Julie Chang

Read Magagnini's essay on writing Orphans of History, and the final installment on Julie Chang and her journey to become an American but live within the expectations of her Hmong culture.
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This story on Hmong student Julie Chang is the final installment in the Orphans of History series.On top of all her responsibilities at home, Julie, 16, was a star at Burbank High School, where she helped teach the Hmong language class, led the She Club (an Asian girls' club), and maintained a 3.5 GPA,even though she'd been in the United States less than five years and had learned very little in the Thai refugee camp where she had grown up.Read Story

Animated and full of life, Julie Chang seemed like the perfect link between ancient Hmong values and 21st century American opportunities. (Photo: Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams)

By the time I wrote the Orphans of History series, I'd written about seventy Hmong stories over seven years.The series ended up being a fifteen-month-long project that tackled several explosive issues that had been ravaging the roughly two hundred thousand Hmong in the United States: gang violence, deteriorating marriages, a wall between parents and children, who often couldn't communicate because they didn't speak the same language.The story on Julie Chang, featured on this site, is the final installment.
...
Julie was a star at Burbank High School and maintained a 3.5 GPA. . (Photo: Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams)

But there was one teenager, Julie Chang, who stood out.She said she hadn't gotten any sleep the night before; she was so busy taking care of her parents, her sick grandmother, and her ten younger siblings (nine brothers and a baby sister) that she hadn't had time to start her homework until after midnight.But Julie wasn't complaining."I'm proud of my culture, and proud of my family," she declared.

On top of all her responsibilities at home, Julie, sixteen, was a star at Burbank High School, where she helped teach the Hmong language class, led the She Club (an Asian girls' club), and maintained a 3.5 GPA,even though she'd been in the United States less than five years and had learned very little in the Thai refugee camp where she had grown up.

I interviewed Julie after school while she was waiting for he mom to pick her up.Animated and full of life, she seemed like the perfect link between ancient Hmong values and twenty-first-century American opportunities.

She honored her culture but couldn't wait to go to her first movie, her first dance, her first all-you-can-eat buffet.

Over the next few months, I visited Julie's family in their crowded south Sacramento apartment, where I witnessed Julie and her brothers in action.Photographer Anne Williams and I showed up at 5:30 a.m. one weekday morning only to find that Julie had already showered, dressed, and cooked up a giant breakfast of fried hot dogs, green beans and freshly steamed rice.
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I interviewed him with the help of Mai Xi Lee, a Hmong guidance counselor at Burbank who had taken an interest in Julie.

During the interview, I noticed two traditional bamboo flutes hanging on the wall.They belonged to Julie's younger brothers, fifteen-year-old Meng and Tou, thirteen.The flutes not only made for an interesting detail but generated another rich story about their teacher, a highly respected Hmong shaman and flute player who was passing on his gifts to a dozen young Hmong.Observing such details is critical, especially if you are developing a beat on immigration.

To round out the story, I shadowed Julie at school one day, sitting in the back during each of her classes, watching her interact with students and teachers.
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Julie vowed not to get married until she had finished college and embarked on her career as a teacher, nurse, or scientist.She even went on Hmong radio to declare that getting an education was more important than getting married early.
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Julie's mother, Chang Thao, was in no hurry for Julie to get married, either.
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We figured Julie Chang would provide a much-needed upbeat ending to a Hmong series laden with tragedy and hardship: Hmong girl makes good in the New World but doesn't forsake her roots.

In the summer of 2000, a few weeks before the series was scheduled to run, I phoned Julie on a Sunday afternoon and asked how she was doing.She said she was going to summer school during the week and then spending Saturday afternoons in the air-conditioned confines of Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library, researching alternative futures.Julie added that there weren't any potential boyfriends in the picture.On Tuesday morning,less than forty-eight hours later,photographer Anne Williams came up to me at the Bee and told me Julie had gotten married.
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I called Julie, who confirmed that she was married but said that it was a long story.Reluctantly, she agreed to talk to me about it the next day.So while Julie's husband, Kou Vue, a seventeen-year-old high-school student, took a nap, Julie explained what had happened.
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Her parents agreed to take $6,400 for Julie's hand in marriage, and on August 4, 2000, Julie and Kou were formally married at her parents' apartment.
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Today, Julie Chang, twenty, has three children.Her in-laws,mostly Kou's younger sister,take care of the kids while Julie works as a receptionist in a furniture store and Kou works at a filling station.
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While her mother was in the hospital, Julie went home for two weeks to take care of her dad, her grandmother, and her nine siblings and found the house in a shambles.

