Vietnamese Culture within the American Culture

[luvmyacnq]

This post is written by my friend, presenting some interesting ideas and perspective. For those of you who care about how Vietnamese culture is blended in American society, take a look.



“It’s pronounced ‘fuhh’ not ‘foe.’” I have had to give this irritatingly many times in my life. What is pho you ask? It’s a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup. This is just a small sample of how much, or how little, knowledge of the Vietnamese culture in America. In fact, Vietnamese culture, in my experience, is one of the least known cultures in America. From the outside, the Vietnamese culture seems to be any “usual” Asian culture; but on the inside, it is a culture struggling to keep old traditions and values alive while embracing new traditions and ideas from the American culture.

America’s culture is composed of many other cultures’ traditions and values. It is also composed of numerous subcultures as well. Being an American is being able to choose what kind of culture you identify yourself with whether it is; gay culture, Vietnamese culture, Chinese culture, young culture, pop culture, etc. Although America is diverse and growing, it has a plethora of views and stereotypes to the many subcultures that make it up.

From my eighteen years of existence, I feel that the greater part of America has many assumptions toward Vietnamese culture. Among them, is that Vietnam has a “one size fits all” culture. It is very traditional – quiet, small family units that cannot speak English very well, diligent children in school, and only speak Vietnamese to other Vietnamese kids. Another is that it is small and spread out throughout America or concentrated in the China Town of a popular city. This is grossly untrue. When people think of my culture, they also apply the “classical” Asian work ethic in it as well. There are many things that come to mind when the question of Vietnamese culture arises, namely, the Vietnam War. There is a large amount of people out there that know a great deal about the Vietnam War. There are many of people who know how to adopt children from Vietnam as well. Vietnam has one of the highest adoption numbers in the world. On the other end of the spectrum, though, when you ask Americans about the Vietnamese culture, they respond with, “I really don’t know.” It goes as far as not being able to pronounce the name of the culture. My ex-boyfriend would call me “Vietmanese” when in fact, I am Vietnamese. I try to remove, myself emotionally, when it comes to situations like this.

Being Vietnamese-American myself, I am trying to look at things subjectively. I can to view Americans’ perceptions of Vietnamese culture from a different perspective. I am generally able to distinguish between fact, fiction, and whether a point is valid when it comes to Vietnamese culture. I do agree with the “classical” Asian work ethic. It is not because Asians seem to work harder because they are Asian. It is because their parents engrain a certain value from a young age. Many of the Vietnamese people in America are immigrants. In fact, all immigrants work harder because they want their children to have a good life. They want their children to be accepted in this culture so they work hard, if not harder, for their children to have the same opportunities as everyone else. That value is then passed on to the children because they have all these opportunities that their parents didn’t have before.

My mother, father, brother, and sister would always remind me that I get to eat all this food that they never were able to eat. They remind me every day that I am in school and they don’t have to pay for it. They remind me that I have all these material things that they didn’t have when they were my age or when they were growing up. Most importantly, they remind me to celebrate my culture every day.

There are many other stereotypes that are affiliated with my culture that I do not agree with. The Vietnamese-American community is in no way small or concentrated in China Towns of big cities. When asking one of my peers where you could find Vietnamese people, he responded, with intonation of obviousness, “China Town, where else?” In fact, you seldom find Vietnamese people in China town anywhere. The Vietnamese community is numerous across America and strongly united. Most of the Viet community is concentrated in Houston TX, Orange County CA, and Northern VA. Historically, when Vietnamese people fled the country, they would land in southern California.

The Vietnamese history has been perceived as “one size fits all,” when in fact the history is anything but ordinary. Vietnam was imperialized by China for hundreds of years then by the French for another hundred years. This created a sense of identity crisis for Vietnam. The culture is rich with influences from the French and Chinese. This is apparent in the architecture, religious beliefs, cuisine, and everyday traditions of the Vietnamese people. Imperialism also shaped the Vietnamese customs.

