October 3 (W), October 5 (F), October 15 (M), October 17 (W)

Read: Espiritu, "Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese Refugee Subject in US Scholarship" (Moodle article)
Trinh, excerpt from Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Moodle article)
Trinh, excerpt from Elsewhere, within here: Immigration, Refugeeism, and the Boundary Event (Moodle article)
Schwenkel, "Recombinant History: Transnational Practices of Memory and Knowledge Production in Contemporary Vietnam" (Moodle article)
Nhi T. Lieu, "Remembering 'The Nation' through Pageantry: Femininity and the Politics of Vietnamese Womanhood in the 'Hoa Hau Ao Dai' Contest" (Moodle article)
Hoang, "Nailing Race and Labor Relations: Vietnamese Nail Salons in Majority-Minority Neighborhoods" (Moodle article)

1. Yen Le Espiritu writes, "This scholarly production of the Vietnamese in the United States as the desperate-turned-successful needs to be studied as such, with critical attention to unasked questions about history, identity, and power" (410). What perspective emerges when we ask such questions? What have been the effects of the desperate-turned-successful image?

2. What does Trinh's selection from Woman, Native, Other suggest about the impact of a concept of the "true" on stories?

3. In the excerpt from Elsewhere within here, what role do sound and story play in terms of memory, culture, and belonging?

4. What is "recombinant history" (12)? What examples of it does Schwenkel provide?

5. How is tourism to the Cu Chi tunnels packaged differently for foreign and domestic audiences? What do these differences mean?

6. What role do beauty pageants play in constructing an imagined community for Vietnamese in the US? Why is the ao dai an important part of this process? What effects do these contests have on young Vietnamese American women?

7. What does Hoang mean by a triangular system of labor relationships? How does it emerge within Vietnamese American-owned nail salons in majority black and Latino neighborhoods? What dynamics of gender, race/ethnicity, and class are involved?

 

Topic for RESPONSE PAPER #4 (2-3 pages, double-spaced, due on October 17 by email before class to Professor Leshkowich.) Please remember to submit your paper as a Microsoft Word document named lastname4.docx.

TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITIES AND MEMORIES:
All of the readings for this week highlight transnational aspects to issues of identity or memory in Vietnam or the US: recombinant history and war tourism, ao dai and nostalgia in Vietnamese beauty pageants in the US, stories and belonging, the image of the "desperate-turned-successful refugee," and labor and entrepreneurship. Pick one of these examples and write your paper in one of the following ways:
a. Media article. Find a media article from the past five years on one of these topics. Pretend that you are the author who focused on that topic (Yen Le Espiritu, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Christina Schwenkel, Nhi T. Lieu, or Kimberly Kay Hoang) and that you have been invited to offer a critical commentary on the article. What themes or tropes might the author identify in the article, and how might she invite readers to be critical of them or to recognize other dynamics at work? (Hint: Be sure to use your essay to explore what you view as the strengths, weaknesses, or significance of the author's perspective.)
b. Transnational movement. Pick a concrete example from Yen Le Espiritu, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Christina Schwenkel, Nhi T. Lieu, or Kimberly Kay Hoang that highlights important dimensions of the role of the transnational movement of people, things, or ideas in crafting claims about the past or about what it means to be Vietnamese today. Use this discussion to explore the strengths, weaknesses, or significance of the author's perspective and to highlight whether or why Asian Studies should be transnational in scope.