Seattle film class helps immigrant families uncover the past, and more

Through an eyepiece, Jordan Amorasin learned about his homeland for the first time.

The son of immigrants never knew about his family's journey from Laos to America, but a class with the Southeast Asian Men's Group in Seattle gave him the right to ask. Armed with a camcorder, he interviewed his mother and uncle.

"I feel like I now have a piece of the puzzle," said the Franklin High School senior. "Before, I didn't know how to fill that puzzle."

Amorasin is one of a couple dozen students who have ended up in the class, after recommendations from family members and referrals by their teachers at Franklin High. It's a ragtag and rowdy group — some affiliated with gangs, some on probation — that meet faithfully every week for a free class offered by Asian Counseling Referral Service (ACRS), a nonprofit family-services agency located by the light-rail tracks on Martin Luther King Way South, not far from Franklin.

"A lot of them don't know the story of where they came from," said Joseph Mills, a social worker and therapist for the class at ACRS, which runs the Southeast Asian Men's Group with a budget of just $40 per month.

"They still struggle with understanding their identity," Mills said of the teens.

Their outsider status often puts them at risk for joining gangs. Many in the class are second-generation Americans, the first generation born in the U.S. to Lao, Mien, Hmong, Cham, Khmu, Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants. Washington state has the third-highest Cambodian population and the fourth-largest Lao population in the nation, according to census figures.

"I never paid attention to my culture," said one student, Kenny Setiao, who at 19 is the youngest of six siblings in a Chinese-Mien immigrant family. Like Amorasin, Setiao's mother never talked about their heritage and he never cared to ask.

The class gets them to address identity through lessons on history and documentary. The students are diving into their backgrounds by interviewing their relatives for a documentary called, "My Parents Are From Laos."

Mills first worked with the South Asian community while volunteering in California in the early 1990s, after the first wave of Southeast Asians came to the States.

Families were fleeing their homelands of Laos and Cambodia, escaping Communist persecution, execution and concentration camps. Many sought political asylum in refugee camps in Thailand before emigrating to the U.S., sponsored by family members already here. They'd settle down and establish their own families, but never explained their coming-to-America struggles to their children.

In 2000 Mills created the class, which was originally part of the nonprofit Central Youth and Family Services. A total of 150 teens have gone through the program, with 27 currently enrolled. Eleven of these students are in Mills' new filmmaking class, which he just started last year. They've already produced two documentaries — "I am American" and "Life and Times of a Teenage Gambler" — and are at work on another, "Starting to Get Sober."

The documentaries uncover both funny and sobering stories.

When Setiao interviewed his mother, he learned for the first time how she escaped the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand — racing 16 miles into the mountains with one baby in her arms and another in her womb.

"My mom did a lot for us, she provided for us," said Setiao, a senior at Cleveland High School. "We are one — the whole family."

Setiao has inked the program-led discoveries all over his body. A tattoo on his right hand spells out his mother's name, Nang Seng, and on his left arm is a cross with the face of Jesus. On top of that, Mills is listed as his "right hand man" on Setiao's MySpace site.

"The whole experience [of creating the documentary] taught me that the stuff life throws at you, you deal with it," said Setiao, who got married last year. "I know deep inside that it was good for my mom to tell me. Who doesn't need to vent?"

Traditionally, however, the older generation is tight-lipped about their struggles.

"Adults tend to keep this kind of business between themselves," said Tia Sakda, a 45-year-old electronics technician. "The children don't bother to find out and don't know what to ask. All they need to know is that life is good enough."

So when Sakda's nephew, Amorasin, asked him to fill in some holes — he decided to open up.

For the interview, Amorasin and Mills crowd into Sakda's Rainier Beach apartment, setting up two camcorders to record from different angles. Photos of the family decked out in traditional red embroidered robes hang above the couches; for the shoot, Amorasin and his uncle are dressed in jeans and workout pants. Amorasin's cousin, 3-year-old Philip, climbs into the shot, but he is quickly lifted up for a trip to get a Happy Meal.

Amorasin, 18, is at first apprehensive about conducting the interview, worried he doesn't have the right words. He looks for help from Mills, who is fluent in Lao, "How do you say," asks Amorasin, " 'When you first came, what did you do to fit in?' "

Mills translates. The answer: rock 'n' roll. Beaming, his uncle takes down a photo from the wall, showing off a younger version of himself with tight jeans and long hair. He used to play keyboards in a band called Nok Chao (Night Heron).

The family left Laos for a refugee camp in Thailand in 1983, went to the Philippines in 1986, and finally settled in Seattle in 1987. In 1990, Sakda traveled back to Laos to find a childhood friend from the same village, and married her in 2000.

"Do you want to know a funny story?" Sakda asks. He shares a memory of hanging out with three friends in Laos, when each young man was trying to out-macho the other. They dared each other to pick up some excrement from a water bull, pretending to not know what it actually was.

"I was surprised he told me his story the way he did,"Amorasin said. "I thought he felt obliged to tell me. Instead, he was willing to tell me."

Marian Liu: 206-464-3825 or mliu@seattletimes.com