Growing Up In Vietnamese Culture

As a proud second generation Vietnamese American, I proudly associate myself with my Catholic Vietnamese community. Like all members in my group, we are indoctrinated with the typical immigrant values of perseverance, freedom, and respect for others and our cultural identity. The church that binds us together, Our Lady of Lavang, is the center where most of the Catholic Vietnamese Community gathers all over West Michigan. Since the 1st grade, I went through the Church's school program every Sunday to learn about Christian moral values, Vietnamese traditions, and language. These lessons has heavily influenced my outlook on life, enabling me to use faith to build confidence with myself, maintain integrity, and to love and respect every individual.

I’m Vietnamese, but I cannot speak the language. Both of my grandparents are immigrants who came to Vietnam after the war. My dad was born in Vietnam and my mother was born in Louisiana. All of them speaks fluent Vietnamese, but only my mother speaks English. Growing up, it became harder and harder for me to communicate with my family in a sense that they did not know what I was saying and vice versa. Granted, I went to a Vietnamese school when I was younger but later dropped out once my family became busy with life.

The following paper will discuss Vietnamese Americans and their journey to America. I will talk about how these incredible and resilient people fought to succeed it a world that seemed to hold the odds against them. The culture, beliefs, and challenges of Vietnamese people are a precise paradigm of their strength and perseverance.

According to Kashima (2010), defining what culture means is a difficult task. Culture can be considered the individual differences of identity. Culture is established by numerous things such as ideology and beliefs. While categories of culture are not limited to only country, a common classification of culture is that of different countries. Vietnam’s culture is diverse, influences from many countries have played a role in shaping Vietnam’s culture. Years of Chinese rule, French imperialism, social conflicts and war have given Vietnamese culture a unique richness of language, music and history.

What are cultural assumptions? Cultural assumptions are defined as assumptions that are commonly known throughout a culture. These assumptions are highly relevant in the modern society we live in. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, you will always have your own assumptions. Literature plays a key part in what kind of assumptions we will have, right from the age we begin to process information in our minds. This leads me to the assumption that has stuck with us since our childhood days. Stepmothers. There is a strong cultural assumption that stepmothers are ‘evil’ people, who force their way into other families and are malicious to their stepchildren. Assumptions like this influence our perceptions and lead

Every culture is unique because of their social customs. There are many different people with different social and cultural backgrounds. Our group consists of two Chinese-Americans and one Vietnamese-American. Our report is on the social customs of our respective cultures. Our purpose is to gather information about our social customs so that we can inform our audience. We researched dining etiquette, gift-giving etiquette, wedding customs, festival celebrations, and family customs for Chinese and Vietnamese cultures. We conducted our research using secondary sources, such as the Web, along with primary sources, such as an interview. Our audience can benefit greatly because they will become comfortable with the customs of the Chinese and Vietnamese people. They can impress their friends with how knowledgeable they will become after reading our report. The audience will know what not to do so that

In this article, Ethnic, Gender, and Acculturation Influences on Sexual Behaviors, the researchers hypothesize that “...general differences in normative sexual practices in healthy Euro-Americans, Asians, and Hispanic populations, using measures of acculturation to analyze the relative effects of heritage and mainstream cultures within each group.” (Meston and Ahrold, 2008) The study shows “A total of 1,419 undergraduates (67% Euro-American, 17% Hispanic, 16% Asian; 33% men, 67% women).” (Meston and Ahrold, 2008) The subjects in this study completed questionnaires that evaluated sexual experience and casual sexual behaviors. In this study, Ethnic, Gender, and Acculturation Influences on Sexual Behaviors, the researchers find that Asian women

This paragraph will give an objective view about Vietnamese social structure, page 9 of Nguyen’s book, mentions that the North Vietnamese were using propaganda, to get backing from the disillusioned, poor peasant of the South. The South Vietnamese were extremely poor; they believed that Communists would be their saviour, improving their standards, there would be no social classes everybody would benefit with no more poor. Vietnamese social structure was, virtually, non-existent because of the North and South Vietnamese war. Nguyen’s family suffered very badly, during the years of 1973 to 1980, her

The developed assumptions about other cultures or about a particular cultural group may bias our perception of other cultures. These assumptions are known as cultural bias.

The mindset I have today is forge between two different cultures I live with every day since the age of four. I was born and raised in Vietnam until the age of four when my parents and I immigrated to the U.S. This wasn’t because we were refugee or because of political or war torn country, but simply to look for a better opportunities and higher paying jobs. Despite my young age and migration to the U.S I didn’t forget my heritage because of my parent’s reinforcement of the Vietnamese culture and language. Having to interact within two different culture every day is a challenge because it likes switching back and forth a system, but after 15 years it becomes natural; although there are flaws when communicating.

I believe that every place around this world have the same purpose of education is to provide an opportunity that helps everyone understands and earn more knowledge because knowledge is an inexhaustible treasure. The person who goes along with students is a teacher. The role of teacher is teaching and passing the valuable knowledge on to students, and the teacher really hope the students will keep the knowledge journal because knowledge is that really need for students to succeed in school and in life. However, because I was born in Vietnam and I immigrated to the United States when I was stepping in high school year, therefore, I believe there are many different from the teaching skill/style and methods, cultural education and environment of school in different countries based on my experience through American education and Vietnamese education.

There was a moment where I decided that my mom was wrong, but not in the context of a stereotypical, petty situation that is expected from a hormonal teenager (a young adult). My loving, logical mom who became a workaholic to raise me, had decided to allow a man she met in one week’s time to move into our home. Then she bought a car for him and filed for his citizenship papers and then he hit her so she distanced herself and then had my first sister with him. Then he hit her, but the police were involved this time. Then she had my second sister with him and then he hit her worse and yet she stilled stayed with him. This cycle of “and then” baffled me because my Vietnamese culture teaches me to always respect my elders and my American culture helps me to understand that a parent’s actions are for the betterment of their child. Yet I discovered that I did not know if I had it in me to respect my mom’s actions when I was the one who took care of my sisters so she could go to work. Nor did I think I could understand her actions when they were the cause of what made life so much more

Culture bound assumptions are something that I notice more and more often as I begin to understand it. These are assumptions that people have about other cultures and their activities based on how their own culture conducts them. This is extremely common in the United States and other countries where a large number of people “know what’s best” for other countries and cultures. The rights and wrongs that apply in our own culture may not translate to a new region, population size, government capabilities, and overall culture. Maintaining cultural relativism when viewing a culture or populous helps us from filling in our lack of knowledge with our personal understanding of life.

After this fortunate door-opener, Vietnam was known as one of the most rapid- growing economies worldwide.

Each culture has its own customs and patterns, but I don’t think that there is one that should be considered “normative” over others. I grew up in a Vietnamese household, so some of my family’s customs are different from the average American family’s customs. I consider both cultures to be a part of my life, but neither takes precedence over the other.