Historicizing Vietnamese American Experiences and Identities

1. Historicizing Vietnamese American Experiences and Identities Long S. Le Atlanta, Georgia July 30th – August 2nd, 2009 Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations [Date]

2. Contents

3. Historicizing the "origin" and "cultural core" of the Vietnamese American experience • 1

4. Originsof the Vietnamese American Experience • Bui Vien’s mythical mission to the U.S. in 1873 • Bao Bai’s breaking away from monarchy, communism, and dictatorship - starting in 1945 • The Truman Administration rejected Ho Chi Minh in 1948 as the appropriate partner for U.S. plans for a postcolonial independent state in Vietnam • The exodus from “red” to “free” Vietnam in 1954 • The fall of South Vietnam in 1975 Bảo Đại

5. The Vietnamese American Culture Core • Phan Boi Chau’s new version of being Vietnamese, fusing Eastern and Western values and innovations • Tran Trong Kim’s modern history of Vietnam based on social scientific thought but accounts for Vietnamese traditions. Such historiography allows for continuity and change; unity and diversity; and resistance and reunification. • “Ve Vang Dan Viet” or “the pride of the overseas Vietnamese refugees” is an ideological statement, declaring the superiority of a democratic way of life • The “roots of unrest” of Vietnamese Americans, signifying their efforts to resolve their displacement caused by communism and the need to define their Vietnamese American identity

6. Putting back the “place” into “displacement” via “place-making” and “memory work” • 2 “This is for all of us, who still don’t know how beautiful we are, this is for those of us who run our fingers down each others faces and swear that no one would ever steal our beauty away again This is for us who wiped the milk of honorary whiteness from our lips and asked: got self?” From: “For US” by Thien-Bao Phi

7. Vietnamese Americans have asserted and negotiated the right to place-making – the Little Saigon – to bring about desired change • For Vietnamese Americans, place-making as been an act of economic liberation, of staking claim politically, of beautification, and of social empowerment Place-making Morgan Nguyen 57

8. States and Localities have recognized the Vietnamese Freedom and Heritage Flag Offerings to Kings and Buddha: Vietnamese Ritual Activities at Chua Bo De • Because our experiences contain displacement and contradictions, there are comprises to find meaning and fulfillment in our social space and identity • Through memory work, Vietnamese Americans have been able to make cultural statements of who they are and in which “becoming American” requires “staying Vietnamese” • Though as the present changes so will the memory work of Vietnamese Americans Memory Work First movie to speak of Vietnam’s re-education camps and boat-people experience Recalling past immigrant experiences in rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina

9. Making the Vietnamese American “cultural core” a constant but shifting entity • 3 No Asian Inferior Complex Here

10. Drawing together the Vietnamese overseas to revitalize the Vietnamese heritage. A Constant but ShiftingIdentity • Being Vietnamese American requires “staying Vietnamese” while “becoming American” as everyone else • Vietnamese Americans are able to do what F. Scott Fitzgerald stated as the test of a first-rate intelligence: “The ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”

11. Place-making in Vietnam • In “returning” to the homeland, Vietnamese Americans will have to confront who they were and what they have become. That is, are they simply bees who had left the hive to explore and now returning to make honey or are they bearers and innovators of expanding the democratic space in Vietnam?

12. Reference • Aguilar-San Juan, Karin (2005). Staying Vietnamese: Community and Place in Orange County and Boston. CITY & COMMUNITY, Vol. 4 Issue 1. • Collet, C., & Furuya, K. (2005). Transnationalism and Immigrant Incorporation: Considering the Protest-to-Politics Model in a Vietnamese American Community. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Las Vegas, Nevada, March 8-10. • Collet, C. (2005). Bloc Voting: Polarization, and the Panethnic Hypothesis: The Case of Little Saigon. The Journal of Politics, 67 (3). • Collet, C. (2003). Vietnamese Americans and Electoral Participation: Assessment of a Community Need. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Vietnamese American Service Agencies, Anaheim, California, July 25. • Le, Long (2008). The Making of the Western Version of Being Vietnamese. Available at http://blogs.bauer.uh.edu/vietDiaspora/. • Le, Long (2005) The E-Survey of Vietnamese Student Association. Available at http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=3d6af203641f552ae5dc9437176a19c0 • Le, Long (2005). The Survey of Young Vietnamese Americans on Protest Politics. Available at http://www.machsong.org/english/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=59 • Nguyen, Hoa Dinh. From the City Inside the Red River: A Cultural Memoir of Mid-Century Vietnam (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1999). • Phan, Tran Hieu (1999). Coi Nguon Bat An: The Roots of the Unrest (The Orange Country Register). • Phi, Thien-Bao (2003). For Us in Linda Vo, ed., Vietnamese American Trajectories: Dimensions of Diaspora. Amerasia Journal, 29 (1). • Tran, Trong Kim (1920). Viet Nam Su Luoc. • Wilcox, Wynn. “The Myth of Bui Vien.” The paper was presented at the Association for Asian Studies Conference on March 31- April 3, 2005 in Chicago, IL.