Yvonne Nguyen

Mai Tran was born to Nhoung Nguyen and Tram Tran on the 6th of July, 1965 as the third child out of her four siblings. The entire family of seven lived in Hanoi, Vietnam. Mai’s father was a part of the military while her mother was a school teacher, so discipline and a well founded education were both valued as important factors for success in the Tran family. They lived in a small house with no electricity, with a well for water and oil lamps and candles for light. 

When the Vietnam War was over, Mai’s father didn’t come back. He had gone to America, and the rest of the Tran family wasn’t able to see him for seventeen years. Her mother struggled without Tram, and it got worse when she was fired from her job due to her status as a South Vietnamese. As a result, Mai got a job selling peanuts and cigarettes on the streets at twelve years old. She eventually graduated high school, but was rejected from college like her older siblings due to their inherited Southern status and presumed support for the former Vietnamese government.

However, she was able to graduate at a different college as valedictorian with honors at the top of her class. Mai lived a stable life in Saigon afterwards, but when her oldest brother immigrated to America to follow their father and receive a better chance at a better life without their status weighing him down, the rest of the family felt obligated to do the same. Her second oldest brother went a year later, and then Mai’s father was able to sponsor everyone else. 

They all came to America and lived at the same house in Los Angeles, California. Mai found a job at a nail salon while she was learning English. When she passed her fluency test, she was accepted into UCLA, got a Bachelor’s degree in computer science, and worked in their pharmacology program for seven months. She married Phong Nguyen and had three children, the younger two being twins. From there, she got a high paying job at Point Mugu and worked as a computer programmer and engineer for the navy. The commute was long and tiring, so Mai and her family bought a house and moved to Camarillo. Her husband quit his job to take care of the kids, and their family of five is still living there to this day.

Born and raised on a slave-owning plantation, Angelina Emily Grimké Weld was born on February 20th of 1805 to John Faucheraud Grimké and Mary Smith. Grimké was the youngest of her fourteen siblings, all of which were raised on a slave-holding plantation. Despite their background, Grimké and her sister Sarah grew up to be a strong contenders of the abolitionist and feminism movements. They fought for the abolishment of slavery as well as the empowerment of women through speeches and prose. As a child, Angelina witnessed slaves being tortured and hurt just because they were different in the skin color she has. The cruelty that she has seen inflicted upon slaves and how the world viewed men superior would eventually shape her into the woman she is now known as.    

Throughout her childhood, Angelina’s father, John Grimké, believed women should be subordinate to men, so he did not seek to educate his daughters. Angelina and Sarah only knew so little about reading and writing because they taught each other. They wanted to help slaves read so they would be a little bit equal in the education. Sarah and Angelina would hold secret meetings to pray and they would tutor the slaves on how to read and write. She hated the idea of others owning another person just because they didn’t want to do the work themselves. Angelina and her sister attempted many tries to convince their parents to abandon slavery but they were never successful.  

After her father passed away, Angelina moved to Philadelphia and she converted to being a Quaker. She then went out to seek education and was accepted at Catherine Beecher's school for girls. Being a Quaker kept her from school because of the meetings and in the end they refused to let her attend the school. She and her sister then joined to become members of an anti-slavery society. Around 1835, Angelina launched her career as an abolitionist writer and speaker through her letter to a publisher who published it in a popular newspaper. The year after Grimké published a pamphlet that tried to convince the readers to go against the slavery movement. This became a dangerous decision because the South threatened Angelina with imprisonment if she ever returned.  

During this project, I was surprised to realize that women weren’t empowered as early as I thought they were. The women in my family were suppressed ever since they were born just because they were a different gender. My mom was the first woman able to vote in my family, and my grandmother wasn’t even allowed to go to school. They looked on the past and worked hard to become successful. My mom went to school so she could get a job to earn money for my family and I so that we could have a better life.

Researching on the suffragettes has been a learning experience. I found out that women weren’t treated as equal as men and that they were seen as a tool, weak and inferior. People back then believed women couldn’t do the things men could. We think that the days where women were still seen as inferior were so long ago and far behind us, but it was really only a few generations away. Everyone should be equal both in race and gender.

Voting is important because it allows for everyone, regardless of gender, race, etc., to give their opinion and contribute to how the community, state, or country would develop. Everyone should have the right to vote because that’s how they can feel they have the power of choice to decide something in the political world. Respecting these rights gives a reflection of progress in our world where we share a community that can and should be equal.