Week 7: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Those with a Heart Will Take the Bride) - Aditya Chopra

This film is a classic love story with a twist. It comes complete with dreamed romance turned reality, forbidden love/strife, culture, comedy, drama, and of course a fairytale, happy ending. No wonder the film became one of India’s most popular hits. It takes off with the leading woman, Simran, and leading man, Raj, meeting on a trip touring Europe. Initially there is no real spark between the two, in fact they are greatly annoyed by each other. Raj comes off as a “player” who’s a major jokester and immature. Simran is much more in line with following the traditional Indian behavior of woman yet she’s also partially a feminist. They clash continuously until fate brings them to unexpected circumstances forcing them to spend a lot time together. During this time, Simran’s wild side and Raj’s sensitive side come out allowing them to realize they’re a much better match than they would’ve ever expected. By the time the two realize they’ve fallen in love it’s too late, their time together is up. Aware of Simran’s arranged marriage back home, the two part heartbroken.

Soon after, Simran’s dad finds out she’s in love and he moves the whole family back to India in effort to preserve their culture and traditional values. Viewing their American home as temporary, the dad has always longed to one day return to the way of life he once knew in India and a major part of this is keeping the families promised an arranged, traditional Indian wedding. In Simran’s family, the males dominate over familial decisions and the women as a result, as Simran’s mom expresses with heartache, tend to be the ones who sacrifice the most.

Meanwhile, Raj’s charismatic father convinces him to go after his true love no matter what it takes. He tries to pass off as the groom-to-be’s good friend in order to spend time with Simran before the wedding and attempt to win over her family’s approval. Raj will not elope with his love until her dad gives him Simran’s hand in marriage.  In this instance, it can be interpreted that the men have greater authority as Simran’s fate is left amidst her dad’s refusal to bless them and Raj’s refusal to elope, despite Simran’s wishes to break from her handcuffs of tradition. However, it’s difficult to make assumptions using only an outsider perspective because one cannot truly understand the dynamics of unfamiliar cultures. In collectivistic cultures, as many scholars have explained, family can not only be a priority but part of an individual’s personal identity. For this reason, Simran’s relationship and attachment to her tradition can become complicated to understand from a Western background. She may seem to want to break away but deep inside also have a greater wish or need to uphold her family’s values.

Furthermore, despite the male’s having a ruling voice, they are not completely inconsiderate of the women’s desires and age is another major factor. When Simran’s grandmother comes into the picture, the men and Simran’s dad especially show great respect and reverence to her. In fact considering the respect towards all the women, there is a prominent display of appreciation for the women’s hard work in cooking and prepping for the wedding. There is an unstated mutual agreement between the men and women in terms of effort towards the family that can easily be missed or misinterpreted. Eventually, Raj’s true intentions come out and the plotline becomes very messy. A lot of people experience disrespect and some end up in deep emotional and physical pain. In a dramatic ending, Raj boards a train intending to leave back to America defeated but stares Simran’s dad off in the last seconds who is holding Simran back from running to him. He succeeds in transmitting through eyesight the pure love he feels for Simran and just in the nick of time her dad frees her, giving them his blessing. The lovebirds finally unite as Raj desperately pulls Simran onto the moving train and the happily ever after commences.

Question:

It was harder for Raj to receive approval to marry Simran from her father than her mother. This can be due to his deep roots in traditional practices and privileged experience as man blurring his sensitivity towards the women's experience of sacrifice. That said, would it be equally as hard or harder for Raj to get approval from Simran's grandmother, being both a woman and showing great insistence for Simran's arranged marriage?

Audio: Tujhe Dekha Remix - theme song remix (:

http://youtu.be/zz4T6kJF-CI

-Rosario Orta

1. Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda. “When Minorities Migrate: The Racialization of the Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan.” Reader. 

This reading is about the issues concerning the Japanese diaspora living in Brazil as well as Brazilian immigrants living in Japan. Both immigrants have ways of expressing their ethnic identity as well as face certain acts of racism around different communities. Race is mostly determined with physical features such as skin color and in this case, Japanese people are associated with slanted eyes in Brazil. The Japanese moved to Brazil because there was much poverty for agricultural workers in Japan and Brazil was one of the few countries that let them work in their country. Japanese Brazilians in Brazil also called Brazilian nikkeijin are faced with people calling them “japones” based on their eyes and multiple ways of interpreting this is that either Brazilians look down at Japanese people thinking that they may take over their country, or that they are embracing Japanese people by calling them Japanese. It’s similar to how Chicano people call Asian people “chino” although I believe it can be offensive in some people’s views, it’s a cultural thing such as kissing on people’s cheek when meeting someone or having eye contact with people or the language we speak these days. It’s also amazing to some Brazilians actually because some have never seen a Japanese person and are often excited to see some. Brazil even considers Japan to be a first world country and have much respect for that country. Japanese people cannot escape their treatment despite how much of their Brazilian identity they show and prove just because of their face. It’s similar to many countries that associate the importance of skin color where it measures wealth, ethnicity, and more.

