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Student Profile — Thuong Barasch
From the war zone of Vietnam to English class at MATC
By Melissa Stelter
Thuong Barasch is a soft-spoken, diminutive woman with a broad smile and an aura of vigor. The 60-year-old is also the protagonist of a painful journey that began in Vietnam and, for the time being, has made a stop in Madison. Barasch is the main character in an epic story of war, the forced abandonment of her two children, and the struggle to find her children.
Barasch's life story, long plagued with conflict, has settled into a relaxing denouement now. She said, "I can't believe I'm still alive to talk about it."
The bombs of the Vietnam War are but a distant memory. Her daughter, whom she found living as an adopted child in Missouri, is now a successful attorney. Her son, from whom she was separated for six years, is now a California computer analyst with two children of his own. Her main challenges these days are the academic writing courses at MATC -- Intro to College English, English 1, and English 2.
"My English classes are very difficult for me," she said with a soft, warm smile. "But I really like my English classes.The teachers are really good."
Barasch, whose life story has been featured on ABC's Prime Time Live, is enrolled in MATC's Liberal Studies Program. She hopes to complete her higher education degree and return to the homeland she left behind more than thirty years ago.
Barasch’s story began in 1946, when she was born the youngest of ten children. At age 13, she moved to the city of Hue to live with her older sister, Thuyen. There, she attended and boarded at the Jean d’Arc school, visiting her sister on weekends. She graduated and began her studies at Hue University, but left her studies to prepare for married life. According to Vietnamese custom, women were expected to prepare for marriage by learning household skills and "how to become a good wife," Barasch said.
Barasch, though, rebelled against her homeland's cultural pressure to live a traditional Vietnamese life. Against the wishes of her family, she married an American soldier and had two children, a boy and a girl. Her children, though, were treated as outcasts by the Vietnamese because they were half American.
"I am not a traditional Vietnamese woman, " she said. "I am different. Unfortunately, I felt Vietnamese culture did not accept my children and did not accept me."
The Vietnam War escalated, and Barasch felt that America was the only society that would welcome her children. So she decided to plan an escape from her homeland.
Heartache followed this choice.
First, her American husband left the home they shared in Vietnam one afternoon to fight in the battlefields of Vietnam; he never returned. At the time, she did not know if he was killed or deserted her. Twenty-five years later, she learned that he was severely wounded and was transported out of Vietnam to Okinawa, Japan, to recover. He lost contact with her and was unable to reach her all those years.
Then Barasch decided to make the trip to the United States alone and with her children. But Vietnamese authorities did not permit her son, Sean, who was in the second grade of a prestigious Vietnamese government school, to leave. Not knowing what to do, Barasch convinced herself that her only choice was to first make a home for herself and her children in America. She would then return to Vietnam for Sean and bring him to the United States.
Nervous, scared and now a single parent, Barasch was forced to make another heart-wrenching decision. Planning her escape, Barasch feared that something terrible would happen to Mary, then 4 years old, if soldiers found her. So she packed a satchel containing a little red book with addresses and pictures of family members, and put Mary on a bus heading to an adoption agency in a different town. Barasch had given her up for adoption to an American family because she thought that was the only way her daughter could escape the ravages of war as an "Ameriasian."
“I stood outside…her hand pressed to the window, and I pressed my hand to the window over her hand, just like that,” Barasch demonstrated, her hand aloft. “We stayed just like that for a long time. The bus drove away…I fell to the ground. I lost everything.”
Barasch’s next task was to say goodbye to her extended family. Although she was forced to leave her own children behind, Barasch agreed to take her sister’s three youngest children away with her. The four of them -- Barasch and her sister's three children (whom Barasch later adopted) -- managed to escape the country. They lived at a refugee camp in Guam for a period of time before they were moved to a Vietnamese community in California.
Barasch described feeling “hurt and lost” at that time. Once in America, her motherly instincts took control. She needed to be reunited with her biological children, Sean and Mary. Relying on her own investigative skills, she found her daughter Mary living in Missouri with her adopted family, who happily gave up their adoption rights so daughter and mother could reunite, permanently.
Unfortunately, reclaiming her son was much more difficult. It took six years before Barasch would be reunited with Sean. This six-year gap has caused a wound in the mother/son relationship that has never healed, she said.
"Sean thinks that I left him behind because I loved Mary more," she said. "But that is not the case at all. Not at all."
Barasch spent about 30 years living in California. She remarried and then later divorced. Her biological children grew up, went to college, started careers, and started families. Sean, now 39, is a computer analyst in California, and he has two children. Mary, now 37, is married and has a daughter; she is also an attorney who "wants to be a judge," said Barasch. One of Barasch's adopted children has a Ph.D. in psychology while another one has a master's degree in education.
Just a few years ago, Barasch decided to move to Madison. One of her friends had moved to Madison and invited Barasch to start a new life here.
Barasch explained, "She told me that if I want to go back to school, come to Madison. She would help me."
She relocated to Madison and enrolled at MATC. She has enjoyed living in Madison, and notes that “the people are very nice and open.” She enrolled at MATC and has "loved" her experience here so far.
She said, "MATC is not so big. Not so huge. Teachers are good because they make the student understand a concept before moving on to the next concept. But the English language is very difficult for me. I think in Vietnamese and then I write in English. I am constantly working on grammar and vocabulary. And I often have to read a chapter two or three times before I understand it."
After completing her studies at MATC, Barasch hopes to transfer to the University of Wisconsin/Madison. She isn't sure what field she'll pursue at the university level, but she has contemplated journalism or psychology.
“I’ve learned so many things, but I don’t know what I want to be,” she stated with a broad smile.
She does keep one specific goal in mind: to return to Vietnam and study the old Vietnamese dialects . She added that translations of the "old Vietnamese language" are becoming lost – another casualty of the communist government there.
“[Vietnamese] students don’t know anything about what we learned in the past,” Barasch said about Vietnam’s current education system. She explained that there are many temples with old Vietnamese inscriptions that she is interested in translating, for the preservation of her country’s history.
“When you lose language, you lose country,” she said.
Additionally, she hopes to write about her own life and share her story with others.
These may seem like high aspirations for a 60-year-old who could be thinking about retirement, but Thuong Barasch doesn’t let anything stop her from pursuing her goals.
“I don’t feel old, I feel happy,” she said. “I started a new life, a new way of thinking.”
Note: Melissa Stelter is a Visual Communications student at MATC who would like to work as a multimedia journalist after graduating.
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