Uncle Chinh In Vietnam

Continuing with the views of Nguyen and his parents, Nguyen’s split identity of being Vietnamese and American is fueled by the way he interacts with his family. The aforementioned disagreement between Nguyen and his parents on fighting the

Tan’s grandfather encouraged her mother to understand and help others, and urged her to consider the possibility of escape from Vietnam. Aged sixteen, Mai married a wealthy pharmacist eighteen years her senior. By 1981 she was preparing to escape Vietnam by boat. In early morning darkness, she left with her daughters Tan and Min, her mother, sister and brother, and 161 fellow passengers on a boat disguised as a fishing vessel. At the time, Tan Le was aged 4, her sister aged 3 and her mother, Mai Ho aged 18.

The Memoir Spider Eaters by Rae Yang is her personal account of her life during the Maoist revolution. In addition, she reminisces about her trials and tribulations during her active participation in the culture revolution and the great North Wilderness. Her family also had various misfortunes due to these changing ideological beliefs spread by the revolution. This memoir illustrates in great detail what Yang experienced under communist rule. Spider Eaters opened up a door to a young girl and her families struggle to be good Samaritans under communist rule and their final disillusionment of the revolution they whole heartedly believed in. Yang and her family struggled with the vast ideological changes during the Maoist Revolution, in turn,

It is extremely difficult for Ha’s family to leave Vietnam because this is their home. First of all,”How can we scramble away like rats,without honor…”(44). If Ha’s family leaves Vietnam and there home doesn’t end up getting destroyed will they have enough money to get back to Vietnam. If it does get destroyed, will they be able to rebuild their life. Second, “No matter what Mother decides, we are not to leave…”(46). Brother Khoi wants to stay home and protect his chick and Ha wants to protect her papaya tree. Her tree is part of her.Lastly, “What if Father returns…”(44). If Ha’s dad returns and his family is gone, what will he do. Ha’s family have a very difficult choice to either leave or stay in

Ha’s mother is grieving the disappearance of her husband and the fall of Vietnam to Communism. The fallout of the Vietnam War causes separation for Ha and her family. Once in America, Ha finds that many in the small township move to ignore her culture and her heritage. Vietnamese culture and

In the short story “A Decade”, Ha Jin further enforces the power and control the government had on everything. The story is told in the perspective of girl who left her village then came back years later in which she recalls her time in school there. More specifically her time with a teacher named Wenli, a shy, soft spoken, innocent teacher who seemingly was not fit to teach under a Communist government. First, she is ridiculed for her singing, then she is publicly shunned for her intimate relationship with a fellow teacher, but the incident that brought her all the way down, was her attempt to teach the class what a metaphor was. She did this by referring to the statement Chairman Mao in which he expressed that americans and russians were dirt. As she explained this was not the case for they were humans as everyone is it all went downhill as the narrator stated, “How dare she change Chairman Mao’s meaning! How could we trust such a teacher?” (Jin, Pg. 204) This in turn causes an uproar amongst the school which causes Wenli to be sent to the countryside. She comes back a monster of a woman compared to who she was. When the narrator sees her teacher in her present cruel self she states, “...similar to how I had felt when my first boyfriend left me for another girl.” (Jin, Pg. 207) This statement allows the reader to have the narrator's real feeling for she witnesses a woman far from the woman she had known only to question herself in a “what have did I

Even with her previous experiences at Beijing University and at Big Joy Farm, Wong still held some belief that the Chinese system wasn’t as bad as it was sometimes made out to be. This event proved to her that it was. “The enormity of the massacre hit home…Although it had been years since I was a Maoist, I still had harbored some small hope for China. Now even that was gone” (259). As a reporter Wong was able to view the progression of the protests in leading up to the massacre, and in viewing it understood that the Chinese people were much more independent than they had previously demonstrated over the past 50 years. She had continuously seen the Chinese people following what they were told between learning in school or with physical labor, yet this protest was one of the first large scale displays of the unacceptance of the regime by the people, and the government did not know what to do with it. But because of this, Wong was able to recognize that the people were not reliant on this way of life that they had previously been bound to, but truly could lead for themselves and take control. The massacre awakened Wong both to the reality that the government was not acting to benefit the people, and that the people were more than capable of acting for

