`` Confessions Of A Ritual Tourist `` By Kevin Nguyen

Unfortunately, Vietnamese Americans make up only a small percent of the total American Population today. There are many stereotypes associated with the Vietnamese, but the truth is, we really know very little about their culture. After the Viet Nam War, many Vietnamese citizens immigrated to the United States to escape political Prosecution and poverty. Faced with a variety of obstacles and

When the Vietnam vets returned to the US they received hate and were called many names making the soldiers feel horrible.

Self-perception is something which can definitely harm anybody. In today’s world, there are many people who like the idea of just aiming for the conclusion and who don’t even think of what the consequences might be, they never even think of how the thing that they are doing might affect others. This can usually occur in many places like high schools. Students say stuff about their friends(rumors) which might usually hurt somebody else. These people are always dodging the reality and are never even thinking about the future. Making such sort of decisions about someone is ridiculous. “Point of View” is something which should be taken into account. Without knowing anyone and assuming who they are is not only wrong but is also hurtful. It’s like assuming someone's race or assuming how much they earn or simply just accusing someone of being a criminal without even knowing the reality. The idea is not to harm anybody and that's what leaders like Gandhi or Mother Teresa do, they are people with a very clear point of view. One should never have a fixed perception of anything because having a fixed perception kills anybody who has one.

An important part of gaining understanding of other perceptions is acknowledging that what a person takes away from a particular event can be different from another’s view of the same event. People make judgements of others based on the past and if past instances are negative then present situations and the people involved will be judged in a negative light.

Discrimination is contagious in a way, and Pham himself displays a variation of it. When he is traveling abroad he shows his own form of discrimination against his own heritage, separating himself with an us versus them mentality; “Mortified by the Vietnamese’s behavior and equally dismayed that I feel an obligatory connection to them, I sink deeper into my seat, resentful, ashamed of their incivility” (Pham p. 64). As a Vietnamese American, or viet kieu, he is not fully accepted by Americans or by native local Vietnamese. In this instance, he is associating with his Americanized upbringing and is critiquing himself in a way that diminishes the value of the Vietnamese and also himself. Pham displays this “us versus them” separation

To this day, many Vietnam veterans suffer and feel forgotten, unappreciated, and even discriminated against. Combat experiences or physical disabilities have ruined some of their lives. For more, returning to normal life had not been easy. "Imagine if you had just graduated out of high school and were sent to a guerrilla warfare far away from your home. During the war, you were exposed to a lot of stress, confusion, anxiety, pain, and hatred. Then you were sent back home with no readjustment to the lifestyle in the states, no deprogramming of what you learned from the military, and no "welcome home" parades. You are portrayed to the public as a crazed psychopathic killer with no morals or control over your aggression. You find that there 's nobody you can talk to or who can understand what you 've been through, not even your family. As you re-emerge into civilization, you struggle to establish a personal identity or a place in society because you lack the proper education and job skills. In addition, there are no supportive groups to help you find your way, which makes you feel even more isolated, unappreciated, and exploited for serving your country" (Thompson 279). This situation is like what many Vietnam veterans had felt upon returning home from war.

Elaine Potter Richardson a.k.a. Jamaica Kincaid, was one of the staff writers for the New Yorker who mostly wrote for the magazine that often-chronicled Caribbean culture. One of her work was “The Ugly Tourist” which was included in the opening chapter of “A Small Place,” and appeared in Harper’s in 1988. Kincaid’s essay talks about how it feels to be a tourist which she refers “the ugliest thing in the world.” The piece was rejected by the editor of the New Yorker because of being “too angry.” Within the composition, it’s obvious that Kincaid’s largest target is the economic structure of the dysfunctional tourism or in other words, she speaks directly to “you,” the reader. She even criticizes tourists in a resentful and ferociously pitched way that is somewhat troubling for some readers, and not obviously what she intends. Overall, Kincaid’s work doesn’t succeed to persuade his readers by failing to construct her ethos, pathos and logos.