Julie earned her high-school diploma and occasionally daydreams of becoming a teacher."I like little kids," she said.
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But for now, Julie is enjoying her job and her new life as a wife and mother and isn't in any hurry to go back to school.

Taking Risks

As a journalist, there are two rules I try to live by: that I am a human being first and a journalist second and that I will do no harm unless absolutely necessary.

So I took the extreme step of telling Julie what I thought.

When I found out about Julie's pending marriage, I told her that in the United States, you don't have to get married right away, that she could finish high school first.Then, if she and Kou Vue were in love, they could get married.For about ten minutes, I tried,as diplomatically as possible,to talk Julie out of getting married and ended up getting us disinvited from her wedding.

Being disinvited from the wedding didn't really hurt the story.But I took a real risk by telling Julie what I, the supposedly objective observer, thought, because I could have dramatically altered the story,not to mention her life,if she'd listened to me.
...
But, on the other hand, if Julie didn't know or understand her legal rights in the United States and went through with a forced marriage she didn't want that ended in tragedy, my conscience would have bothered me for not speaking up.

Julie Chang seemed like the perfect link between ancient Hmong values and 21st century American opportunities. (Photo: Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams)

By the time I wrote the Orphans of History series, I'd written about seventy Hmong stories over seven years.The series ended up being a fifteen-month-long project that tackled several explosive issues that had been ravaging the roughly two hundred thousand Hmong in the United States: gang violence, deteriorating marriages, a wall between parents and children, who often couldn't communicate because they didn't speak the same language.The story on Julie Chang, featured on this site, is the final installment.
...
Julie was a star at Burbank High School and maintained a 3.5 GPA. (Photo: Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams)
...
But there was one teenager, Julie Chang, who stood out.

She said she hadn't gotten any sleep the night before; she was so busy taking care of her parents, her sick grandmother, and her ten younger siblings (nine brothers and a baby sister) that she hadn't had time to start her homework until after midnight.But Julie wasn't complaining."I'm proud of my culture, and proud of my family," she declared.

On top of all her responsibilities at home, Julie, sixteen, was a star at Burbank High School, where she helped teach the Hmong language class, led the She Club (an Asian girls' club), and maintained a 3.5 GPA,even though she'd been in the United States less than five years and had learned very little in the Thai refugee camp where she had grown up.

I interviewed Julie after school while she was waiting for he mom to pick her up.Animated and full of life, she seemed like the perfect link between ancient Hmong values and twenty-first-century American opportunities.

She honored her culture but couldn't wait to go to her first movie, her first dance, her first all-you-can-eat buffet.

Over the next few months, I visited Julie's family in their crowded south Sacramento apartment, where I witnessed Julie and her brothers in action.Photographer Anne Williams and I showed up at 5:30 a.m. one weekday morning only to find that Julie had already showered, dressed, and cooked up a giant breakfast of fried hot dogs, green beans and freshly steamed rice.
...
I interviewed him with the help of Mai Xi Lee, a Hmong guidance counselor at Burbank who had taken an interest in Julie.

During the interview, I noticed two traditional bamboo flutes hanging on the wall.They belonged to Julie's younger brothers, fifteen-year-old Meng and Tou, thirteen.The flutes not only made for an interesting detail but generated another rich story about their teacher, a highly respected Hmong shaman and flute player who was passing on his gifts to a dozen young Hmong.Observing such details is critical, especially if you are developing a beat on immigration.

To round out the story, I shadowed Julie at school one day, sitting in the back during each of her classes, watching her interact with students and teachers.
...
Julie vowed not to get married until she had finished college and embarked on her career as a teacher, nurse, or scientist.She even went on Hmong radio to declare that getting an education was more important than getting married early.
...
Julie's mother, Chang Thao, was in no hurry for Julie to get married, either.
...
We figured Julie Chang would provide a much-needed upbeat ending to a Hmong series laden with tragedy and hardship: Hmong girl makes good in the New World but doesn't forsake her roots.

