USD Magazine: Living Life in Full Color

Anita Duong grew up unaccompanied. She was unattended, unprotected. Abandoned. Alone. That was then. And this is now. Now, Duong ’23 (MA) is a scholarly success.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from San Diego State University and in 2021 graduated cum laude. Under her gown, she wore a black dress from Forever 21. Her commencement stole was purple and white, colors used to symbolize foster youth.

In June, she walked across the stage again, this time at the Jenny Craig Pavilion, with a Master of Arts in higher education from USD’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences (SOLES).

Kimberly White-Smith, EdD, dean of SOLES, is well aware of the obstacles students like Duong face, especially having been raised in the foster care system herself.

“When I meet students who’ve made it through the gauntlet, I’m excited and proud because I know what they’ve been through to get here,” she says. “I’m also aware it doesn’t have to be that hard. A program like Torero Renaissance Scholars (TRS) is one pillar that fills in the gaps and help us navigate educational systems.”

Another pillar is SOLES, which prepares teachers to address the needs of students who come from nontraditional households, learn differently or are neurocomplex.

“That’s why Anita’s presence is essential, why it’s vital that she’s represented in the higher education space and why it’s important that she’s earning a master’s degree from SOLES, which will help her better serve this community,” White-Smith says. “Just as I may be an inspiration to her, she too is serving as an inspiration to those who come behind her.”

After turning her tassel, Duong plans to earn her doctorate in higher education.

“My goal is not just to become an educator and a scholar but an advocate for foster youth,” says Duong, who is among the less than 1% of the nation’s foster youth who’ve earned a master’s degree and now hopes to join White-Smith as one of the even fewer in the ranks to complete her doctorate. “I’ll champion other students, like me, who work so hard to overcome the disadvantages they face. I’ll represent those who are underrepresented. I want to give these students their chance, their opportunity to have their voices heard, to have their dreams fulfilled. I want them to have their own renaissance.”

During her time at USD, Duong was involved in Torero Renaissance Scholars, a program that provides support and resources to USD students from across the United States who identify as former foster youth, who are emancipated or unaccompanied minors, who were in legal guardianships, or who are homeless or are at risk for becoming homeless.

The program was established at USD in 2010 by former Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Cynthia Avery, EdD. Avery spent time as a court-appointed special advocate and understood the struggles foster students often face in school.

“After arriving at USD, I asked what support systems were in place for former foster students and students who were homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless,” she recalls. “I was told USD didn’t have students in those circumstances.”

But Avery knew of students on campus who were homeless, hungry and struggling to meet basic needs — all while attending classes and juggling life as a student.

Within a year or so, the FAFSA form — officially known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — added questions that allowed students to note whether they were foster students, unaccompanied minors, emancipated minors or homeless.

“That changed everything,” Avery says. “Now, the Office of Financial Aid can identify students whom we could invite to join the TRS program.”

Another major turning point was when TRS gained the attention of two anonymous donors, who generously gave a significant contribution to support the work of the program. They said their goal was to serve as catalysts for others and to provide students with opportunities they might not have otherwise had.

The TRS program started with three students and, this year, serves 15.

Duong is proud to be one of those scholars. Her own story was part of a generational trauma that began years prior.

Her grandmother grew up in Cambodia and survived genocide at the hands of the Communist regime known as the Khmer Rouge, which came to power in the spring of 1975 after overthrowing the president of Cambodia. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge systematically killed more than 2 million people, including anyone thought to be an intellectual — doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, those who spoke a foreign language, those who were leaders in the community and even those who looked scholarly simply because they wore glasses.

After living through that, Duong’s grandmother came to the United States when Duong’s mother was 5 years old. Life here had its own difficulties and her grandmother suffered abuse at the hands of her husband. Eventually, her grandmother found the courage to leave her husband, but subsequently struggled with depression and alcoholism.

Duong’s mother had no choice but to step up to care for her younger brother. That meant years later, having done her duty, the last thing she wanted to do when Duong was born was to be a mother.

She wanted to dress in fancy clothes. She wanted to drink. She wanted to party. She wanted  to enjoy the freedoms she didn't have while growing up.

The last thing she wanted was to take care of a baby or to be tied down.

Duong has hazy memories of her mother and grandmother drinking together, with music blaring in the background.

The more they drank, the louder they'd crank the music. Before long, the women would yell at each other until Duong’s mother would inevitably storm out of the house, vowing never to return.

“Chaos would ensue,” Duong says. “They’d yell, argue and throw things. I’d hide in my grandma’s room and cry until it was over.”

Eventually, Duong’s mother fled to New York for a decade with her new husband. After that, Duong’s mother existed primarily in photographs.

Duong grew up with a fantasy she played over and over in her mind, of her mother picking her up from school the way other moms picked up friends and classmates.

In Duong’s mind, her mother drove a red Lexus. She wore a beautiful skirt and blouse with blue flowers and long, flared sleeves that billowed as she walked. Her hair was curled and her makeup was simple — light mascara and blush in a soft shade of pink.

