40th Anniversary of the Southeast Asian Diaspora

Chiang Rai Refugee Camp, Thailand, sometime between 1975 and 1980: Papa Thammarath and Mama Thammarath

I admit.

Growing up, I was one of those high achieving, highly tracked, annoyingly arrogant students that lived up to the model minority stereotype (ironically spend my professional life trying to dismantle this stereotype, but that is another topic).

I particularly loved social studies and history . . so much so that I actually believed that my father lied to me about being a refugee from Laos. I thought all the stories he told me as a child about fleeing Laos, villages being shot up, piles of bodies on the side of the road, my grandfather dying fighting alongside American soldiers, secretly paddling across the Mekong River at night time, and living in refugee camps were just made up because I read about the Viet Nam War and all the other wars . . there was never any mention of a war in Laos. Any refugees from Laos. Anything, really, about Laos.

My conclusion was that my text books were right and my father was wrong. Unfortunately, it was me and my text books that were completely wrong.

Anyway, there are some amazing stories being posted to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Southeast Asian Diaspora. Here is one: Our Vietnam War Never Ended.

Wars are fought twice

The first time on the battlefield, and the second time in memory, says Viet Nguyen in an article online. (Before you laugh, academia, though not current events, has some importance too.)

This is something I often think about, how "the past" and "history" tangle and tango. I remember having a nice sit down talk with Monica and Kim at Smart Alec's. Kim was doing an intern interview and I tagged along. I forget the details, but I remember asking Monica something along the lines of "so how come you're not a communist?". Outrageous, I know. I was a young student, high on fresh radicalization and politicization, not yet able to make the connections between the personal and political. And I'll always remember her response. No, I'm not. Because of what they did to my parents and grandparents.
Yes. Our parents, our grandparents. Did the war, refugee, and resettlement experience not mean anything to me? How could I not see it?

Here's an explanation. I grew up with a hesitant pro-USA mindset. Even though I'm not from "Orange Fucking County", there was definitely that influence. And I knew there was something very wrong with it, something didn't fit. And then I got to Berkeley and learned of all these decolonial, anti-imperial movements going on in the middle of the 20th century, and it all made sense to me. Or so I thought.

Yet both sides had been grossly over-romanticized. Going from "USA=good and Communists=bad" to "USA=the devil and Communists=heroes" was a shift in my mind that didn't really get me to think and form my own version of history. And that's something Southeast Asians have to deal with. This in between space that Danielle is talking about. How do we critique one master narrative without landing in another? I mean, 30-something years has gone by and how do you respond to KFC in Viet Nam? Ideology is truly deceiving. So how do we make sure our narratives of history are present and not complicit with ones that ignore or shun or wrong us?

According to Viet Nguyen's article, nations do it through monuments. We can do it through our monumental expressions, like this blog, and through our enduring art, like this: