This story is part of Asian American Bustle, an occasional series publishing during Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
As Nancy Tiên walks through her former neighborhood in Old East Dallas, an area once known to many as “Little Asia,” she recognizes many of the structures that help form her Asian American identity.
She can still see the vegetables growing at the community garden on Fitzhugh Avenue that she’d visit with her mom decades ago. The Bangkok City Restaurant her family would frequently dine at is still at the corner of Bryan and Peak streets. Tiên often drives by the duplex she lived in during the 1990s as a child.
But she feels something is missing. Many of the families and Asian-owned businesses are no longer there.
“I don’t know, it’s just different,” Tiên said.
Little Asia was built in the 1980s by thousands of refugees from Southeast Asia — namely Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam — according to the Dallas Asian American Historical Society.
By 1995, her parents bought a house near Interstate 30 and Buckner Boulevard, and at least a dozen other Vietnamese families lived close, Tiên said. Although they no longer lived in Little Asia, the families went to the area for their day-to-day needs.
That changed in the early 2000s, said Tiên and others who have long ties to the area. Many people in the Southeast Asian American community started moving to suburbs such as Garland and Arlington.
That part of Old East Dallas — near Bryan and Fitzhugh streets — lost its identity as an Asian American…
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