Readings: : **Kibria, Family Tightrope
Leshkowich, "The Ao Dai Goes Global"
Tai, "The Past is a Foreign Country"

1. What have been the overall effects of immigration on Vietnamese immigrants' family structures and ideologies? How does Kibria's analysis of conflict relate to earlier arguments viewing migration as a process of assimilation or adaptation?

2. What does Kibria mean by "patchworking"? What role do Vietnamese immigrant household structures and kinship ideologies play in shaping patchworking strategies? How have kinship ideologies themselves been transformed through migration and life in the US?

3. How has life in the US affected gender relations among Vietnamese-Americans? How have women's economic roles changed? How have their roles as mothers changed?

4. How have younger Vietnamese-Americans tried to compromise what they perceive as traditional Vietnamese family values with the demands of living in the US? Have their efforts been successful?

5. Based on Leshkowich's article, how would you describe relations between Vietnamese in Vietnam and those living abroad? What role does the diaspora play in economic and cultural life?

6. How does Tai characterize contemporary debates about what Vietnamese culture is? How do these compare to the anti-colonial debates which she described in the selections from her book which we read earlier in the semester? What role does the Vietnamese diaspora play in these current debates?

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu