Editor’s Note: This column contains descriptions of trauma, which may be distressing for some readers.
Being compared to Hillary Clinton was not a compliment in my household.
Back in high school, when I told my parents that I was going to start working on a local political campaign, my father teased that I was going to “pull a Hillary Clinton.”
“She’s very mean, you know?” he said. “She’s a bit abusive.”
My parents knew I was a stubborn kid so they let me do what I was going to do. So, I, holding a small dream that I could be a chief-of-staff of a massive campaign one day, went and did what I wanted.
The dream petered out in lieu of a bigger dream: I loved the sciences and wanted medicine much more. But that comment always stuck with me.
What did it mean to be a “Hillary Clinton” in my house? My parents certainly did not consider her by her accolades, even as they saw her on television back when she was former President Barack Obama’s secretary of state or her 2016 presidential campaigns as the first woman to lead a major political party to the White House.
No, Clinton was a woman who dared to defy America’s hierarchy — one that prioritized men in power and conservative, outdated values of where a woman should be— and therefore, my family’s hierarchy.
When the results came out that Clinton lost the 2016 presidency, my father certainly had something to say.
“Did you think she could actually win?” my father asked.
The implied question was, “Did you think you could ever win?”
If my father told us the sky was a deep yellow, we were forced to accept it was that very color. It didn’t matter if his narrative got twisted or wrong. He was the man, and therefore the head of the household. It was a hierarchy that forever held true the moment I stepped inside the apartment.
I often find it vaguely amusing how twisted the narratives could become but living them is far from it.
I had to believe that the holidays meant to bring family together — Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays — sometimes just had to be forgotten because of my father’s temper and resulting vicious fights. It’s normal to keep only a small number of the possessions I truly loved just in case I got kicked out of the house. Of course, being a daughter was a conditional, privileged role that I had to deserve.
My father was sick, my mother told me all the time in the aftermath. We sent you to Roman Catholic school so you can learn how to be a good person, so now can’t you just bear the holy cross like a good Catholic daughter and forgive him?
That just came with being Vietnamese, I was told. That just came with being a woman. No matter how hard the vitriol carved into my bones, I must smile and take it.
My uncle called my move to UB the “worst decision” I ever made because how dare I leave my family? How dare I betray the values that were instilled in me since childhood? How dare I forget my place?
Of course, I did leave and never looked back since.
But, sometimes, I catch myself crying over whether I made the right decision to leave. Whether I should have accepted my place and my role. I cried then when Clinton lost. I cried when former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election to President Donald Trump in 2024.
I saw two women go against the grain and lose; I was scared of believing that my resistance was futile. I, like the Clinton I was compared to often, would lose.
I cried today, but for very different reasons.
The Democrats flipped Senate seats in the most competitive states, including five states that voted for Trump in 2024. Senator-elect James Talarico broke the Republicans’ grasp in Texas, which held strong since 1988. Abdul El-Sayed — attacked over false ties to terrorist organizations and his faith egregiously blasted — became the first Muslim senator when he won swing state Michigan. Dr. Amy Acton, who was once thought as the long-shot candidate and faced personal attack ads in the weeks leading up, won Ohio. Keisha Lance Bottoms is the first Black woman to be a U.S. governor and the first in decades to win Georgia.
And these are just a few historic moments that happened.
Today’s world felt nonexistent to that girl I was back then; who felt that it was an insult to be a “Hillary Clinton.” That it was pointless to believe that one could overcome decades of a hierarchical structure, with many Americans still dragging their feet to accept change.
But these people decided that a country just had to be different and unlike Clinton and Harris, they won.
America still has a long way to go, but what happened last night reassured the lonely and scared girl inside of me that I was not crazy for pulling a “Hillary Clinton” and daring to believe that it is worth fighting for a different life.
Mylien Lai is the editor-in-chief and can be reached at mylien.lai@ubspectrum.com.
Mylien Lai is the editor-in-chief at The Spectrum. Outside of getting lost in Buffalo, she enjoys practicing the piano and being a bean plant mom. She can be found at @mylien.lai on Instagram.
