Fields Corner, Dorchester

(August 5, 1994)

Binh Tran walks down a narrow lane beside a school in the Fields Corner section of Dorchester. It was here, he recalls, that thieves accosted him one night and stole his jacket. It was here that he routinely watched for trouble as he made his way home through the dark. Tran recalls every curve and hidden niche of danger. After surviving a dangerous boat journey out of Vietnam, he found himself in the early 1980s suddenly learning how to survive on the sometimes mean streets of urban America.

Like many Vietnamese refugees, Tran gravitated to Dorchester's Fields Corner section to be close to other Vietnamese, who began to move to the neighborhood in the early 1980s. Almost a decade later, Tran's life has changed dramatically. After years of hard work and saving, he and his brother bought a house in Randolph for their family, who last year immigrated from Vietnam.

As Tran walks these Dorchester streets today, he seems ambivalent about the neighborhood that once served as his introduction to America. Shadowed by memories of harassment and isolation, Tran still casts a skeptical eye on these familiar surroundings.

But despite a residue of suspicion, Tran says he still regularly returns to the neighborhood when he feels the need "to be around Vietnamese people" or if he needs to make purchases at some of the Vietnamese-owned shops. Walking along Dorchester Avenue on a recent summer afternoon, he could barely pass a block without seeing a familiar face and stopping a moment to talk and laugh with them about old times. There were former students he counseled at the Asian American Civic Association and friends who had lived with him in Dorchester in his earliest days in America.

It's seeing those faces and the camaraderie of a shared language and culture that continue to make Dorchester Avenue from Fields Corner to Savin Hill one of the Boston area's major Vietnamese enclaves. Just as the city's Chinese immigrants gravitated to Chinatown to be with people sharing the same language and culture, the Vietnamese are drawn to Dorchester Avenue to find a sense of community they find lacking in other Boston neighborhoods.

To a casual visitor to Dorchester Avenue the Vietnamese presence on the street is unmistakable. There's a Vietnamese market and video store, a car repair shop and a social service center, a hair salon and a pharmacy, a doctor's office and a restaurant.

But while the Vietnamese presence is pervasive, the Vietnamese are not the only ones to call this neighborhood home. The narrow residential streets off Dorchester Avenue make up one of the city's genuine multicultural districts. On a hill overlooking Dorchester Avenue, the quiet streets are populated by Vietnamese, African American, white and Hispanic families.

On one block, a black child scrambles for a soccer ball rolling down the street. Around the corner a Hispanic youth snaps a picture of two friends posing in front of a car. Not far away an elderly white man stands in front of a clapboard house with an American flag hanging above the porch. A little further down a Vietnamese teenager passes a summer afternoon on a shaded porch with a group of black friends.

Coming to Dorchester

The Dorchester Vietnamese community began to grow in the early 1980s, says Hiep Chu, the former executive director of the Vietnamese American Civic Association in Fields Corner. Chu says the neighborhood's first residents were refugees who had escaped by boat from Vietnam and its Communist regime. "Before 1984 there wasn't that large a community," he says.

Over the years, says Chu, there have been waves of Vietnamese migrants arriving in the neighborhood. The first group left Vietnam when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975. That group was followed by the boat people - many of whom were ethnic Chinese - in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Next came immigrants participating in the US Government's Orderly Departure Program and the Amerasian Homecoming Act. More recently former political prisoners and their families have immigrated under the Humanitarian Operation.

Each wave of Immigrants had varying levels of education, says Chu, who adds that the Vietnamese who came during the first two waves were relatively wealthy and well-educated. Many people in the third wave, in contrast, came from rural areas and had limited education. The most recent Vietnamese immigrants were political prisoners and their families. "This group is very well educated," says Chu, who adds that many had once worked for the US Government.

Early Days

The Vietnamese say they moved to Dorchester because of its affordable rents and proximity to Red Line subway stops. When the Vietnamese arrived on Dorchester Avenue, the neighborhood was populated by both white and black residents. Over time, more and more Vietnamese moved in and eventually opened their own businesses. Now there are about 35 small Vietnamese-owned businesses in the area.

Although Vietnamese refugees were eligible for welfare when they first arrived in this country, many quickly became self-sufficient, moving on to school or manufacturing jobs in the area. Some started their own businesses. Many also saved their money and purchased homes. While some moved to South Shore communities such as Quincy and Randolph, others stayed in the neighborhood and purchased tenement houses, which they rented out to other Vietnamese

As the community developed, many parents focused their energy on ensuring that their children were well-educated. Many also become members of local Catholic churches or attended newly created Buddhist temples in Roslindale and East Boston.