Most Brazilians moved to Japan for better opportunities because Japanese jobs paid much more than in Brazil. There, they are forced to learn a new language along with adjusting a new culture. Some Brazilian immigrants have difficulty being there such as sitting in a kneeling stance and eating the food. In fact, some Brazilian immigrants try to retain their culture by speaking Portuguese and dress Brazilian to let others know that they are not Japanese and should not be treated like one.  It’s usually because Japanese people tend to treat everyone the same because they believe if people look Japanese then they are Japanese. Also, those who are mixed race also have trouble with being Japanese if they identify more with their Brazilian culture because Japanese people tend to look down on Japanese people who do not act proper Japanese. It’s like that in most ethnic groups where communities like Vietnamese people tend to look down on Vietnamese people who cannot speak Vietnamese and more.

From this reading, we understand that there is marginalization in other ethnic groups outside of the U.S. and relates to our class on diaspora and globalization. Immigrants are forced to move for financial opportunities and have to adjust to a new lifestyle. They face societal assimilation pressures and stereotypes just like in America and therefore, race and ethnicity is socially constructed  and changes in different countries for different groups.
-Tri-Thien Nguyen Lam

From Youtube. - Forgotten In Japão: Education in the Brazilian Dekasegi Community

Questions:

1. Is it possible to retain one's identity and culture in another country? If so, what ways and methods can one do to retain it? Could you do it?
2. Why aren't there many cases where Americans migrate to another country for better financial opportunities? If there are, what are some examples? Would you do it if you were in financial trouble?

2. Bernard Scott Lucious. “Into the Black Pacific: Testimonies of Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Displacements.” Displacements.

Lucious introduces the narrative of the "Black Pacific" which he describes as another "counterhegemonic discourse" that calls attention to the narratives of blackness that roots itself in Asian diasporas (122). "Black Pacific" goes beyond "Black Atlantic" (transculturation of African diasporas which can be traced back to the history of the Atlantic slave trade throughout the areas it has affected such as the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and the Americas). It entails the emerging lived-experiences of the Afro-Amerasian, an identity which Lucious describes not exclusively belonging to just "African-American or Asian-American or African Diasporic or Asian Diasporic, but is all of these at once" (122).

He details how the Black Pacific manifests in the interstices of three diasporas. The first diaspora is described to be the blacks who came to serve in the United States army starting in the 1850's. They were sent all over the Asia-Pacific during wars like the Spanish American War, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. The second diaspora happen to be the "military brides" or "Asian-American immigrant" as a result of the first diaspora's presence in the Asia-Pacific (123). The diaspora is made up of the Asian womyn who pursued affairs with American-military men. They often faced backlash from their families and communities for betraying their race and nation. The third diaspora are the result of the first two. They detail the lives of the children who are a product of black military fathers and mothers whose lives are tied to the Asian Pacific.

Lucious sees "Black Pacific" as a transnational term which is a "concept that signifies cross-cultural exchanges, linkages, or identities that emerge as two or more cultures converge" (123). He aims to recount the narratives of Black resiliency in the Asia-Pacific. He uses testimonies to illustrate the challenges that many Afro-Amerasians faced whilst living in Vietnamese diaspora which concentrating on three important aspects: Black testimony, colorism, and contact zones. Black testimony recognizes the importance of the Black narratives in Vietnam and how the accounts of discrimination faced by man black men and their children contribute to the emergence of  the Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian. Colorism is an important factor to recognize, especially in regards to how the Vietnamese community received Vietnamese Afro-Amerasians. Skin color is always taken into account when operating in Vietnam and contributes to the discrimination many darker-skinned Vietnamese Afro-Amerasians. This discrimination based on skin-color can be seen in the displacements it produces which plays out in the contact zones that are within and beyond Vietnam.

