We Are All Suspects Now - My Memoir

In the stories told, what comes up a lot is the issue of documentation and being able to prove the identity you assume. This has inevitably led me to think about what my grandmother could have gone through had she been under different circumstances.

My grandma lived in the GuangZhou region of China up until the era of Mao. When he took over and implemented his policies, my grandmother and her family lost literally everything except for each other. She moved next to Burma, but without any sort of legal documentation or paper work to prove who she was. Any sort of documentation had been lost or left behind in China. I remember the first time I realized how serious an issue this could pose. When in middle school, out of curiousity I casually asked my mom one day, "how old is grandma?" And my mom replied, "Umm...I think she's somewhere between 63 and 67 years old". At first I thought nothing of it. I said next, "Well, what year was she born in?" And my mom, rather accepting of the fact, said "She isn't sure. She doesn't remember exactly and her papers were lost a long time ago."

Thinking back on these circumstances, had the Chinese been profiled as terrorists, like people from the Middle East, South Asia, etc. are today, my grandmother probably would have been deported as well, especially if strict immigration laws were put into effect. If something like the "round up" that affected Pakistanis was implemented, where illegal immigrants were forced to turn themselves in, for the Chinese, my life along with my extended family's would have been very different.

I believe this really sums up the title of Nguyen's book. Manipulate and twist, substitute and swtich, and any one of us could be considered terrorists. It's all a matter of perception and portrayal, fueled by nothing deadlier than fear. All it would take for my grandma to face the consequences of not having proper documentation like thousands in America are today, is for the media to profile the Chinese as dangerous and threatening to the country. This in of itself is something that all Americans should be concerned with.