“I imagined her walking to my lunch table and surprising me,” Duong recalls, with the trace of a smile on her lips. “She’d hold my left hand and I’d wave goodbye to my friends as we drove off.”

Duong’s father, originally from Vietnam, was in prison for shooting a man and was still serving his sentence when Duong was born. She was 8 years old when he was released. Duong resented him for leaving her alone with her mother, who abused her. But he was abusive too — slapping her across the face, slamming her head into a window, pushing her down and kicking her in the stomach.

He constantly shut her out of his room, where she couldn’t help but notice white powder on his desk. He even took her along on drug runs, leaving her in the car while he was buying or selling. One day — in a state of paranoia fueled by cocaine — he nearly killed an elderly man in nearby Linda Vista, whom he was convinced was following him.

Soon, he was back in prison.

Duong spent her childhood bouncing around from one relative to another, until her welcome expired. Some were abusive. Some were merely inattentive. She carried her belongings in a blue, plastic laundry basket and had only one item she truly treasured — a toddler-sized yellow blanket with a brown bear holding three balloons — one red, one green and one blue. Bought at a flea market, she carried it everywhere she went.

Eventually, Duong moved in full time with her grandmother.

“I call her mommy,” Duong says lovingly, of her grandmother. “She’s the true definition of resiliency. She survived the genocide. She came to a foreign place where she didn’t know the language. Her husband abused her and cheated on her and, eventually, she decided she was better off navigating alone.”

Grandmother and granddaughter lived together in a humble, two-bedroom home in City Heights. One room belonged to Duong’s uncle. She and her grandmother shared the other room.

“My grandmother had a lot of regret with her own kids,” Duong says. “Now, she’s working hard to be a proper mother, through me, but I feel bad that she had the responsibility of raising me.”

Watching television shows and movies, Duong knew other families were different, but it wasn’t until she was filling out paperwork with a financial aid counselor during her senior year in high school — and the counselor checked the box indicating Duong was an unaccompanied minor — that she truly understood just how different her life was.

Duong says, as a young girl, her uncle bought her a pink-and-purple Huffy bicycle, complete with decals of her favorite Disney princesses and colorful metallic tassels that would flutter from the handlebars as she rode against the wind. Her uncle took her and her cousin camping and to the roller rink.

“I’m so grateful to my uncle for helping to normalize my life and for giving me great memories,” Duong says, while gliding on her purple roller blades. “To this day, I still love roller skating. I feel so safe, so relaxed, so free.”

At first, Duong was reluctant, scared even, to go to college, to move away from her grandmother. But an AP teacher convinced her that it’s an important four years and encouraged her to live life for herself. So she applied to nearby SDSU. It wasn’t until she was an undergraduate student there that, for the first time in her life, Duong had her own bed, her own closet, her own desk, her own dresser drawers. Her side of the wall was covered with photos she printed at Walmart or took with a Polaroid camera. Her bed linens were coral pink with small, white flowers — which she bought herself using money from her financial aid disbursement. A teddy bear sat at the head of her bed.

“I had the choice to decorate everything myself. I could get creative,” Duong recalls. “I felt as though, for the first time, I was in control of my own life.”

It was as if her life was transformed from black-and-white to full color. Duong was grateful to take control and has made the most of her life ever since.

As a graduate student at USD, Duong has spent two summers serving as a college seminar instructor for the USD TRiO Upward Bound program, which is geared toward promoting academic achievement among high school students, establishing not only a path toward college, but also representing low-income and first-generation students who are succeeding in higher education.

In her role, Duong has taught 50 high school students who identify as low-income or first-generation students. She facilitated workshops and cultural events to build community among the students and developed her lesson plans and materials to review everything from college admissions, financial aid and scholarships to college culture and even imposter syndrome, common among students who feel as though they don’t belong or deserve to be in college.

In the spring, she taught an undergraduate emerging leaders course through SOLES — touching on topics such as values, identities, social justice, privilege and how to look at life as a Changemaker and find ways, big and small, to help humanity.

This summer, Duong plans to study abroad — in Spain and in London — learning about their K–12 educational systems. 

As a child, Duong spent a long time feeling helpless, feeling like she had no one looking after her. 

She was unattended, unprotected. Abandoned. Alone. That was then. And this is now.

“No child, no young person, should have to worry about whether their mom will come home at the end of the day or when they’ll eat next, or whether their mom or their grandma will be blasting music in a drunken rage,” Duong says. “They should be worried about playtime and whether they can occasionally get away with eating candy before dinner.”

Sometimes Duong still can’t believe how far she’s come.

“For so long I was so busy surviving — being anxious, being angry — that I forgot to set goals for my future,” Duong says. “But now, I am excited to look back and to know that I did it. Someday, I look forward to earning my PhD, being Dr. Duong, and making a difference to other students like me.”

— Story by Krystn Shrieve, Photos by Alé Delgado and Barbara Ferguson

This story appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of USD Magazine.