This piece explores ideas of addiction, chance, immigration, and the American dream. Immigrants often leave their countries in pursuit of the American dream--to build a better life, to find financial stability, to give more to their families &, etc. The journey takes sacrifices, hope, and patience but even all this effort can often still lead to a game of chance on if financial stability can be achieved.

"Gambling offers a unique appeal to immigrants as an enticing and rapid way to make money. Also, gambling does not require the ability to speak English or US citizenship. Finally, since many immigrants may be gambling together, there is the added benefit of socialization and peer support. The process of acculturation is stressful in itself, further reinforcing the lure of gambling as a way to deal with adjusting to a new culture and as a way to avoid having to deal with the stressors of this process. To examine this, Petry screened 96 Southeast Asian refugees from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam from a community center and reported an astonishing pathological gambling prevalence rate of 59 percent in this population.31 Even more intriguing is that 42 percent had gambled more than $500 in the previous two months, an amount that undoubtedly represents a large percentage of the household income of refugees."

In Laos, there is a phenomenon where balls of light rise from the Mekong River every year around the Buddhist lent. Some people think it’s chemicals in the river making this happen. Some think it’s man-made to attract tourists. Some believe it’s the Naga rising from the river to greet people for the Buddhist lent. In this animation, I take a statistic about how children makeup 40% of bomb victims affected by 80 million cluster bombs left behind from the Vietnam and Secret Wars and turn it into a story where their souls are assisted by the Naga, the protector of all Lao people.