A Minnesota PBS Initiative
Food Stamps
My parents came here to the United States in 1993 from Thailand as refugees, the year that I was born. Their lives here came as a result of the Vietnam War and the post effect of manslaughter on the Hmong people. They were forced to relocate from Laos to Thailand to live in refugee camps, eventually leading to a settlement in Appleton, Wisconsin, where my childhood began.
Childhood brings back a lot of memories, many sad times but also happy times. It reminds me of the time when food stamp coupons were a thing back then, at least for my family.
I remember when my dad would leave in the afternoon for work. He worked fulltime at a pizza factory called Jack’s Pizza, so my mom was the sole care provider while he was gone. My mom would occasionally take my siblings and I to a small store called Aldi’s for grocery shopping.
t was always my little brother Ger, my little sister Linda, and I who went. The two older brothers, Lia and Meng, would be off venturing with friends and playing Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, so they were never with us. Anyways, we would walk to Aldi’s because my dad was using our one and only car for work, and my mom didn’t know how to drive at that time. It was about a twenty-five minute walk to get there, but we didn’t complain because we had our mom’s hand to hold and each other to play tag with.
Ger, Linda, and I would know exactly what we wanted to get before we even got there. We would quickly pick up some spicy chicken fingers and fried chicken with apple juice boxes. This would be our dinner for the next hours in the evening. Healthy eating wasn’t exactly anything known to my siblings and I back then, nor was it for my uneducated parents.
Food was food and something edible on our table.
Of course then my mom would buy whatever else we needed aside from what we wanted. My mom would pull out her food stamp coupon book and we would rip out the coupons for her. We were always fascinated by them because they looked similar to green dollar bills and functioned like them too.
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At the end of grocery shopping, we would usually end with two small cardboard boxes full of groceries. My mom would take one box and the other box would be for my siblings and I. They seemed to be the heaviest things ever at the age of four, five, and six. That’s when my mom and us would take breaks in between our walk back home. It took about twenty-five minutes to get there, but thirty-five minutes to get back home.
Although now I’m fully aware of food stamps and the stigmas attached to them, I’m not one bit ashamed. I’m not ashamed that my family was considered below the poverty line. For if I was, it would mean being ashamed of my parents who had forces against them they couldn’t control. It would mean being ashamed of the time and hours my father worked from afternoon until early morning. It would mean being ashamed of my mother, who loved us so dearly. And I’m not about to be ashamed of that.
Those food stamp coupons reflect the poverty I lived through in America, but it would never define me, or my family.
This story is part of the Immigrant Stories collection. Immigrant Stories invites immigrants, refugees, and their families to create digital stories about their experiences. Each story is preserved in the Immigration History Research Center & Archives at the University of Minnesota, where we have collected materials related to immigration in the U.S. since 1965.
Biographical Details
Submitted From: St. Paul, MN
Primary Location During Vietnam: Laos 
Story Subject: Refugee
Story Themes: Food Stamps, Hmong, Immigrant Stories, Laos, Poverty, Refugee Camp, Secret War, Thailand, Video
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