Painting > This Is My Home: Stories of First Generation Immigrants

NGHIA TRAN was born in Long An, Vietnam in 1940, and he served in the Vietnamese Navy before his sister sponsored him to come to the US. Tran emigrated in 1990, and his parents sold their house in Vietnam to be able to afford the move. Tran thought about America as the land of freedom, and remembers coming to the US and thinking, “It feels like summertime here.” He spent his career working on the fish processing line for Trident Seafoods, putting fish in boxes for shipping. Tran has gone back to Vietnam three times to visit family, but the US is his home: “The community here is happy,” he tells me, “the community is free.”