News
Page 4
Street Roots • June 17-23, 2016
A CROWNING
SUCCESS
Ms. Oregon recounts her family's
harrowing escape from Vietnam
and her path to citizenship
BY EMILY GREEN
STAFF WRITER
t sat there smugly, seeming to exist for
the sole purpose of taunting the little
girl every time she meandered past it.
Thuy Huyen (pronounced “Twee Who-
win”) despised that inane bowl of decorative
fruit.
Back then, food was always on her mind -
there was never enough of it
There wasn’t enough at the refugee camp
in Indonesia, where her little belly swelled
up like a basketball from malnutrition,
protruding out from her wiry frame. And
now that her family had finally been granted
entry into the
United States, there
still wasn’t enough
to eat.
There were times
when her mother,
Lien, would go to
the McDonald’s
near their home in
the little fishing
town of Port Arthur,
A periodic series on the personal journeys
Texas, and bring
within Portland’s immigrant communities.
back a single
hamburger that she
At Thuy Huyen’s request, Street Roots has
would cut crosswise
not included the full names of her family
two or three times,
members due to her fear for their safety. For
so she could split it
many people who flee oppressive regimes or
among her children.
conflict zones and later find refuge in the
Huyen remembers
U.S., the fear can stay with them throughout one day when she
their lifetime. For the Planet Portland
was about 7 years
series, Street Roots respects these requests for
old, she watched as a
anonymity.
girl her age tossed
an apple core into
the gutter. Huyen
thought about that apple core for a while.
There was a bite or two left on it Would she
go fetch it from where it lay in the gutter
and eat it? It was covered in dirt but she
was so hungry. She admitted to picking it
up, but was reluctant to say what she did
next.
When her family arrived in Texas, they
were flat broke. A charitable woman hosted
the refugees in her home. Huyen
remembers, now three decades later, the
anguish that was caused by this woman’s
choice of table topper - that awful bowl of
plastic fruit
It seemed fitting that, when Huyen filled
out her application for Ms. Oregon earlier
this year, she chose world poverty as her
platform.
“I figured: If I’m going to pick a platform,
I’m going to pick something that I am very
familiar with,” she said.
The Ms. (not Miss) America pageant is
for women 26 and older. They can be
I
Plane
Portlan
PHOTO BY DIEGO DIAZ
Ms. Oregon, Thuy Huyen, will compete in the Ms. America pageant. Her platform is world poverty.
married, single or divorced and with or
without children. There is no swimsuit or
talent competition; instead, the emphasis is
on contestants’ spreading their platform
messages in the months leading up to the
selection of Ms. America. This will happen
at a live-streamed pageant in Brea, Calif., in
September.
This was the first time Huyen, 42, had
ever entered a pageant A selection
committee crowned her after a thorough
vetting process earlier this year, and now
she’s the reigning Ms. Oregon.
She smiled with poise as she recounted
her life’s astounding and often horrific tale
during an interview over a picnic table in
North Portland’s Peninsula Park.
'Despite the somewhat depressing topics
of conversation, Huyen seemed cheerful,
even laughing gleefully, at times, as she
detailed her family’s struggles.
Later she would reveal she could barely
hold back tears throughout the interview.
She said it was the first time she’d shared
the details of her escape from Vietnam in 35
years.
Saigon’s fall
Huyen was bom on Buddha’s birthday at
the most lavish hospital in Saigon.
It was 1974, one year before communist
forces captured the South Vietnamese
capital city, marking the end of the Vietnam
War.
Huyen’s grandmother was a wealthy
woman who owned a fabric store and
retailed jewelry. She used her riches to
build several Buddhist temples for the
people of Saigon.
Huyen’s father, Chanh, was a well-known
man of pedigree who dabbled in politics and
taught high school English.
Her parents owned two houses in the
city. Huyen remembers splitting her time
between urban Saigon, where she was
See HUYEN, page 5