“Lennie, why don’t you be a good girl and get the men some beers,” said my uncle. Why don’t you go get them yourself? You have legs, don’t you? I stared intently at the television, pretending not to hear his chauvinist command. At fifteen, I was already sprouting branches of Western ideas. Glaring eyes of both the men and women in the room attempted to snap these branches in my mind, but I did not get up.

***

Deep in the roots of Asian culture lie ancient traditions regarding gender roles and rules. If you were to dissect these traditions, revealing their inner bark, you would see rings upon rings upon rings upon rings, marking how far back these customs go. With every generation grows a new ring and even deeper roots. No one is to cut down the tree or uproot it.

I was never explicitly told what these roles were but was expected to learn from observation. Because of certain body parts I possessed but didn’t choose to have, my roles were, apparently, working in the kitchen and waiting on my uncles, hand and foot.
In the winter of my sophomore year in high school, my parents, my brother, and I took a road trip to California, where my mom’s side of the family lived. As always, whenever the whole family is in one state, we all gathered in one house for a traditional Vietnamese meal.

At the beginning of dinner all of the men—except my father, since things are much less patriarchal within my immediate family—sat down in their chairs and waited. They slugged bottles of Heineken, delegating the feeding of their children to their dutiful wives, who would be the last to eat. The rest of the women and the older girls scooped bowls of rice, piling the grains up high for these mighty men to eat. We set the bowls down in front of them, along with their spoons and chopsticks, without so much as a “thank you.” The blood rose to my face; I could feel the flames of anger and injustice licking my cheeks. I was suffocating. The roots of chauvinism gripped my body in a hold that I was too afraid to break—part of me was in that very soil.

Only after my uncles were served the food they didn’t cook could we, the females, sit down and eat. And even then our work was not finished.

“Grab me a glass of water,” said one. You have hands, last time I checked.

“I need more napkins,” said another. They’re literally right next to you.

“You’re washing the dishes, right?” asked another. I’ll wash my own.

But alas, my inner protests were just thoughts. I washed the dishes, cleaning every spit-ridden grain of rice off the white porcelain, as if I could be infected by the sexism, which, in a way, I already was. I scrubbed remnants of bok choy and droplets of fish sauce off the dishes with the ferocity of a tiger. I wanted to disinfect every piece of patriarchal thought off these plates. I wanted to bring in the herbicide. How was a tree supposed to grow and prosper without proper nourishment?

My uncles pride themselves on their forward, Westernized thinking. One works for the navy, another is a professor at a prestigious university, and the other three are engineers. And yet here I was, washing the dishes I set out for them, as they heaped their bowls and plates and chopsticks and spoons and cups into the sink. They had assumed I would wash everything because it was my female duty, my role in this family. And they assumed right.

Once dinner was over and the dishes were spotless, the children gathered around the television with me as their caretaker. The men stayed in their macho huddle at the table, their second round of Heinekens almost dry. When I saw the last drop slide down their throats, I had a feeling of what would come next.

“Lennie, why don’t you be a good girl and get the men some beers,” said my uncle. I heard him, saw his expectant gaze, but I pretended not to. I brought out the herbicide, and I stayed put.

“Lennie?” he asked once more. “Go get us some beers.” I felt sweat beginning to form on my forehead. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to separate my roots from the rest of the family tree, let alone uproot the whole plant. The roots were too deep in the soil, winding and weaving through every generation since who knows when.

Traditions and customs—they’re important. They keep a culture alive. Familiar practices nourish the roots of culture, allow the branches to expand, not wither and decay. But at what point is a practice outdated? Don’t get me wrong: I love my culture and my heritage. In fact, I embrace them. I go to Lunar New Year festivals and Buddhist temples; I eat fish sauce and moon cakes (not together, of course). My culture and heritage are a part of who I am and always will be. What I don’t agree with is the place of women on this side of my family. That is one tradition that needs to change. I don’t expect to glug a beer while the men go cook and clean and care for the kids. I’m just asking for a little consideration and appreciation, a “please” here, a “thank you” there. I’m asking to form my own roots, free of gender roles and rules. I’m asking to not have patriarchal expectations thrust upon me. I’m asking not to be merely a servant.

I put the herbicide away, realizing it would only be a temporary fix. Where one root is destroyed, another will grow back in its place as long as those of the old generation and those with the same mindset are still watering the tree. Some fights aren’t worth the scorn that will inevitably come along with them.

I got up and fetched five Heinekens as I was expected to.