Vietnamese Culture (Anti Communism)

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CHAPTER ONE

The Setting and the Characters: The Social Life of Anticommunism

The Vietnamese Federation of San Diego’s [community

center/house] sits unobtrusively on the south side of Linda Vista Boulevard, just about

half a mile beyond the Asian business district on Convoy Avenue, at the periphery of the

community in San Diego called Linda Vista.89 Prior to its establishment in Linda Vista in

1995, was located in East San Diego where there was, and is, a high

concentration of newer immigrants, including Vietnamese. Le Thi Diem Thuy begins her

novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For with a mapping of one Vietnamese refugee

family’s movement around San Diego:

Linda Vista, with its rows of yellow houses, is where we eventually washed to shore. Before Linda Vista, we lived in the Green Apartment on Thirtieth and Adams, in Normal Heights. Before the Green Apartment, we lived in the Red Apartment on Forty-ninth and Orange, in East San Diego. Before the Red Apartment we weren’t a family like we are a family now. We were in separate places, waiting for each other.90

In this mapping, we see how refugee migrations across the Pacific splintered one family

and their journey to becoming a family again traverses the low-income neighborhoods of

East San Diego and Linda Vista. Le’s mapping of the narrator’s temporary homes

parallels the movement of as well. While the moved from

an inconvenient location on the second floor of a business building in East San Diego to

its own building in Linda Vista in order to house meetings and events more efficiently

89 Linda Vista, in Spanish translates to “pretty view,” is also home to the private Catholic University of San Diego. This community was where many Vietnamese refugees settled in the late 1970s and 1980s and one of the clearly visible geographical imprints are the Vietnamese businesses in the area, including the Vien Dong Supermarket. 90 Le 2003: 3.

and spaciously, during my time on the Board of Directors, I have witnessed an ongoing

effort to move it back to East San Diego to better serve the area with the most social

need. To buy their own property and relocate to East San Diego has been an ongoing

project for each of the presidents since 1995, but it remains unfulfilled. While I

conducted fieldwork, I spent a great deal of time at the for weekly Board

of Director meetings and special events during the weekends.

The provided a home base for me to regularly interface with

community members and gain valuable insight into the lives of first generation

Vietnamese Americans. While I was able to spend some time at elders’ homes, the

routine of meetings and events at became a productive site to observe

how anticommunist discourse and practices serve as modes through which many first

generation Vietnamese American men and women create a space to talk about their pasts

and their memories of South Vietnam as well as a means of delineating their right to

belong in the United States. If memories of the Vietnam/American War and postwar

aftermaths have become ghostly imprints in national narratives, what spaces enable such

memories to emerge? As the past is called upon for the purpose of articulating a uniquely

Vietnamese American identity in the present, how does anticommunism serve the needs

of a community desiring a “place to stand [ ” in US society?91 I ask what

shapes and forms do refugee memories take in between the private and public realms

through which anticommunist discourse and practices travel? This chapter examines the

weekly meetings and other routine “ [community activities]” of the

91 I borrow the phrase “place to stand” from an interview participant who told me that Vietnamese refugees need to find a place to stand in the United States, or “

Vietnamese Federation over the span of four years, from the summer of 2002 to the

summer of 2006.92 This period covers two executive board terms for the Viet Fed, both of

which were under the leadership of the same president and a relatively stable Board of

Directors (hereafter called BoD). I examine the weekly meetings as a social space that

reveals the making of community at the intimate level, a space where members share

common objectives and work through their differences. This space sustains many of the

members in more ways than the obvious. That is, each week they are able to do more

than plan upcoming community events or discuss current political issues with their peers.

In the safe space of the conference room at they can relate to each other

as friends; and for me they have become another type of family in San Diego. Because of

the disruptive forces of war and migration in Vietnamese refugee lives, I believe that

family, in whatever form we can find, is a hard-won and prized concept for Vietnamese

Americans.

I explore the ways anticommunism has functioned as a “practice of everyday

life,” to borrow from Michel de Certeau’s seminal work. In The Practice of Everyday

Life, de Certeau insists upon a means of examining how individuals re-appropriate

traditions, symbols, art, and language—the stuff of cultural identities—in order that they

may subvert dominant regimes of representation that seek to conform individuals to

predetermined identities. Thus everyday life can be a productive analytical site that may

offer individuals a chance to create meaning for themselves against the grain of totalizing

narratives. If “Vietnam War” history is one such totalizing narrative that posits

92 I became involved with the Vietnamese Federation during the summer of 2002 when I came to a general election to seek interview subjects for a conference paper and became an “accidental” independent delegate first, then a Board of Directors member.

