You can’t choose your memories

1. You can’t choose your memories • Paul Nguyen

2. Identity of paul • Paul Nguyen ： • Gender－male • Nationality－Vietnamese-Australians. • Occupation-doctor • Family- mother,father(both are catholic and doctor) ,grandmother, step-father • Sexuality-homosexuality • Language – Vietnamese, English • Relationship: close to grandmother but not his parents, high school mate, • Religion:

3. Summary of the story • Paul is the first-generation Vietnamese-Australians. He has raised like most of Asian kids.Who are expected to be good at study and get a best job. • His parents are Catholic,they stayed married because it was un-Chthoic to divorce.However,there were no love between them. • Paul’s grandmother was the closed friend during his childhood.Because his grandmother cared about his life,but his mum doesn’t. • Paul mum refused him to see his grandmother anymore because of jealous. • Paul complained all his mum gave him is money but not love. • Paul’s father is a homebody who doesn’t know how to deal with his son.But love TV and pizza. • Paul father passed away,he regreted hasn’t treat him nicely.Paul was crying • at his funeral. • Paul decided to come out to his mother his is a gay.His mother refused to accept it. • Paul has decided to raise his children in an other way .

4. Key quote • You can’t choose what you remember,be they good memories,trivial ones,or traumatic.what you can do is choose how they affect you. • I have decided to treat my memories as a warning sign rather than as a guidebook.(Even we can’t choose our memories, we still have responsible and option to choose what we can be) • Like any good twenty-something, I have spent much time trying to define myself.

5. Key vocab and phrase • patriarchal- characteristic of a form of social organization in which the male is the family head and title is traced through the male line. • trivial-of little importance; petty or frivolous • traumatic-An emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person, often leading to neurosis.

6. Identity and belonging • What if you had no memories? Would you be any less “you”? Would you be somehow less human? • who you are is the sum total of all that you’ve experienced. • In many ways, our memories define our sense of self. You are able to have a sense of identity because you know that you are the same person you were yesterday and will undoubtedly be the same person tomorrow. • You first become aware of your own identity early in life, perhaps as young as 18 months, when you recognize that the toddler you see in the mirror is really you, and not another child. • As you progress through childhood and into adolescence, you start to develop a cohesive set of schemas, or views, about your identity. These include ideas about how your body looks and performs, your abilities and personality, your place in society, and the way you believe you are perceived by other people.