I was told from a young age the easiest way to get in touch with your cultural heritage is through food. Many good memories and cultural traditions are passed down via food. Food is a way of connecting people to each other, bringing up good memories from the past. Food has a way of healing old wounds and making people happier. You have a sense of pride knowing you are connected to your culture through the use of food. However there are times when you question your cultural food choices, particularly if you haven’t grown up on certain dishes. Reading Catfish and Mandala reminded me of my cultural closeness through food. Due to being bi-ethnic I learned how to cook food from both my ethnicities, however there were times when I found myself acting like a foreigner towards certain dishes. A prime example was when I had Chitlins or pig intestines. I had eaten menudo, thanks to my Hispanic mother and this was the first time I had Chitlins, an African American dish via my paternal grandmother. Unlike Menudo, which to me has an appetizing smell and taste, Chitlins were a gray stringy putrid smelling dish. Remembering the utter dislike I obtained from that African American dish, reminded me of Pham’s experience with Vietnamese food. While there are some dishes people can’t stand, most usually embrace a dish from their culture and that helps ease some of the pain or discomfort. Pham’s trip however has the opposite effect. He shows us the Vietnamese culture through the eyes of an assimilated Vietnamese American trying to get back in touch with his roots. He hopes to get in touch with his roots mostly through interaction via food. In Pham’s case that’s exactly what he does, with disastrous results bringing to light his inability to... ... middle of paper ... ...cement of a body seeking reassimilation into a culture whose people do not necessarily welcome him. However palatable the concept of cultural mixture might be when thinking of food, Andrew Pham's body signifies a pluralism that creates enormous difficulty for him as he tries to reintegrate into a culture that repeatedly thwarts his desire to assimilate. (Phillips 49) He has become too Americanized. In the end Pham’s desire to become fully Vietnamese has ended. He has come to terms with the fact he is more American than he is Vietnamese. . Works Cited Phillips, Delores B. "Quieting Noisy Bellies: Moving, Eating and Being in the Vietnamese Diaspora." University of Minnesota Press 73 (2009): 47-87. Print Pham, Andrew X. Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Print.
A household is a precious and sensitive system of a group. Everyone has a role and responsibilities and even if someone took a sliver of more than the rest the balance could be broken. In the short-story “The Boat” written by Alistair MacLeod, the mother controls decisions in the house and abuses them even if they are not for the better of the house. She refuses to accept the daughter’s gifts, she discourages her family towards getting a better education and she married their father and pressured him to be a sailor. Though these decisions are what she feels is right, it does not work out for the rest of the family members. The mother’s stubbornness towards change and education caused the state of desperation in the house-hold.
In Fish written by Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen we find a woman who moved to Seattle from Southern California with her husband her two children. This woman Mary Jane Ramirez had everything going for her she was a happy person who had a happy life her family their relationship couldn't get any better. They both had good jobs, jobs that they enjoyed. Then one day, twelve months after they had moved to Seattle Dan her husband was rushed to the hospital with a burst aneurysm he then died. After that incident everything changed for Mary Jane especially when she took an offer to work on the third floor for First Guarantee Financial.
Eventually, the store had to close down. The Anticommunist movement is extreme to the point that anyone who even appeared to be sympathetic to the current government of Vietnam was branded a traitor. For instance, the community claimed that one of the Vietnamese American politicians, Tony Lam, did not support the community in forcing this video store to close down. In addition, Tony Lam took part in requesting the council of the city of Westminster to change the name Little Saigon into Asian town (Collet, & Furuya, 2010). His rationale was that “Little Saigon” negatively reminded of the pain in Vietnamese history, which needed to be forgotten. His political career soon ended, since his attitude and belief was viewed as an offense toward Vietnamese immigrants. Vietnamese immigrants believe that the term Saigon is sacred and beloved, therefore replacing the name Little Saigon is equivalent to neglecting the dramatic historical background and disconnecting their origin. In away, Anticommunist movement creates cohesion among Vietnamese immigrant.
I chose Cambodian Americans for my target culture because it was a place I knew very little about. My ignorance of that side of the world is laughable, to say the least. Cambodian American was a great choice because both the people and the culture are very captivating to me. While some Cambodian Americans have become very westernized, accepting most of America’s cultural norms, some hold strong to their Cambodian traditions and way of life. Through Geert Hofstede’s
Just like the durian, my Vietnamese culture repulsed me as a young child. I always felt that there was something shameful in being Vietnamese. Consequently, I did not allow myself to accept the beauty of my culture. I instead looked up to Americans. I wanted to be American. My feelings, however, changed when I entered high school. There, I met Vietnamese students who had extraordinary pride in their heritage. Observing them at a distance, I re-evaluated my opinions. I opened my life to Vietnamese culture and happily discovered myself embracing it. `
In the book Inside out And back Again, Ha, her family, and most of South Vietnam are representing the modern day refugees. They show what life is like for many different evacuees from around the world: . This essay will show how the title Inside out and Back Again relates to the universal refugee experience by showing all of the hardships and things the refugees have to redevelop such as culture, language, manners, and friends.
