Valverde's chapter on "Whose Community Is It Anyway - Overseas Vietnamese Negotiating Their Cultural and Political Identity: The Case of Vice-Mayor Madison Nguyen" delves into the cultural difficulties and political barriers Vietnamese Americans have to overcome in order to achieve political representation as well as dominance within the community today. In the excerpt, Valverde states, "This struggle includes coping with continued relations with the home country; adjustment to the host country; and the need to mediate divergent ideas within the ethnic community, felt particularly by staunch anticommunists" (p.114). The struggles mentioned here remind me much of the transnationalism theme we have discussed much about in class (being firmly rooted in the host country but still having several connections back to the homeland). This chapter examines the effects of transnationalism on politics and how one affects the other in the case of Madison Nguyen. Nguyen finds walking the tightrope between being "American" as well as being "Vietnamese" challenging when her own community that she had devoted so much time and effort into was turning against her during her campaign. However despite all the hate Nguyen had to endure, the part that I admired the most about her character was when she won the recall election, she said "This was a victory for all of us" (p.143). Even when her own community and the people she knew were pitted against her, she still did not see "sides" or a "divide" within her community, but saw the entire situation as a step closer to unity. Michael Peter Smith's chapter on "Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics" covers the depth and details of contemporary globalization of culture now shaping the lives of transmigrants as well as global grassroots movements. This reading helped me further understand how "existing structures of power and discrimination seek to erase the new political spaces and move politics back to terrains they currently dominate" (p.32).
Discussion Question: What are some ways we can encourage and keep the momentum behind Asian American activism?
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