I grew up in a Vietnamese family of four. My parents lived in Vietnam before I was born. They migrated over here because they knew that their lives would be much more stable, and in the long run it would benefit them. I was raised to respect my elders and those around me, to be kind and humble. I value my family and friendships, because they are the one who helps me and supports my decisions. Without my family and friends, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I believe that if people work hard enough they will become successful. My parents were given the opportunity to come to the U.S. They knew that coming to the U.S means that they had to start all over. Like learning a new language to be able to communicate with peoples. They knew that they had

The United States has seen a great influx of East Asian immigrants that desired to become American, but never before had it seen such a desperate wave of Vietnamese as it did in the late twentieth century. In 1975, anti-Communist South Vietnam was overthrown, and fell into the communist hands of North Vietnam (Bankston et al. 24). The two previously separated sides of the country were then united under the Hanoi government, but the country remained torn due to its peoples’ inability to cooperate under a single identity. The Hanoi government did not aid this in the slightest despite all their authoritarian attempts. Their laws and policies, including programs such as reeducation camps to politically and forcibly educate their citizens of communism,

Learning to put one’s self in another shoes before judging them is an important lesson to learn. One may find the concept confusing at first, but it is crucial that they learn how to avoid being ignorant.

Perspectives can be controversial, commonly used as topics for debates and in fact, used to solve certain disputes between people. First, to understand the idea of perspectives, the definition of “perspective” is the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, the faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship, basically a mental view or prospect. All these definitions, taken from the dictionary, are linked and are somewhat related the common factor being, they are all formed by certain ideas, ways of seeing the world and its problems or its occurrences in general. An example of clashing perspectives having a significant impact on all of our lives would be perhaps past wars and feuds.

The Vietnam war started in 1954 to 1975. During this war, the Vietnamese Soldiers invaded a few towns in Laos. Some of these towns they invaded were towns my parents lived as kids. They grew up in different towns and refugee camps, but they went through similar journeys to get to America. As kids they ran miles across the jungle with their families to get to the Mekong River. Running through the jungle to get to the river took days. These days were the worst because there were no food to eat on this long walk. A lot of Hmong families who ran away from the Vietnamese soldiers didn’t make it far, or they died of starvation. My parents and their families were fortunate enough to had made it safely to the Mekong river without any harm done to

Every four years, my parents, my sisters, and I, take a trip to Vietnam to visit the rest of our family. When I’m there and I go out into the world, it is very common for people to judge me for being born and for living in America. I never fully understand how things work there. I do not understand how the addresses or currency work in Vietnam. I do not know all of the things that the locals refer to in conversations.

While reading Francine Prose’s essay Confessions of a Ritual Tourist, I believe that she successfully conveyed the concept of a ritual tourist using both her negative and positive definitions. For example, Prose brings up the negatives of the German tourists in paragraph thirteen of the essay. Prose talks about how they would push their way to the front of the crowd, talking loudly, and how they were loaded with cameras; seemingly not understanding or caring that the ceremony was very real to the other people present. Prose brings up the importance of respecting and understanding that the ceremonies or rituals are being performed by real people who truly believe. In paragraph ten, Prose talks about how she has heard stories of tourists crossing boundaries of respect during rituals. She states until she had received her own lesson about the dangers of ritual tourism, she had not realized how culpable she had been. In my opinion, Prose does a good job connecting both the negatives and

Confessions of a Ritual Tourist was by far my favorite reading this week. The idea of traveling to places for ritual events seems pretty interesting. Traveling to see ritual events seems like it will give you your own little window into the culture. Although I have not been able to do this kinda of traveling so far in my life I see myself traveling this way in the near future. Being in the army I was able to travel to South Korea, and although I was not able to see an ritual event happening, I enjoyed the culture and was able to learn a lot from the people I interacted with. In the South Korea culture it is looked down upon if you have a big house.South Korea culture unlike the United States culture it is more expectable to own a smaller house