Analytical Description

For my family artifact, I have chosen to showcase a photograph of my mother at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, immigrating to America to join my father in 1996. This candid photograph centers my mother crying, surrounded by many family members offering their tears and goodbyes to her. This photograph is significant because my mother’s immigration signifies the start of our family, since I was born in California in 1998 and my brother was born in 2008.

In the diasporic Vietnamese community, it is commonplace for Vietnamese men in America to find a wife in Vietnam and sponsor her to the U.S. This is because Vietnamese men fear that American women will not uphold the traditional, patriarchal values of Vietnamese society. However, in 1986, the Vietnamese government adopted a new economic policy that encouraged free markets and global engagement, leading to differing expectations of gender roles between men and women. As a result of these differences, transnational marriages were commonly characterized by conflict and domestic violence. Furthermore, Vietnam’s long history of colonization, war, and poverty combined with the intergenerational gap between parents and American born children has woven trauma and mental illness into Vietnamese people across multiple generations. However, ethnic enclaves such as the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) have served as a source of community and healing for Asian immigrants and their Asian American children.

This artifact demonstrates how Asian American history is highly interconnected. In my family, the Vietnam War explicitly triggered my parents to immigrate to America. Although the Vietnam War is a past event, the trauma from Vietnam’s history explains the trauma experienced by my family today. To cope with this trauma, my family has always prioritized living in an ethnic enclave, such as the San Gabriel Valley. Therefore, we see how Asian American history is alive, thriving, and developing today, but is still inherently connected to the past.

Keywords

Vietnamese American, immigration, transnational marriage, intergenerational trauma, ethnic enclaves, intergenerational gap