Julie and her husband, Kou Vue. (Photo: Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams)

In the summer of 2000, a few weeks before the series was scheduled to run, I phoned Julie on a Sunday afternoon and asked how she was doing.She said she was going to summer school during the week and then spending Saturday afternoons in the air-conditioned confines of Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library, researching alternative futures.Julie added that there weren't any potential boyfriends in the picture.On Tuesday morning,less than forty-eight hours later,photographer Anne Williams came up to me at the Bee and told me Julie had gotten married.
...
I called Julie, who confirmed that she was married but said that it was a long story.Reluctantly, she agreed to talk to me about it the next day.So while Julie's husband, Kou Vue, a seventeen-year-old high-school student, took a nap, Julie explained what had happened.
...
Her parents agreed to take $6,400 for Julie's hand in marriage, and on August 4, 2000, Julie and Kou were formally married at her parents' apartment.
...
Today, Julie Chang, twenty, has three children.Her in-laws,mostly Kou's younger sister,take care of the kids while Julie works as a receptionist in a furniture store and Kou works at a filling station.
...
While her mother was in the hospital, Julie went home for two weeks to take care of her dad, her grandmother, and her nine siblings and found the house in a shambles.

Julie earned her high-school diploma and occasionally daydreams of becoming a teacher."I like little kids," she said.
...
But for now, Julie is enjoying her job and her new life as a wife and mother and isn't in any hurry to go back to school.

Taking Risks

As a journalist, there are two rules I try to live by: that I am a human being first and a journalist second and that I will do no harm unless absolutely necessary.

So I took the extreme step of telling Julie what I thought.

When I found out about Julie's pending marriage, I told her that in the United States, you don't have to get married right away, that she could finish high school first.Then, if she and Kou Vue were in love, they could get married.For about ten minutes, I tried,as diplomatically as possible,to talk Julie out of getting married and ended up getting us disinvited from her wedding.

Being disinvited from the wedding didn't really hurt the story.But I took a real risk by telling Julie what I, the supposedly objective observer, thought, because I could have dramatically altered the story,not to mention her life,if she'd listened to me.
...
But, on the other hand, if Julie didn't know or understand her legal rights in the United States and went through with a forced marriage she didn't want that ended in tragedy, my conscience would have bothered me for not speaking up.

Julie Chang showed off her moves at her first-ever teen dance, causing her first-ever breakup â€" all on the same wild night.

"This was the first time I went to a party in my whole life," says Chang, 16, her fingers combing raven locks that flow past her waist."It was so fun."

She boogied to "Larger Than Life" by the Backstreet Boys that fateful May night, then was confronted by her jealous boyfriend, who didn't know how to fast dance.
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It's all part of Julie Chang's grand American adventure.She's 4-foot-11 without her high-heeled Soda shoes, but larger than life â€" a diminutive dynamo who honors her ancient culture while embracing the raft of opportunities that have come her way in Sacramento.

Things other American teens take for granted are landmarks in Julie's life: She recently saw her first movie and dined at her first all-you-can-eat buffet.

The future of the Hmong will fall on the shoulders of hundreds of young people like her who straddle two worlds often at odds.

Balancing those worlds will challenge Julie in ways she can't imagine.

It's 5:30 a.m. in her family's mildewed Meadowview apartment.The aroma of fried hot dogs, green beans and fresh-steamed rice wafts from the kitchen.Even her father's prize fighting cock is asleep, but Julie has already showered, dressed and made breakfast for her family â€" 14 in all, including nine younger brothers and a baby sister.

For her grandmother, afflicted with dizzy spells and high blood pressure, she has prepared a medicinal chicken soup."It's part of my job," she says."I'm proud of it."

She was up past midnight studying for a history test, but there's not a crease on her eager face, not a shadow under her mahogany eyes.She hems her black bell bottoms while a parade of bleary-eyed brothers emerges from the bedroom.

One by one, they hop onto giant 50-gallon water jars â€" left over from Y2K, when many Hmong thought the world would end â€" surrounding a small oval kitchen table, and devour breakfast.

Also in the kitchen are two 40-pound bags of rice, a neatly stacked pile of clean dishes Julie washed the night before, and a list of 50 phone numbers â€" all for members of the Chang clan.

Soon, the three-bedroom house returns to its normal chaos: children bouncing on the sofa and chasing one another around the living room, babies bawling, the phone ringing.

Gliding through this kinetic sea is Julie Chang, Burbank High sophomore, big sister, chief cook and wok washer, laundress, textile artist, tutor, interpreter and the shining hope of the Chang family.

"Sometimes I have so much to do, I don't have time to go to sleep," says Julie, who shares a bedroom with her five oldest brothers.
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Miraculously, Julie is managing a 3.5 GPA.She's also president of an Asian American girls club, a regular at the Friday afternoon Hmong forum and the star of Xavier Young's "All Hmong, All The Time" language class.