In my family, I feel that we are very “traditional” when it comes to customs. We go to the temple on holidays, have an alter set up in our house to honor our deceased relatives, we celebrate Vietnamese holidays such as Tet (the lunar new year), the lunar festival, parents day, and the anniversary of the death of our loved ones. I was also raised with a very conventional set of values; family, respect for your elders, hard work, and heterosexism. My family was also really strict with my studies and activities before I graduated. My parents were always quite lenient with my curfew and activities as long as I had justification as to why I was late or why I just have to go out. This is why I feel that I have grown up in a less traditional family set. Most Vietnamese parents seem to rule their house with a totalitarian grip but my parents, were always open to new ideas and were very fair with their punishment or their reasons as to why I couldn’t do something. It feels like because of my homosexuality, they needed to be less conventional when it came to raising me.

Within the Vietnamese-American culture, there are two generations battling with each other; the older generations of the parent battling with the first generations of their children born or raised here in America. The parents try to keep the old traditions alive within their children. Some of these include values, practice of traditional arts (such as instruments, dance, etc.), traditional ceremonies (such as weddings and funerals), and most important language. I have lived long enough to see the traditions of my culture being passed down incorrectly or improperly or not passed down at all. One tradition I feel strongly about is the passing on of the Vietnamese language. Growing up in a home where Vietnamese is the dominant language, my parents always stressed the point of being able to speak my native tongue in order to communicate with “my people.” It pains me to see people my age and Vietnamese children younger than me who cannot speak a lick of Vietnamese or can only barely understand what their parents are saying and have to respond in English. This creates a rift within the household, a rift not only between the parents and their children but the children with their heritage.

The Vietnamese culture lives within some of the more traditional families but there is an even greater culture clash between the materialism of the American culture and the more customary values of the Vietnamese culture. Some ideas in the American culture are so tabooed in the Vietnamese culture, the first generation living in America and the immigrants have trouble seeing eye to eye. Some controversial ideas include divorce, materialism, and the value of friends over family, and “non-traditional” lifestyles. In many cases, materialism comes into play. A parent may only want to provide for their families and give their children opportunities that they never had in the past while the child only wants an iPod or a PS3. This leads to the idea of valuing materialism family or work ethics. Problems such as these create a real rift within the Vietnamese-American culture.

Although the Vietnamese-American community is struggling within itself, it is in no way divided. While the Vietnamese community is spread out and concentrated in certain areas of America, it is a very strongly united. It is a proud community united through the strong feelings of nationalism. Numerous amounts of people within the community are proud of their heritage, their history, and their struggle. Another similarity within the community is the strong sense of anticommunism. My people fled the country to escape communism. America is the ultimate goal of numerous amounts of people from Vietnam because America is the land of the free. Here, there are copious amounts of freedoms that we take for granted that people in other countries can only dream of. This is especially apparent in the veterans of the Vietnam War like my father.

My father spoke of realizing a dream that he had. One day living in America with his family and giving his children the opportunities that he can only dream about. Today, his dream has been realized. While my family may not all be in the same location geographically, we are all in the land of the free where we have the ability to hate the government and express it. This idea perfectly illustrates what America is “all about.” In America, the Vietnamese community has freedom from oppression, freedom of speech, and all the other freedoms described in the Constitution. The freedom in America makes it possible for the clash between the old values and ideas of parents and the new ideas of their children to clash. In Vietnam, the child is such a product of the parents’ ideas, values, and morals they are almost like a carbon copy of their parents. Having the freedom to disagree with our parents and the ability to express what we disagree about is a great way to define what American Culture really is. I believe this makes the Vietnamese-American community really strong.

As the result of the history of Vietnam, it is a culture composed of at least two different cultures. The American culture and the Vietnamese culture have much more in common than one would expect. There is no denying that both cultures are still in turmoil. The introduction of new ideas with the values and morals of the old culture will weed out older traditions that seem dull or meaningless to give way to newer traditions and values that fit into the popular and developing culture of America.

By Justin Nguyen