In this reading, Long discusses the history of Vietnamese resistance to colonial and oppressive forces. Long states that American historians and statesman claim that other factors contributed to the disastrous conclusion of the Vietnam war, but that the real truth is that the American’s were not prepared to meet such a formidable foe. The Vietnamese had been resisting the Chinese for over 1,000 years and had held on; when the French arrived the same policy of resistance was practiced. Ultimately, due to the oppressive nature of the French and WWII, the French were ousted and a new communist government under Ho Chi Minh was established. Having just been under an oppressive force, and being very knowledgeable about how to deal with oppression, the American’s were caught by surprise.
A collection of essays by Andrew Lam called “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora refers to the struggles of a Vietnamese national living abroad. “A good scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories by Robert Olen Butler is fifteen short stories that relate to the immigration from Vietnam in the 1970’s to the southeastern U.S. state of Louisiana. In these two novels there seems to be one major idea of community among Vietnamese immigrants. In Butler’s novel the women in the Mr. Green short story is Catholic and was from Hanoi. She lives in Versailles, Louisiana and she states that there is “the garden on the bank of the bayou that runs through this place they call Versailles; it is part of New Orleans, but is far from the center of town and it is full of Vietnamese who once came from the North” (Butler 24). This was a popular garden that the Vietnamese community shared. The Vietnamese community was showing their presence in Louisiana and creating awareness to the American born population. Andrew Lam’s novel states that he was “Old enough to remember Vietnam, I was also young enough to embrace America, and to be shaped by it.”( Lam, 121) In an article that discusses Hurricane Katrina’s affect on Vietnamese communities it was said “The Vietnamese were among the first to return to begin rebuilding their neighborhoods, giving momentum to rebuilding efforts in the East and the rest of the city. Many Vietnamese feel the experience has brought the community even closer together.” ("Vietnamese History in New Orleans") Although immersion to American culture is important to obtain financial, social and education needs, Vietnamese still gain great pride in their past history and
The Vietnam War started off as a nationalist struggle before turning into a class struggle as foreign powers became involved in the war. However, it is the view of many Vietnamese scholars that see the conflict as mainly a nationalist struggle for national independence and reunification (Marr). Although the role of exogenous factors is acknowledged, it is, according to this view, the force of Vietnamese nationalism and patriotism that motivated and encouraged th...
Vietnam is now a host for war. This war however is not against another country, it is a war between a controlling Communist Northern Vietnam and a free Democratic Southern Vietnam. No one in the entire country is safe from this particular war. America expresses support for Southern Vietnam and its cause, however the North is stronger and overtakes Southern Vietnam’s capital of Saigon. Traumatized Southern Vietnamese people try to escape a Communist government and are forced to flee the nation. Stories shared by these people grasp onto every one of your emotions. In the poem “Saigon is Gone” and the transcript “Forgotten Ship: A Daring Rescue as Saigon Fell,” both writers convey the tones of anxiety and sorrow.
...at the same time. Because they attempt to have both identities, Little Saigon also has both American and Vietnamese cultures that reconciled with each other.
Nguyen was still staying in Vietnam, his yearning for a stable, comfortable and peaceful life in the United States was reflected by his longing for delicious food in the United States. Because he is one of the victims of the Vietnam War, which “took away more than two million lives, in which many of them were civilians, three million were wounded, and hundreds of thousands of children were left orphans.” (Rohn 1) Also, the Vietnamese society was totally in turmoil since the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Numerous Vietnamese had become refugees and lots of them were trying to escape from Vietnam to the United States. According to statistic, “Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the Vietnamese immigrant population in the United States has risen significantly, increasing from about 231,000 in 1980 to nearly 1.3 million in 2012, making it the sixth largest foreign-born population in the United States.” (Rkasnuam and Batalova 1) Mr. Nguyen was also one of those Vietnamese who could no longer endure living in Vietnam. Therefore, when Mr. Nguyen’s cousin Eddies sent a photo of his American life to him, he expressed his aspiration of moving to the United States by describing how the Peking duck, steamed fish, fried rice with shrimp aroused his appetite. Mr. Nguyen and his family imagine a picture that they are still staying with each other and are tasting the foods happily. (Lam 83) Standing in Mr. Nguyen’s shoes, food implied his American dream and his attitude towards food reflected his expectation of living in the United
Before this project I had little knowledge of Vietnam. Every time I heard the name, I just started thinking about the war that affected so many lives and how this terrible incident became part of our history. Vietnam is rich in culture; its ethnics groups are so unique and diverse in many ways but they all shared the basic characteristics of a Country that fought and overcame so many obstacles while keeping their essence and their roots.
The Vietnamese people’s movement was very well coordinated during the Pacification period. The rebellion was not only led by court mandarins, but also by private scholars. The moral and military power of some of the rebel ...
Vietnamese immigrants had a difficult time transitioning to life in the US, because the US wasn’t ready for so many refugees who spoke little or no English. Vietnamese immigrants and the US had to work together to be able to adapt to one another. They had many difficulties and challenges to get through in order to adapt to the US environment.