The "Black Pacific"which is made up of black histories in Vietnam and the testimonies of Afro-Amerasians presents an "epistemic challenge to the Black Atlantic's dominant discourse on blackness" (151). It reshapes the idea of blackness which can be seen throughout the resiliency of the Vietnamese Afro-Amerasians and their endurance through the many challenges they face due to their complex identity.
-Casey Nguyen

Tran Van Hai is an Afro-Amerasian who started his own family in Vietnam. His story can be found here: http://amerasianvoice.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/tran-van-hai/

Questions:

1. In what ways does the "Black Pacific" pose a challenge to the "Black Atlantic" in terms of defining blackness?
2. What parallels can be seen between the Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian identity and the Vietnamese, African-American identity that finds itself in the diasporas that formed after 1975?

Week 6: Culture

1. Cultural Identity and Diaspora by Stuart Hall. Reader

In the article, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, Stuart Hall discusses the Caribbeans and “Third Cinema” addressing questions about identity, cultural practices, and cultural production. Hall states that there are two ways of reflecting on “cultural identity”, identity understood as a collective shared history among individuals affiliated by race or ethnicity that is considered to be fixed or stable, and identity understood as unstable, metamorphic, and even contradictory. Hall believes that identity should be seen as a “production”, because identity is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within. There are two different ways of thinking about “cultural identity.” The first position defines “cultural identity” as a shared culture, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common. The second position recognizes that there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute “what we really are” or “what we have become.” Hall states that cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made within the discourses of history and culture.

According to Hall, he brings up that there is a conception of “difference,” to rethink the positioning and repositioning of Caribbean cultural identities in relation to three “presences”: Presence Africaine, Presence Europeenne, and Presence Americaine. Presence Africaine is the site of the repressed. Africa was silenced through the power of slavery. As a result of the experience, Africa remains the unspoken “presence” in Caribbean culture. Hall brings up an example about him growing up as a child in Kingston, and how everyone had an their own identity, but years later, people started to see themselves as “black” which also connected to their past of slavery.  Presence Europeenne involves exclusion, imposition, and expropriation. Africa was unspoken, but Europe kept speaking and speaking about the Caribbean cultural identity. Europe introduced the idea of power which created a discourse of “difference” in the Caribbeans. Lastly, Presence Amercaine continues to have its silences. It is the presence of a “New World” where all these different cultures meet, a land where assimilations and creolization were negotiated. The “New World” also represents the beginning of diaspora, diversity, hybridity and difference.

2) Sunaina Maira. “Mixed Desires: Second-generation Indian Americans and the Politics of Youth Culture.” Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas

   People who are part of the second-generation, especially youth, are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they are torn between identifying with their ethnic culture and the mainstream culture. In “Mixed Desires”, Sunaina Maira does a research on second-generation Indian-American youth and how they come to identify with themselves as an Indian American and a “local”. Maira goes into detail about how these youths created a subculture, a mixture of the Hindi music and dance with American music, as well as Indian-styled jewelry with the latest American clothing fashion. Youths use the desi subculture scene to network with others in their area. Places where the youths can listen and dance to this kind of music help them find their “place” in a social hierarchy. The desi parties are only a temporary escape from reality where once the party’s over, the youths have to go back to their everyday routines. Gender plays a role in subculture as well. When it comes to fashion and wearing hip-hop clothing, it’s a double edged sword for men and women. The men are allowed to wear baggy pants and get away with it. When women dress in body hugging outfits, they’re considered “loose” and not marriage material. Youths and their families had to chose between black or white for their race. Those who were fortunate to have money were considered whites and those of lower- and upper-middle class were considered black. It seems to be that the second-generation youth tend not to apply the term “diaspora” to anything anymore or as much as the older generations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9sMBbPGpyQ

3) Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Defying and Redefining Vietnamese Diasporic Art and Media as Seen through Chau Huynh’s Creations.” Transnationalizing Viet Nam