A few months ago her father, who earns $900 a month washing rental cars at Sacramento International Airport, paid her the ultimate compliment: He bought her a computer.

The computer, now squeezed into her bedroom, "is helping a lot," Julie says.But she still has to wait for her brothers to fall asleep before she can concentrate."They're so annoying, talking talking talking ...

"I love my life and I'm very happy, but I wish I was a boy," she confides.
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Julie stitched stories of a war she'd never seen in a country she'd never visited, then sold them in the camp.

Her family was among the last wave of Hmong refugees to leave the camps.Her grandparents held out hope of returning to Laos to the last.

In 1994, armed only with her ABCs and 1-2-3's, she was thrust into the fifth grade at Freeport Elementary School.Her initial excitement turned to sorrow when the other Hmong girls in her class tired of translating for her.
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Julie's a fast learner.She taught herself to read and write Hmong in two months and she's steadily mastering English.When her grandmother had surgery to remove a fist-sized growth on her back, Julie went to the hospital â€" a place she'd never been before â€" to translate.

"I cannot really translate from English to Hmong," she says."There's no word for ‘complicated' in Hmong."

And that, in a word, describes the Hmong predicament: America is a land of many belief systems, cultures and lifestyles, confusing newcomers who have lived by the same rules for centuries.

As the eldest daughter in a Hmong family, Julie rarely has time for fun.

"Fun?" she does a double take."I never have time to go play my sport, volleyball."In six years here, she has seen one movie, "Godzilla," and then only on a field trip.She does watch Hmong videos and catches snatches of "Friends" on TV.

The other night, she awoke at 4 a.m. to finish "Sweet Valley High," the latest in her diet of teen romance novels.

Even then, the house isn't always peaceful.Sometimes Julie can hear her 75-year-old grandmother, recently widowed, crying in the next room or listening to sad Hmong songs.Sometimes Julie reads while brushing her teeth.

Julie's brains, looks and work ethic have already generated several marriage proposals, including one from the guy who broke up with her at the dance.

"He still calls me every day," she says."He says he's sorry, he wants another chance because it's hard to find a girl like me."

He comes over Saturday nights and talks of love, "but I'm not taking it seriously," she says."I don't have time to date.Education is more important."

Her mother, Cheng Thao, begs Julie, "Don't get married early.
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You're the only one who can help me." It's Julie who helps her mom shop, Julie who helps her grandmother cash her SSI (Supplemental Security Income) check, Julie who explains the notes from school, Julie who plans her siblings' birthday parties.

But Julie and her mom both know that when a traditional Hmong girl marries is often beyond her control.
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Lee calls Julie "your typical Hmong girl but more so.
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Julie handles her many roles with grace and pride, partly because she was raised in an all-Hmong environment that offered no choice, and because her parents are wise enough to nourish her dreams.
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Julie says she wants to wait at least until she has finished college.But despite the pitfalls of early marriage, counselor Lee estimates as many as 60 Hmong girls at Burbank â€" more than one in five â€" are already married.Some became wives at 14.

Julie's dreams

At the Friday afternoon Hmong Forum led by Hmong teacher Xavier Young, Julie and other students open up about how hard it is to reconcile their modern American dreams with the expectations of their old world parents.
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After a long day of French adjectives, Bolshevik history, probability, anatomy and Hmong language, Julie presides over a meeting of the all-girl She Club.

Today the club, which deals with everything from leadership skills to breast cancer, is preparing a dance performance.

Julie shows a sextet of Asian American girls how to gracefully twirl their hands and move their feet to a haunting Hmong love song.
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Julie takes over, cooking a dinner that's not unlike the breakfast she made 14 hours earlier.

It's not until Saturday afternoon that she's able to steal a few moments for herself in the cool confines of the library a few blocks from her home.She asks the librarians to help her research how to become a registered nurse, a teacher, a scientist.

Tears shine in Julie's eyes when she thinks of Laos, the country that has shaped so much of her life, even though she has never even been there."We don't have a country of our own," she laments.

But she's making America her own and says she's impatient to join the new wave of Hmong leaders."I feel like I want to be in college, right there, right now," she says.
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After Julie came home from summer school at the end of July, her cousin showed up to fix her computer.
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Kou, a junior at Florin High, took Julie to his home, where all his relatives were waiting for her.
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"No," said Julie