Lowell celebrates its Southeast Asian influence
By Kirk Boutselis, Sun Correspondent
Article Last Updated: 05/07/2008 09:33:19 AM EDT
LOWELL -- For many, it was war, oppression and genocide that mobilized
groups of Southeast Asians to leave the land of their fathers and
mothers and travel across an ocean and a continent to settle in
Lowell.
When they first started to arrive in the late 1970s, the immigrants
and refugees from war-torn parts of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam faced a
society, culture and language that were all but alien to them.
Lan Pho, 67, director emerita of the Center for Diversity and
Pluralism at UMass Lowell, said these immigrants -- herself among them
-- were walking on a "one-way street" where they simultaneously taxed
the city's schools and resources without contributing much to the
fabric of the community.
Now, 30 years later, that same group of nervous but hard-working
immigrants are spinning a new thread to the patchwork quilt that is
the Mill City. They number about 20,000 -- nearly one-fifth of the
city's population -- and have become educators, civic leaders and
businessmen. Lowell has even become the city with the second largest
concentration of Cambodian immigrants in the nation after Long Beach,
Calif.
"Now it's a two-way street," Pho said. "Now they offer something that
the city never had before and we hope that other cities will look at
Lowell and have the same experience as Lowell."
Pho was one of more than 100 residents last night who gathered at the
Mogan Cultural Center for a celebration of the Southeast Asian
community's 30-year
contributions to Greater Lowell. It was also an opportunity for Pho,
who now lives in San Diego, to promote her new book, Southeast Asian
Refugees and Immigrants in the Mill City, which she edited with UMass
Lowell professor Jeffrey Gerson and Sylvia Cowan of Lesley
University.
"No matter how much I love the weather of California, I miss the
spirit of Massachusetts," she said. "And the spirit is not so much
with the place as it is with the people."
Cowan, who heads the intercultural-relations program at Lesley
University, said the book collaboration with Pho and Gerson was an
opportunity to tell the stories that may never have been told. Inside
is a series of essays and studies about the resettlement of Southeast
Asian immigrants to Lowell and its toll on regional economics,
politics and community psychology.
"They brought a lot of vitality to the community," Cowan said of the
Southeast Asian immigrant population. "It has made the city much
richer in terms of cultural diversity."
Also attending last night were former Gov. Michael Dukakis and his
wife, Kitty, who was one of nine community leaders and refugee
advocates to receive special awards.
Dukakis, whose parents were Greek immigrants, said the influx of
Southeast Asian culture to the area is one of the reasons for the
Lowell "miracle."
"The strength of this city, the strength of this state, and the
strength of this nation is bound up in the immigrant experience," he
said.
|
