Sidney Siu
Raymond Trinh
ASA 114
Asia as Home(land)
Louisa Schein. “Diaspora Politics, Homeland Erotics and the Materializing of Memory.” Displacements.
In Louisa Schien article, she discusses the discourses and events that materialize a homeland for Hmong in diaspora. Schein argues that Hmong people have multiple homelands. She presents two vignettes. Vignette - a brief evocative description, account or episode. One vignette talks about a specific Hmong New Year in Fresno, California, and its spectacular event because two Lao Royal guests have been invited to attend. The second vignette talks about how male Hmong Americans have visited the Hmong villages in China, only to sleep with the young women who are promised a chance to go to U.S., but are left behind and forgotten by these men. These vignettes served from their contexts, highlight the complex junctures that are inhere in homeland politics and that remain undertheorized in diaspora studies.
For the first vignette, Schein analyzes the history of the migration of Hmong people, originating from China. Conflict with Chinese imperialists, Hmong crossed the Chinese borders and into the South-East Asia territories, such as Laos, that became their new homes and now have centuries of huge historical depth for them. During the time of the Vietnam War, Hmong in Laos formed an alliance with the French and the Americans to retaliate against the communists. However, when the United States finally pulled out of the Vietnam War, it left many Hmong in persecution. Therefore, the Hmong people in Laos had to leave the country and migrate to Thailand refugee camps, and eventually settled in the United States and other receiving countries to survive. These Hmong refugees went from a settled lifestyle in South-East Asia, to years of trauma, and migrate to a new westernized country where they had to adjust to the education and language barriers. “Whereas China is remembered in the nostalgic, Laos is romanticized and remembered concretely. Thus”Hmong American spatial commitments, then are multiple and not constricted by a unidirectional program of return”.
Hmong New Year runs for approximately six day and is attended by tens of thousands of Hmong from all over the United States and beyond. However, Fresno Hmong New Year in 1996 was different and special as a result of the two Royalty guests that attended. The two Lao Royalty guests are the offspring of the former Lao king who is now living in exile in Paris, France. Their presence at the Hmong New Year represented a unified identity of the Hmong and Laos through their similar experiences in political standings and struggles. The ceremonies for the Lao Royalties were a way to recreate a lost culture of Hmong memories in Asia. Furthermore, to create a time when these high status officials were once able to compose and form important political decisions. Hmong Americans weakens their co-ethics in the Chinese homelands because the Hmong in China are still dealing in poverty. The Hmong individuals were seeking for Hmong Americans for mentorship, educational, and economical assistance.
Schein seeks to further elaborate on the complex nature of Hmong migrant and homeland practices by discussing strategic triangulation. In other words, she discusses how the Hmong employed multiple methods in an attempt to achieve their goals of recovering their lost culture. In one example, the Hmong were motivated by political nostalgia to reobtain their influence in the highest level of state politics. They aimed to establish themselves as recuperated and revamped - an improved version of the Hmong that was never seen before. By placing an emphasis on the multiculturalism of partnership and coalition, they differentiated themselves from the minoritized status assigned to them in the U.S. They were to establish this perception by marrying inter-ethnically. This method resembles a similar strategy employed by immigrants from Thailand. As discussed in class, the Thai immigrants made their restaurants more upscale in order to cast an impression of higher standards. Both the Thai and Hmong people sought to establish their statuses as exceeding the minority statuses of other immigrant groups. Another method of strategic triangulation was employed by the Hmong people who lived in the U.S. These people played the typical model minority by disavowing the stigmatized poverty and concomitant retrograde character of their coethnics in the Chinese homeland. This caused China to be portrayed as an emblem of the past, while the U.S. was seen as an advanced country where the educational and economic opportunities placed immigrants in higher standings than their counterparts in other countries. Also, Schein discusses how in the U.S., women who are able to access this increased educational opportunity are increasingly able to realize their potential and challenge their traditional, exploitable image.
