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Reviews
| The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New Beginnings. Edited by Sucheng Chan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. xvii + 323 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $74.50 (cloth); $25.95 (paper).
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Sucheng Chan's groundbreaking book boldly addresses issues within Asian American Studies that remain largely ignored or avoided. The book may focus on Vietnamese Americans, yet it poignantly and explicitly reflects upon Asian American Studies as a field of study. Chan addresses the field's tensions between capitalism and Communism and between pedagogy and politics—all while highlighting the complexities of Vietnamese American experiences. |
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Chan tackles these complexities by presenting edited versions of student family histories, autobiographies, and interviews written by Vietnamese Americans of the 1.5 generation. The 1.5 generation includes those born in Vietnam who came to the United States during their youth. Chan provides several chapters of history about Vietnam and Vietnamese Americans as context for these student-authored narratives. |
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The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation features Chan's frank discussion about the political underpinnings of Asian American Studies and how it often elides, conflicts with, or even overshadows the experiences and perceptions of Vietnamese Americans. She states that the anti-establishment and anti-capitalist stances of early Asian American Studies proponents often turned away more conservative student views, such as those held by strongly anti-Communist Vietnamese Americans. |
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The stories included here stem from her strong belief that "Asian American Studies must be ecumenical both in terms of Asian panethnic inclusiveness and with regard to ideological openness" (p. viii). She acknowledges that the earliest efforts to represent Vietnamese American perspectives did not receive much attention. For instance, Dr. Pham Cao Duong's proposal to bring Vietnamese American Studies to the University of California's Berkeley campus came to naught (p. viii). Asian American Studies is only beginning to engage more deeply Vietnamese America—not just as a subfield of study, but as a subfield that can impact the primary field. As the field matures, it grows easier, and more necessary, to reflect upon these pedagogical and political discussions. |
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For instance, many of the student authors include scathing critiques of Vietnam's Communist regime—a view that would not normally be expressed as strongly in other accounts that focus on Vietnamese Americans as victims of war and refugee trauma. Other narratives forcefully describe the cruelty of Communists who imprisoned and tortured former male officials in "re-education camps," forbade their wives from receiving employment, indoctrinated the children with Communist philosophies, and criticized the corruption of former South Vietnamese leaders (pp. 243–45). |
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Chan neither sanitizes nor elides these viewpoints, which often do not appear in other Asian American Studies texts, even those by some Vietnamese American scholars. These viewpoints reflect the past and current reality that most Vietnamese Americans continue to hold staunchly anti-Communist views. Even though Chan herself is of a very different opinion, she highlights these perspectives and tensions through her own writings and the sections included here. |
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The student-written narratives in the book are themselves a refreshing and unique approach for Vietnamese American Studies and Asian American Studies. Because the students were taking Chan's classes, they deployed analytical frameworks learned in her class and elsewhere that are integrated into their narratives, which break from the norm of Vietnamese American interpretations. For instance, the student authors employed concepts such as value systems, socioeconomic status, age hierarchies, and capitalism/Communism. |
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Equally important, the stories are written by 1.5 generation Vietnamese Americans. The authors personally experienced the refugee migrations while also adapting well enough to the United States as college students. This experience provides their narratives with both an Asian American and Vietnamese American perspective reflecting their positions as cultural brokers. |
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Unlike other authors, Chan spends considerable time surveying Vietnamese and Vietnamese American history. Many other books about Vietnamese Americans tend to lack this much historical detail and narrative, so Chan's attention to these subjects proves useful to readers starting to learn more about this ethnic group. For readers with an already strong background, the book is structured so that they can skip straight to the student-written narratives. This book will be valuable to both trained scholars and novice students of Vietnamese Americans.
Vu H. Pham
University of California, Irvine
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