The Vietnamese-American Experience: Different Sides of the Same Coin

Jennifer Le
Section A01
Reflection #7: "Love, Money, Prison, Sin, and Revenge" by Andrew Lam

   When I was reading how Andrew Lam's and the Nguyen brother's personal stories, I feel like I read about two different Vietnamese-American experiences of the children of the war. Two sides of the same coin, these men were the byproduct of the Vietnam War and the embodiment of the Diaspora. However, there was a stark difference in their lives after settling in American. Their family's polarizing socioeconomic status in their homeland has a influential hand in their placement in American society and their assimilation in this foreign culture. For Lam, a son of privileged French-influence, affluent Vietnamese family that came to America in the first wave of professions and intellectuals, his family easily molded into the new society and seemingly succeeded at the American Dream. However, this was a exceptionally rare case of prosperity for the Vietnamese immigrants of that time. In many ways, the Vietnamese-American children identified more with the struggles of the Nguyen brothers, with whose parents fully experienced the totality of the communist take over and escaped on rickety fishing boats as the "Boat People". Even though their parents had the best intentions for their children to "do well in school but keep 'Vietnamese traditions'", the strict customs and struggles with English made it harder to assume the American identity and succeed.
   Reading these different tales, I can connect with the traces from both lives and understand the importance of how family status and household environments influence the lives of the new Vietnamese-American community. While I come from a household that struggled with the same poverty, my parents were very different in their sensibilities and support. Instead of rigid family expectations and traditions, my parents let me grow up more independently. It was also important because my parents had some educational background. A parents ability to help their children with their homework can make a world of a difference.