Another way that Schein discusses Hmong practices is by thinking about Diasporic Sex. The purpose of viewing it from this standpoint is to push beyond the feminization of homeland into its erotics. Schein discusses how the imported bride, a type of heterosexual engagement, brings about significant economic reparations. Completing an interethnic marriage, causes channels for the flow of export goods from China to open. This ties into the previously discussed concepts of transnationalism and globalization, as members of the Diaspora now help to stimulate economic prosperity and growth. Despite the economic benefits, imported brides also reinforce gender disparities, which ultimately intensifies gender exploitation. Schein provides an example of how Ara Wilson and Venny Villepando argue about how marriages between Asian women and non-Asian men are imbricated in gender logics of female docility. It is interesting to see that these types of inter-ethnic marriages still exist today. However, the relationships between the Asian women and non-Asian men may differ in the severities of gender disparities. Schein also discusses how the picture may change if changes are homoerotic or within a diasporic community - would gender exploitation still exist? She answers this by discussing examples that show how these relationships result in transformative remasculinization, as well as liberation from subordination. Schein continues this section by explaining how conducting a social analysis allows for sexual encounters to be a site of the production of meaning or of significant relationships. She discusses how migrant fascination with homeland women does not fit the logic of alteric richness and plentitude. Therefore, an alternative explanation for this phenomenon is that women represent a traditional aspect of self. She also questions how sex accomplishes this recovery of lost self, theorizing that it epitomizes the recovery of masculine power.
Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Popular Music: Sounds of Home Resistance and Change” Transnationalizing Viet Nam
In this reading, Valverde explains the impact that popular culture, particularly music and video, make in the lives of both Vietnamese Natives and Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese). She introduces the chapter by describing the ways in which “Paris by Night,” a popular Vietnamese diasporic variety show, plays a key role in the Vietnamese diaspora. Not only do the videos entertain with popular music and performers, but they also represent true experiences and shared/hybrid cultures. The fast growing popularity of these videos in the 1980s and 90s created multilayered discussions about “artistic concerns, social gossip, copyright infringement, government restrictions, and technological advances” (30). Furthermore, the popularity does not pertain to a single region. Its global reach defies the distance and political conflict between Viet Nam and overseas. The way around the political restrictions is through the blackmarket. Through the blackmarket, professionals in the industry have found loopholes to collaborate transnationally in order to produce an entertainment that highlights the voices of these people and fans-- commonly regarding issues of assimilating to hybrid culture.
Before “Paris by Night” was traditional Vietnamese music, which was then influenced by French colonization and later lead to music with French melody and Vietnamese lyrics. When French influence took over much of Viet Nam, especially to the elite urban youth, the popular music was mostly heard in French speaking movies, musicals, and theater. From there, Pre-Indochina war music was popularized as folk style music in the genres of “marching music, love songs, and songs relating to resistance and independence from France” (32). Even though this type of music was trendy among urban/educated youth, it was not so favorable by the poor, rural population, and feudalistic intellectuals.
Popular music has heavily impacted the Vietnamese diaspora, mostly including refugees. This music became very important to them because it created a connection to the homeland, while also being used as a method of preserving their culture. Another way Vietnamese Americans preserved their culture using entertainment was with clubbing and karaoke. Many Vietnamese youth came together and found the means to go out and have fun with their community. Having fun and being around other young Vietnamese, who listened to songs in both Vietnames and English, founded a social space for identity formation.
Because the movement of popular music is fairly recent, many artists who began the movement are still alive and performing today. However, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages that differ between Viet Nam’s music industry and the Vietnamese diaspora’s. Viet Nam has a specific advantage in that they have more support due to the country’s population. On the other hand, Vietnamese Americans hold power in technology and style due to easier access to technology. Both groups acknowledge their disadvantages to their counterparts, which motivates them to borrow ideas and resources from each other, such as collaboration despite political restrictions. This collaboration allows for new and creative sounds that translate between the diaspora through globalization and transnationalized perspectives.
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