Process: Su Co moves to Pennsylvania to live with another nun

• Education/Family: While in Pennsylvania, on top of working, Su Co studies at Montgomery Community College to receive an associate degree, to honor her late mother’s wishes and to gain a degree that will give herself more favorable work prospects in the United States.