Nevertheless, the orphan played a very beneficial role in An Tinh’s identity development. An Tinh connected to the orphan because the orphan wanted to isolate herself, how she declared herself Vietnamese and how she was a social

"If baby Hung and I and my father's spirit were to survive the death of Vietnam, we would have to turn our eyes elsewhere—to the West…" (239). Le Ly had married an American, who many see as the enemy, and most of her family members did not approve of this. Marrying an American was only a part of the problem. The difference in ages, with Ed being much older, and marrying so soon after the death of her father went against traditions. "You betray your ancestors" (347)! Even knowing all of this, moving to America is what needed to be done to protect her family and their futures. When Le Ly's father was alive, he had told her to take care of her son, whatever that entailed. "Raise him the best way you can. That is the battle you were born to fight" (201). Now, honoring her dead father, she remembered his words. The future was not bright for her in Vietnam. And with a growing boy to think of, she had to make the hard decision to leave everything and everybody she knows behind. With Ed as her husband, she knew she could give her son a better future where endless opportunities await him and he will not know the hardships of war. "…he would see to it that I would never have to work again; that my little boy, Jimmy, would be raised in a nice neighborhood and go to an American school; and that neither of us would have to face the dangers and travails of war again. …the

In the novel, Paradise of the Blind, written by Duong Thu Huong originally in Vietnamese and translated into English by Phan Huy Duong and Nina Mcpherson, the author constructs characters Aunt Tam and Uncle Chinh as analogs of conflicting political ideologies of 20th century Vietnam in order to display her opinions on its effectiveness in attaining proclaimed paradise. The characters are constructed to differently express the author’s voice towards extremist ideologies, Uncle Chinh

All throughout history, a variety customs and traditions have been followed by different ethnical, religious, and geographical groups. Food, holidays, religious practices, moral ideas, dialects, music, dances, art, and education are all important components of what makes up a society. It is clear to see that tradition has a significant impact on cultural beliefs. Tradition dictates what is the proper way for something to occur; what the social norm is.

Amy Tan is an American Born Chinese, daughter of immigrants, and her family shares many features with the families depicted in her novels. Tan's novels offer some glimpses of life in China while developing the themes of mother-daughter relations, cultural adaptation and "women with a past".  Tan’s novels share many themes and elements, but this paper will focus mainly on two episodes of the novel The Joy Luck Club: "The Joy Luck Club" and "Waiting Between the Trees"; and will make references to The Kitchen's God Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses.

Vu Trong Phung’s The Industry of Marrying Europeans handled a topic that many other reporters at the time saw as “taboo” or “deviant” because he openly wrote about people many saw as “lowlives” who were shunned from traditional Vietnamese culture (10). While other Vietnamese reporters avoided writing about opium addicts, gamblers, rapists, and other corrupted characters, Vu Trong Phung was unique in blatantly centering his works on these types of people. Though many of his contemporaries claimed that his work was nonfiction, Thúy Tranviet, the translator of this edition, argues that Vu Trong Phung’s work is a mixture of both nonfiction and fiction (11), making this primary source unique for its truth-bending and its translation. Basing his

Jing-mei’s inability to connect with her mother arises from her upbringing. Mrs. Woo pushed Jing-mei to extremes with her parenting and failed to realize the lasting trauma it had on her daughter. Jing-mei as a fragile child wants nothing more than for her “mother and father [to] adore [her]” (233). The developing girl is looking for acceptance through her parents, but Mrs. Woo does not understand the positive reinforcement required in those early stages of development. Instead

As such, firsthand approach to Indian tradition is lacking at large, and the idea of tradition being through the media of interpretative tradition has engendered the danger of a distorted view of tradition. The distortion often swings between two extremes – either in viewing tradition as Everything, or as Nothing.