   Kieu-Linh Valverde’s chapter called “Defying and Redefining Vietnamese Diasporic Art and Media as Seen through Chau Huynh’s Creations” discusses three issues involving art pieces that created backlash in the Vietnamese community. Valverde discusses how the smallest things can be taken out of context and blown out of proportion. Such as Chau Huynh’s Pedicure Basin exhibit, Nguoi Viet Daily news, and protests at art exhibits from anticommunists. Huynh’s first piece was her Marriage Quilt that she made by sewing pieces of both the Republic of Viet Nam (RVN) and SVN flags together, where both her and her husband are from. It wasn’t until 2008, in an article published by Nguoi Viet Daily news, when Huynh made headlines for her Pedicure Basin work that caused the most controversy. Huynh was accused of defacing and disrespecting Viet Nam and the Vietnamese community by putting the country’s flag in a foot basin. Just like Huynh, Nguoi Viet Daily news got off on a rocky start, filled with backlash and protest from the Vietnamese community. Their backlash began when they featured a picture of Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in 1989. Many art shows and exhibits and other newspapers also received negative viewpoints from the Vietnamese community for supporting communism. Protesters shut down multiple art exhibits over the ideology of anticommunism. The F.O.B. II: Art Speaks exhibit allowed over 50 artists from Viet Nam and the U.S. to participate in an event where they wouldn't be harassed by anticommunist protesters. Valverde states that “…art, and places that display art, can shape what is acceptable cultural production in society.” (Valverde, 92). Valverde shows that the anticommunists have the upper hand in most of these events because they weren’t afraid of speaking out and that they gained the most control over everyone.

(Photo courtesy: bolsavik.com, 2008)

Questions:

1) How is identity defined by Hall? Why does he bring up the three presences to position "cultural identities"?

2) Why is it that we don't see any Asian American artists in the mainstream music industry today?

3) What kind of influence does the hip-hop culture have on other Asian Americans?

4) Is it important for an artist or the media to have a solid understanding or background of their piece that they will be publishing?

5) Did Huynh and the Nguoi Viet Daily know what they were getting into when they created the project or article? Or do you think the community was overreacting?

Jessica and Adrian

Week 5: Politics

                              

Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Whose Community is it anyway? : Overseas Vietnamese Negotiating their Cultural and Political Identity-The Case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen.” Transnationalizing Viet Nam.

Whose Community is it Anyway? candidly reveals the transparency of a community cohesiveness could simply be rifted and diffused over differences of anti-communism sentiments.  Author, Caroline Kieu-Linh Valverde, candidly divulges the underpinning cultural values and attitudes that altered the unity, progress, social and political positioning of the Vietnamese community in San Jose. The incidents surrounding the people’s campaign for recall election of Vice-Mayor, Madison Nguyen, a Vietnamese American council woman, was an epitome of the deeply rooted political activism of Vietnamese Americans.  At times such as this, community’s strengths and weaknesses are apparent and easy to recognize. The author recognizes and honors the historical legacies of the Vietnamese older generation; at the same time, laments over the dichotomy of treatment toward Madison, an accomplished and independent council member who has in the past been praised and embraced by the community for her fight against social justices and betterment of the community. Madison’s triumph over the recall election signifies that if there were to be a hegemony voice of the community, it should be one that is representative of all members, not just those who could reverberate loudest and longest. 

Understanding of the reconstruction of Vietnamese community in diasporas requires the      knowledge of their long history of the Eastern    imperialism, Western colonialism, civil war and  diasporas. The emergence of Vietnamese in  diasporas was essentially a result of the lost of  South Vietnam to the North Vietnam communists.  The expulsion of the Vietnamese from their  homeland branded them with new status and  labels, such as boat people, refugees, political  prisoners and Vietnamese in diasporas. Vietnamese  in exile having witnessed the gradual expunging of  historical and cultural essences of the old Viet Nam and the mistreatment of those who stayed behind, beginning with their “Saigon” city now wears the name of their enemy, “Ho Chi Minh” City ignited an underlying visceral sentiment of love/hate relationship for the place they called “the burial place of our mother’s placenta”. Many are apprehensive to embrace it again due the psychological and physical wounds inflicted into their fleshes and memories. This is where the strengths and weaknesses of the Vietnamese communities lie, especially in the progressive world of globalization.
               
                    

The historical experiences  taught Vietnamese to be resilient across time and space;  however, appropriating the tenacious sentiments  of a distant past appears to be a dilemma in the  way they “imagined” their communities in  diasporas should be (Anderson, 1983).  With that  being said,  with all of their experiential wisdom,  they justified the deployment of political tactics  and treatments of the Madison Nguyen’s incident  was an attempt to protect the younger generations  from the infiltration of transnational  communist  government into the socioeconomic positioning of  Vietnamese communities in America.  The younger generations could not even imagine the deep rooted resentment from the elders due to the lack of shared experiences; thus, they can’t fully appreciate the sacrifices and the burden the older generations carried due to the lost of their country.  Granted that the trepidation for the  loss of cultural heritage and ethnic authenticity are substantiated and valid; however, the older generations should trust and allow the younger generations to learn by way of experience and reasoning; which are more meaningful than the belief by blind faith. Even more important, younger generations  who benefited from the lessons of previous generations should regard that trust with care and caution in order to avoid the pitfalls that many generations before us worked so hard for us to avoid.   After all, their experiences molded us into who we are today. Thus, trust, autonomy, empathy and respect are essential from both sides in order to close the gap between generations.  

