Original Document

You actually just heard from one Italian, so you're probably going to hear from another one. I came . . . Well, it doesn't help that my naturalized name is actually Tony. I grew up in South Philly. My family came in 1975, when I was nine years old. We were the first Southeast Asian family to settle in that area. I think there was some study done that we were the only family within a two or three mile radius in South Philadelphia in 1975.

We came as a direct result of the war that happened in Vietnam . . . When my family first came to South Philly, S. Seventh Street was basically a bustling business community . . . [I]t was mostly Jewish-owned businesses. But we were perhaps at the epicenter of some very, you know, South Philly is very divided. You walk from one block to another and the neighborhoods change, and change drastically. Recently I've heard someone describe Philadelphia as not neighborhoods but as a collection of tribes living next to each other. So, my family grew up on Seventh and Wolf. The immediate area was mostly Jewish. You walk two blocks west, you're in an Italian neighborhood. You walk two blocks east of it, you're in an Irish neighborhood. You walk two blocks north, you're in an African American neighborhood. You walk northeast, you're in a Puerto Rican neighborhood.

So, here I was, just, you know, a Southeast Asian and it was very easy to identify with the predominantly Italian community around there. In fact, no one ever [called] me Thoai when I was growing up. They'd call me . . . I walked down the street, was, "Yo, Anthony" or "Yo Ton'! What's up?" . . . And, years later, the question of identity is very interesting to me . . . people may tend to think that identity is something very static and it's singular. Well, to me it isn't, and growing up in South Philly is a clear example of that. I am Vietnamese. I'm a Vietnamese American. Sometimes I consider myself Asian American-whatever that means. Sometimes I consider myself just, you know, a boy from South Philly, and no matter what country, no matter where I live, I really can't get the South Philly out of me. And when you push me hard enough, I will, you will truly see the South Philly in me . . . I never really appreciated what South Philly is.

But years later, I was working for a diversity consulting firm, and one of the celebrations they wanted to have was, "Thoai, can you cook something authentic from your culture to bring to this celebration?" So, I thought about this and, you know, I actually wanted to teach them a lesson, because here's a cultural diversity group that assumed that as a Vietnamese American I would bring in a Vietnamese dish. Well, I didn't. I actually brought in, I think, chicken cacciatore, and when I laid it out on the table . . . but they were actually quite surprised that I came, and I actually didn't explain. And they had to force it out of me that South Philly-that Italian neighborhood where I grew up-is as much a part of my identity as is, you know, me being a Buddhist, or me being Vietnamese, or me having grown up nine years of my life in Vietnam and coming here as a refugee.


Credit: Joan Saverino, "The Ninth Street Market and South Philadelphia: Personal Connections, Particular Views, Past Times, and Embodied Places," Pennsylvania Legacies 7:2 (November 2007). http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=1077