In response to "Creating Identity, Defining Culture, and Making History from an Art Exhibit"

Tiffany Do

ASA 2 Section 2

Week 7 Blog

In response to Valverde’s “Creating Identity, Defining Culture, and Making History from an Art Exhibit”:

I wasn’t aware of the more extremist anti-communist tendencies within the Vietnamese American community. This article made me wonder what sort of implications this has for Vietnamese Americans of subsequent generations. To elaborate, I have gone with my mom to Vietnamese American events in San Jose in which a lot of the significance and the meanings of the songs, performances, and speeches are lost on me. Although I have more of a critical consciousness now, I know that I will never understand the Vietnam War the same way my parents, uncles, and aunts do, many of whom came over as “boat people.” I see the differences in the way my parents and their friends think about communism and the way I do. I see how communism sounds good on paper—that ideologically it means well, but in actual practice it has not turned out so well. However, when my parents and their friends talk about North Vietnam they describe the communists as “evil” repeatedly. As time passes and we (me and other Southeast Asians like me) are becoming increasingly politicized and critical of a world that seems to be getting smaller and smaller (in terms of globalization), how will these conversations about communism change or not change? If the staunch anti-communist group begins to fade as generations of Vietnamese Americans come into existence, what does this mean for the cultural production and self-censorship that Professor Valverde describes?