My parents were born in the early 1960s during the escalation of the Vietnam War. My dad was the youngest of eight children and my mom the middle of ten. During that time, having more children meant more bodies to help support the family. So that’s what they did. Both of my parents completed school until the fifth grade and left to start farming. To sum up their teenage years, they grew up in a battle torn country, farming crops for work, surrounded by war and starvation. In the 1970s, many Vietnamese fled their home to escape the conflict. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that my parents boarded a boat with a few family members and immigrated to the United States.