True community is formed when people respect and listen to each other’s needs, showing compassion for an understanding of fellow members (Valverde, 2012). The “imagined” community that everyone aspires to build isn’t of “oness” but of multiple similarities and differences of composition, values and practices; never the less, moving toward common goals as one whole body make-up of diversity (Hall, 2003).    A divided community is stagnant and can’t position itself advantageously in the socioeconomic position of the social fabric of America and is an unfortunate situation (Valverde, 2012). The betterment of the community as a whole should prevail over sentimental disparity because socioeconomic positioning translates into social equality and better quality of life. 

Questions:

Given the fact that it has been more than 30 years, but many Vietnamese Americans couldn’t let go of their haunting past. Is it possible for them to find a common ground where they can build a neutral foundation for the future generation?  Or will their legacy continues to influence the cultural identity of the generations to come?

Will the new generations who are born and raised in an individualistic society be fully capable of understanding the sufferings and resentment of past generations?

For those whose hearts do not beat to the same “lop dop” rhythm of anticommunism be able to voice their opinions?

How much of self denying and sacrifice of personal freedom one is willing to live with so that  the community can progress toward a better socioeconomic positioning and social equality and justice  as a whole? 

Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Whose Community is it anyway?" : Overseas Vietnamese Negotiating their Cultural and Political Identity-The Case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen.” Transnationalizing Viet Nam.

   Valverde uses the case of  Madison Nguyen and her controversial rise in politics as a Vietnamese American woman to address the shadowed issues within the Vietnamese American community such as continued anti-communist sentiments, political discontent, and the four-step community building process.  In efforts to get the city to recognize the commerce contributions of the Vietnamese community while trying to please all submissions for a  prominent commercial area, Nguyen came up with the name, Saigon Business District. However, this decision was blown way out of proportion by a  number of individuals who favored to say the least, the term Little Saigon. The unresolved dynamics of these concerns turned a location-naming decision into a hostile debate on alternative, pro-communist motives of the entire San Jose city council and mostly brutal media attack on vice-mayor Nguyen. The attacks ranged from negative critiques of her physical appearance and gender to concerns of past romantic relationships to proposed alliances justified by her race.

   A key insight into the complexity of this case is predominantly the notion that the same Vietnamese community members who worked hard to elect and support Madison Nguyen into a San Jose school board and city council seat were at the frontline of her press conference yelling “you’re a traitor and a liar” and urging a recall of her standing position. Through a clear, in depth analysis of multiple perspectives engaged in this case, Valverde conveys Nguyen’s genuine commitment to the Vietnamese community and discusses the roots of miscommunication. A primary cause being “ the tensions in the continued efforts of Vietnamese Americans to produce their own reality” (130-131).

Question:

What other reasons may vice-mayor Madison Nguyen’s have had to refuse changing the name of the business district from Saigon business district to Little Saigon besides her beliefs that the pro-Little Saigon protesters were not representative of the entire San Jose Vietnamese American community?

Michael Peter Smith. "Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics."

In Michael Peter Smith's essay, he states that, in world cities such as New York and Tokyo, the "inside" and the "outside" are rigidly defined in order to represent the flow of global space.  Global flows of information and technology are gathered and localized in these world cities.  This dichotomy of globalization and localization is highly problematic and can obscure the possibilities of global grassroots politics, which goes beyond the boundaries of the nation-state in which politics are defined.  This essay discusses the globalization of transnational migrants' culture and how global grassroots movements subvert the globalization/localization dichotomy.

            Rather than the typical "global reach" approach to the globalization of culture, which is attributed to "multinational capitalism and mass communications", Smith focuses on the "globalization of cultural and political practices produced 'from below'"(17).  What this entails is the ways that transnational migrants recreate and reproduce culture.  These transnational migrants or refugees live bifocal lives in which they remain connected to transnational networks and multiple nation-states, thus delocalizing the space in which they practice culture. However, because transnational migrants are not bound by space, they are also deterritorialized, living in imagined communities.  They respond to deterritorialization by attempting to reterritorialize another space, such as ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown.

