Before Spanish explorers ever mapped its coastline, California existed only as a myth in a 16th century romance novel, Las Sergas de Esplandián. The author, Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, imagined a distant island paradise rich in gold, ruled by a powerful warrior queen named Calafia. When the conquistadors landed on a hot, unfamiliar peninsula, they mistook it for that legendary land and gave it the novel’s name. California was a place born from imagination, a crossroads of fiction and exploration long before it ever became a crossroads of the world.
Five centuries later, my family arrived carrying a vision not so different from theirs. We came to California as refugees from Vietnam, my parents, my older brother, and me, with only the hope and the belief that this foreign land held opportunity. Like the explorers, we landed somewhere we didn’t recognize and over time, called it home. California was the first state I knew. It was where I was raised, and it became part of my origin story.
When people ask where I’m from, the answer has gotten more complicated over the years.
I live in Hawaii now. I have been here long enough that it feels like a new home. The rhythms are familiar. The roads are familiar. The people are familiar.
But California is the place that shaped me.
I spent nearly two decades there, and from the middle of the Pacific, it feels less like a former residence and more like a country I once lived in. Not foreign, but distant enough that I catch myself observing it the way an expatriate might.
The California I remember was vibrant, restless, and impossibly diverse. Entire worlds existed within a few square miles. One neighborhood was Vietnamese. The next was Mexican. The next Korean. The next something else entirely. Diversity wasn’t a slogan there, back then it was simply daily life.
That is where I learned Spanish (sort of). Classroom taught but practiced with friends and at the best Mexican bodegas. You cannot grow up surrounded by that many cultures without absorbing pieces of them. California taught me that language is more than vocabulary. It is a doorway into how other people see the world.
Navigating that massive world required a different kind of fluency, the physical skills that quietly built my independence.
I learned to drive on California roads. I learned to snowboard in California mountains. I learned to swim in California pools.
Each seemed small at the time though looking back, they marked the slow handoff from childhood to independence. Every new skill pushed out the boundary of what I thought was possible.
California is where I started to figure out who I was. Like other immigrant children, I spent years trying to find footing somewhere at the intersection of these cultures and expectations. California gave me the space to work through that discovery journey. Surrounded by people from every imaginable background, I eventually understood that identity isn’t something handed to you. It is something you must build.
The state kept reminding me of how little I actually knew. California feels like a crossroads of the world. Every person seemed to carry a unique story, a distinct history, another way of seeing things. The more people I met, the larger the horizon became. That curiosity took root there, and I am still chasing it.
Okay… I still miss the food. California spoiled me with Mexican food. Not the ones on Yelp or sponsored by influencers, but the small family-owned places where the recipes traveled north with the people who made them. The tacos, burritos, and salsas were just part of daily life. I didn’t realize how much I took them for granted until they were gone.
I also carry a deep appreciation for the Vietnamese communities that made a home there. Many, like my own family, arrived as refugees with determination and the clothes they wore. What stayed with me wasn’t just their success. It was their mindset. A quiet understanding that nothing was guaranteed and that progress required effort. Businesses appeared where none existed before. Parents sacrificed so their children would have choices they never did. Entire communities were built on persistence; not privilege.
Those examples shaped me more than I understood at the time. My parents and most of my siblings are still there. Hawaii is the closest state, yet the Pacific still creates real distance. Depending on the season, we are separated by two or three time zones. Small on a map, but enough that the everyday moments are no longer shared.
The dreams seemed impossibly large back then. Home is usually described as a physical place. Older now, I think of it as a state of mind. It is the starting point where patience is learned, growth begins, and big dreams are born.
For me, that place will always be California.