Articulating Identity: Vietnamese Diasporic Culture in Literature and Media

Year 2020, Issue: 52, 7 - 24, 01.01.2020

Nina Ha

Abstract

In her article “The Confucian Four Feminine Virtues,” Ngo Thi
Ngan Binh interviews contemporary Vietnamese women living in Ho
Chi Minh City (formerly called Sai Gon) to highlight and analyze the
contradictions and expectations of family members governing female
behavior and actions. Binh’s ethnographic research regarding how
“modern” females--or contemporary young women--should follow
tenets of societal expectations is significant when examining the stories
of the two females I studied. These two individuals are Chi or Minh
(the older sister nay transgender brother of the author) and Andrew
Pham (the subject of Marlo Poras’ documentary Mai’s America). This
essay explores the shifting identities of these Vietnamese females as
they travel from their “home”--or natal country--of Vietnam to inhabit
the borders of the US nation-state. In making this transnational move,
they undergo a type of racialization familiar to travelers and those
who relocate, but it plays a particular role for people of color, who
have immigrated or have been part of a racial or ethnic group living in
America. For example, people from the Caribbean, Latin America, or
8
Africa who are noticeably dark become grouped into the category of
African Americans, though their migration histories and patterns may
be quite different from African American counterparts (whose past is
often connected to the former US slaves).
Moreover, these other groups may speak Spanish, Patois,
Creole, as well as other languages. This racialization within the Black
community is very similar to those in the Asian and Asian American
communities living in the US nation-state. For example, Asians from
countries as diverse as China, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.
are considered “all alike” by those unfamiliar with the heterogeneity of
the Asian body. Also, like many other non-white groups, individuals
are gendered and sexualized into designated subgroups. Thus, I intend
to analyze and to interrogate how Chi/Minh and Mai complicate and
challenge racial, gendered, and sexualized expectations of themselves
by others. I will not address what their intentions for exploring and
“performing” different gender paradigms means to them (because I
really could not do so), but I will try to formulate the traces or remnants
of how their performances of their gender and sexuality have affected
those emotionally and physically close to them, not to mention to their
audiences.

Keywords

Feminine Virtues, Vietnam, Travel Writing, Transgender, Transracial, Asia

References

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