The "think globally/act locally" way of thinking about transnational migrants and global grassroots politics still restricts grassroots politics into the binary of globally/locally by "restrict[ing] political action to resistance to the actions of local political and economic elites, such as mayors, urban service providers, 'growth machines,' business interests, and the local press" (25) and does not fit well into local politics. However, there are better ways to “reconstitute the notion of ‘grassroot’” politics together, which are practiced among the transnational migrants and refugees. Michael Peter Smith termed them as “cross-border grassroot politics”, which are thinking locally while acting globally, living bifocally (or thinking transnationally while acting multilocally), and thinking and acting simultaneously at multiple scales (25).

The process of “thinking locally while acting globally” is to think about the political sense of what the community wants/needs while doing something extraordinary in the political world to reach the goal. Smith used the Guatemalan refugees as an example of the process; they thought about returning to their home country while recruiting better representatives for their cause and putting the representatives as mediators between the Guatemalan government, UN, and themselves (25-26). This process was the idea to bring a movement to state what the people wanted and bring change for the better.

The second process is “living bifocally, or thinking transnationally while acting multilocally”; this process is to think about what the people in the home country need and what the other country could offer to be used as support, while using both knowledge from those two different countries to help shape a new transformation. A UC Berkeley organization called Students Against Intervention in Central America (SAICA) collected medical supplies, clothes, and other things to bring to El Salvador. In El Salvador, not only did they give out the supplies, but they also brought films and concerts and supported campaigns to support the people (26-27). Smith pointed this out as an example to the second process because of the impact that people from a different country with knowledge of both worlds makes a difference.

The last process is “thinking and acting simultaneously at multiple scales”, which is gathering on a big event about a topic and include many experiences/stories to ensure that they are told in order to create rights/laws for protection and justice. In 1993, on International Women’s Day, many women from all over the world came to the conference held in San Francisco and talked about protecting women’s rights and safety with their own experiences/stories from others (30-31). Smith thought of this as a combination of the other two processes and create it like an end result or last product of grassroot movement/politics.

With Smith’s three “cross-border grassroot politics”, he thought that it would be easier for the people to use them than to be repressed or follow the dominant order (31). They have the power and ability to create new grassroot ideas and politics to send their messages across the governments and maybe, the world. However, the present politics and order are not allowing new grassroot ideas/politics to blossom because ordinary people have been exploited, marginalized, and silenced by the dominant government order (32). If the people allow the government to step over them, it would be difficult to create new political ways to speak their words to make change.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzrWwvI8JpI (Fall of the I-hotel trailer)   

“Saigon, USA” Film

On April 30th, 1975, many Vietnamese refugees and people migrated to the United States to flee from the new regime. Some traveled through boats, some flew on American aircrafts, and others fled by foot to other countries to temporarily stay in refugee camps. The immigrants and refugees were trying to find a place to stay and start their lives over. In the United States, the Vietnamese people were separated from others, but they managed to regroup in Orange County and created a place for themselves, which is known as Little Saigon. There, they built a community and spread their culture, ideas, and beliefs of their homeland. However, it is not like the Communist Vietnam of today; it is more of their ideal image of what South Vietnam was like before the war. The loss of their ideal homeland made them feel nostalgic, which motivated the people to build Little Saigon in the United States and spread their culture to others and their next generations.
  Asian/Asian-Americans are stereotypically known to be silent or not resilient, but at some point when the situation hits at the core of the people’s ideals, they would come together to send a powerful message. Trung Van Tran hung up a poster of Ho Chi Minh, which enraged most of the Vietnamese community. They rallied in front of his store to make him take the poster down and stated that they are not communists or communist lovers. This shows that the Vietnamese community still clings to their pasts and ideals because of the war and its traumatic effects (i.e. loss of family members and home). They will not associate with any communists because it would insult their political ideas of what Vietnam should be. As long as they cling to the ideal Vietnam, they will not stand for any insults or aspects of communism that will tarnish their image of their new home.

  Overall, the film did a good job in taking into consideration the sentiments of anticommunist refugees as well as the sentiments of pro-communists while portraying the complex relationships and tensions within the Vietnamese community. However, its main location of focus for the controversy is placed not only ,of course physically, in the US but also in concept. As a result it fails to include/ capture the contemporary homeland politics as well and complexities of a people's historic trauma being carried over transnationally.

Posted: Jennine, Rosario, Jillian, Marryanne