Becoming Americans

Like earlier waves of immigrants, the Vietnamese have experienced their share of struggles in adapting to life in this country, says Tuan Q. Tran, a pharmacist and owner of the Kimmy Pharmacy on Dorchester Avenue. Tran knows about those struggles first hand because of his involvement in the daily life of the Dorchester community. In addition to providing medicine for the community, he also keeps a room in his pharmacy to serve as an unofficial neighborhood counseling center. A government worker and a military official in Vietnam before he escaped by boat to the West, Tran spent four years in prison after the Communist regime came to power. After arriving in the United States, Tran studied pharmacy and eventually opened his own drugstore. "My sponsor was very reluctant to let me come over here," says Tran of his decision to move to Dorchester.

In addition to inexpensive housing, the Vietnamese remain in this Dorchester Avenue neighborhood because of the sense of community and shared culture and language they find here. "They feel it's like a second home," says Tuan Tran, who explains that some Vietnamese move to cities such as Brookline and Cambridge but eventually come back to Dorchester. "No one talks to me" is a common complaint he hears from Vietnamese who have moved to outlying areas, he says. Even those who do move away permanently continue to return to the neighborhood to visit Vietnamese doctors or patronize Vietnamese-owned shops.

Adjusting to American Life

In the course of his counseling, Tran has found that adjusting to life in a new country is especially stressful to families. Conflicts often arise when Vietnamese and American values start to clash in the home. In Vietnamese culture, respect for family and elders is a deeply rooted value, but in American life, young people are given more status and independence. "When they (Vietnamese children) go to school, they imitate other kids and they come home and make more demands," says Tran, the father of four children, three of whom attend Boston Latin School.

In America, young people "have more rights," making it more difficult for parents to "ask their children to follow their advice." For parents, he adds, the situation is sometimes 'very tough." And while some parents lose control over their bicultural children, others are more successful in guiding them toward productive futures. In the end, he says, most parents just want their children to have a better future.

"Either rich or poor, they try to send their kids to school," he says. Like respect for elders and the sanctity of family, education remains an enduring Vietnamese value.

The convergence of traditional and American values also affects relationships between husbands and wives, says Tran. "The husband [in Vietnam] has more power over the wife than in America," he says. In America, problems sometimes develop between husband and wife because the women no longer want to accept being in a subordinate position. Moreover, many women work outside the home and end up contributing equally toward the family's survival. When "the wife does not accept that [the man has more power]," the "husband is very shocked," says Tran.

Living in the Neighborhood

A group of Vietnamese women walk down Dorchester Avenue, past a long row of Vietnamese-owned businesses. Several recognize Binh Tran as their former teacher and are happy to stop for a moment to talk with him. They are returning home from the Kit Clark Senior Services Center, which they visit once a week to socialize, exercise and receive counseling. Nhung Nguyen says she speaks with a counselor because she sometimes has difficulty sleeping and often feels nervous. And while Nguyen says she feels safe in the neighborhood if she stays on a main street such as Dorchester Avenue, she feels less secure when she ventures down a quiet side street. In the past, strangers have thrown stones at her without reason.

While Nguyen suggests that Dorchester's Vietnamese are still occasionally harassed on neighborhood streets, Tuan Tran and others say the neighborhood is much safer now than it was in the past. Tuan Van Pham, the owner of T&D Auto Body Repair on Dorchester Avenue, says harassment is much less of a problem than it was in the 1980s. In those days, he says, he was often harassed and attacked simply because he was Vietnamese. It's better now because the Vietnamese population is larger. Now the Vietnamese can stick up for themselves. "Now you see Vietnamese people every minute," he says. "It's hard for them to take advantage of you."

Hiep Chu agrees. "In terms of racial conflicts I haven't seen any, " says Chu, who nevertheless adds that such activity may continue to occur in the neighborhood.

Last year a Vietnamese youth was shot to death at a Dorchester Avenue restaurant. There were suggestions at the time that the shooting may have been gang-related, but the police eventually determined that it wasn't. Violence in America, says Chu, isn't limited to one racial or ethnic group. Chu suggests that youths who gather in groups are sometimes unfairly characterized as being members of a gang.

At the same time, he adds, there may be groups involved in criminal activity who travel from state to state. "Within the community I don't want to deny the problem," he says. "But I don't think we have a major problem."