Vietnamese Americans as either injured victims of the or deserving refugees

of the US nation, then how do individuals respond to and re-appropriate this discourse in

the everyday tasks of community work? While the structures of meeting and community

work deviate from the quotidian practices of everyday living as discussed by de Certeau,

I expand the notion of “everyday life” to include how the Viet Fed meetings may reflect

the everyday work of community building. That is, the frequent, routine, and predictable

nature of the meetings allows for an analysis of community work at the more intimate

and grounded level.

While there certainly are other social spaces in which to examine the meanings of

anticommunist discourse for first generation Vietnamese Americans, the Viet Fed weekly

meetings are a productive and unique site because of the ways in which variously

different individuals come together to not only talk, but act upon their convictions.93 In

fact, this site may be more productive than others because of the way anticommunist

discourse and practices become seamless facets of community work. This space

highlights the dynamics of collective memory as well as the negotiations of class,

generational and gender difference tied to the maintenance of an anticommunist “moral

community.”94 This intimate space also reveals the ways members work through

differences and ultimately contrive a solidarity contingent on a shared (and perhaps

93 Another highly charged “everyday” space that comes to mind are the coffee shops where Vietnamese Americans (mainly men) gather and share stories about the old days and talk politics with each other. I have lingered outside of these coffee shops in both Orange County and San Diego to catch the gist of their conversations which often included the Vietnam-American War and the war in Iraq. However, this space was for sharing ideas and stories, not for planning events or acting upon anticommunist convictions. 94 I borrow the phrase “moral community” from Guillermo J. Grenier and Lisandro Perez, who argue that the Cuban community in Miami shows the persistence of an “exile ideology” which is dependent on the construction of a “‘moral community’ that serves to build political capital and a sense of solidarity in the enclave.” See The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003).

invented) past. First, I describe the meetings and the process of planning for events in

order to show how anticommunist practices and beliefs often define community work for

first generation Vietnamese Americans. I am especially interested in exploring how class,

generation, and gender are negotiated at these meetings in order to present a unified

community perspective during public events. Then, I describe the mealtime ritual

occurring at the tail-end of meetings in order to show how it provides a different space

within the meetings for building affective relationships between members that continue to

rely on an anticommunist sensibility.

In this meeting space, I have had to confront the ambivalence, anxieties, and

uncertainties I often felt as a “complicit researcher,” or “halfie,” as well as fumble

through my role as a BoD member.95 My initial entry into this organization happened at a

timely moment in the summer of 2002 when a term had just ended and a new BoD was

being elected. Thus, as I approached Vietnamese elders to make their acquaintances for

my project, they saw me as a willing recruit into an organization direly in need of young

faces.96 The meeting space was painfully awkward for me at first since I did not know

anyone and I certainly did not understand all the community politics under discussion.

Being relatively new to San Diego also made me feel like an outsider, or the “un-cool

kid” on the playground who had no one to talk to, no one to stand next to, no way to just

blend in. The elders always tried to make me feel welcome by constantly remarking on

95 I borrow the term “complicit researcher” from K. Wayne Yang, who describes his role this way through his activist-ethnographic work on urban schools. I use the term “halfie” to reference Lila Abu-Lughod’s (1991) argument that “halfies” are those anthropologists who possess split subjectivities, existing between cultural and physical spaces. 96 Throughout the dissertation I refer to first generation Vietnamese Americans as “elders” and the second generation as “youth” to indicate how community members reified these categories and terms in their everyday speech.

the need for young blood to reinvigorate the organization and they often complimented

me on being an exemplary student, a model for other Vietnamese American youth. Yet I

could not easily start a conversation with elders, in part due to my upbringing to show

respect through listening rather than speaking and also because of my “kitchen”

Vietnamese.97 I was constantly insecure about my Vietnamese language abilities, feeling

a bit inadequate with my limited academic vocabulary. Although I had ample experience

working with student and some grassroots community organizations prior to this

fieldwork, I was wholly unprepared to be immersed in a first generation organization

where I would usually be the only person under 40 at any given meeting, where all the

business was conducted in Vietnamese. I often spoke a mix of Vietnamese and English

since complex words such as “theory” and “ideology” were beyond my grasp in

Vietnamese at that time. A year after I began working with the Viet Fed, I took two

summer months off to participate in a Vietnamese language program at the University of

Wisconsin at Madison to better my academic Vietnamese. I came back from my summer

studies eager to dialogue more with the elders, to find an outlet for my new relationship

with my native language.

While I initially took the role of the fly-on-the-wall ethnographer, taking meeting

minutes in English and quietly observing proceedings from my seat in the corner, as I

became more familiar with the elders and the Viet Fed programs, I took on more

97 Although I took Vietnamese classes through Catholic Sunday schools as a youth, my lack of interest made my Vietnamese reading and writing grade school level at best. However, I was raised in a household with parents who did not speak English. I was often their interpreter for official business and my Vietnamese-to-English process is rather rapid and accurate. I could understand everything I heard in Vietnamese and quickly relay it into English. The opposite process was significantly slower because I had very little occasion to have discussions with my parents and my siblings and I formed the habit of speaking English with each other.

participatory roles. My actual BoD title also changed from “assistant to the secretary”

during the first term, a role created to get me on the BoD, to Vice President of External

Affairs for the second term. I became more than a student researcher-volunteer who may

have the occasional pseudo-important job of representing the Viet Fed at civic events; I

became a key player in the organization and the organization became a crucial site of

belonging and community for me.

