Week 6 Blog-Pahnia Vang

In Defying and Redefining Vietnamese Diasporic Art and Media, I feel that the issues and tensions between overseas Vietnamese and those back in the “homeland” are still at a crossroad unable to move forward. Just like what the chapter itself presented about Chau Huynh’s creation of the pedicure basin, what this says about the overseas Vietnamese community is that the sentiments, resentments, and memories of losing a homeland under the regime of Ho Chi Minh and communism influence was ingrained and nailed in too deep to easily forget the pain, hardship, and sufferings. However, from the two opposing sides discussed within the chapter, their worries and reasons are completely valid in voicing out their concerns. In expressing her artwork through her own personal experiences in her homeland as a communist and to her life in the United States under anti-communist influence , Chau Huynh was not celebrated  and was instead criticized and protested against by the majority of the anti-communist overseas. What I personally think what Chau Huynh tries to encompass was this hybridity of cultures between the past North and South Vietnam relations as well as to her two-part family. I think that for her being put within this mixture of North and South influence, Chau Huynh wanted to blend her own and that of her husband’s family.

Question: At the end of this chapter mentions fear-“fear that one’s own history and experiences will be forgotten and one’s suffering will not be remembered” (Valverde 112). Even today, there is a sense of fear that our own history will be forgotten if we don’t ingrain it into the texts or even to our offspring. How can we move past this and seek alternatives to having our history not be forgotten?

Valverde, Kieu. Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2012. Print


http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2008/02/the-salience-of-symbols-for-vietnamese-americans/