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when I began to feel at ease with elders in the

Viet Fed, so subtly did our relationships develop over a long period of time. I showed

myself to be patient and doggedly consistent in coming to meetings because of a

commitment to my research, but more truthfully because this was the one place in my life

where I could practice being a scholar in Vietnamese. I listened and learned from them in

ways that I could not with my own parents. And they spoke to me and looked at me with

a glimmer of respect and a great deal of patience. I practiced articulating myself in

Vietnamese in order to legitimize my right to do this project as a “halfie.” So, in this way,

my research allowed me to learn about the meanings of anticommunism for first

generation Vietnamese Americans while learning how to speak to elders coherently, to

listen to them thoughtfully in order to interact with them on terms that conveyed both

respect and critical engagement.

The Vietnamese Federation of San Diego

A Community and Organization Profile

I was introduced to the Viet Fed in 2002 by my dissertation advisor’s friend, an

energetic first generation Vietnamese American woman dedicated to recruiting youth

volunteers for community work. At the time, I was merely a curious outsider who wanted

to make contact with Vietnamese veterans of the Republic of Vietnam military in order to

conduct a study on the civic activities of this group in San Diego for a conference

paper.98 My first impression of this organization was that it resembled an old boy’s

network, organized along very militaristic lines. Very few women held leadership

positions within this organization, but many worked behind the scenes to sustain the

organization’s events. When I was asked to join the BoD for a two-year term, I

recognized an opportunity to get to know the Vietnamese community in San Diego better.

At the time, I was not too concerned about the gender and age imbalance—being the

token female and youth allowed me to take a more observational role.

The BoD was (and still is) comprised of the President, two Vice Presidents

(internal and external affairs), a General Secretary, and a Treasurer. Other regulars at the

meetings included an advisor to the President (a former president) and several other

dedicated representatives (Culture, Education, Entertainment representatives).

Throughout the four years of my involvement, I noticed that the gender ratio at board

meetings would be around 1 woman to 3 men, sometimes 1 to 4. This skewed gender

ratio approximates the participation of men and women in the Viet Fed member

organizations as well, which are still predominantly first generation organizations. Most

of my interview participants explain that the gender imbalance can be attributed to two

main factors: the multiple and strenuous demands first generation women have at home

and/or in the workplace and their “traditional” upbringing that requires women to take on

more supportive roles in community or public spaces. Nazli Kibria’s ethnographic study

98 The conference was sponsored by The Regional Studies Network of the UCSD Civic Collaborative and was called “San Diego’s Veterans: Understanding Their Critical Role in the Life of the Region.” My conference paper was titled, “The View from the Other Side: Vietnamese Veterans in San Diego.” October 12, 2002.

of Vietnamese refugee families reveals that domestic caretaking in these families was still

conducted primarily by women even while women usually took on additional

responsibilities such as running businesses, tending to money matters, negotiating with

social services and healthcare.99 As such, the significantly low number of women in the

BoD may suggest that the multiple and rigorous demands of family and work may have a

higher impact on women’s ability to do community work when compared to their male

counterparts. However, this gender imbalance in first generation Vietnamese American

organizations does not reflect the numbers of women and men in attendance at

community events, which tend to be quite evenly distributed. The skewed gender ratio in

the Viet Fed leadership reflects the structure of many other post-1965 immigrant

communities in the US where the prevalence of women working outside the home

subverts prior gender norms; that is, of man as provider and woman in charge of domestic

care-taking. In response, as Sheba George demonstrates in When Women Come First,

immigrant men take up prominent community leadership positions in order to reassert

masculine power and authority.100

The weekly meetings were always held either on Tuesday or Wednesday in the

conference room of for the BoD and other active members to debrief past

events, prepare for upcoming events, and review the general status of the Viet Fed. They

were often quite structured, but there was always room for digression and humor since

many members were either long-time friends coming into their roles or soon became

99 Kibria 1993. 100 In particular, George (2005) suggests the church plays a vital role in offering a space where male leadership can be articulated for immigrants from Kerala, India, whose familial and gender roles were dramatically reversed with the migration of female nurses to the US.

close through frequent interaction.101 Meetings were held at 6:30 p.m., but usually began

around 7:00 p.m. The business portion would run until around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. (unless

there was an important event coming up that demanded more attention).

There are two major events that the Viet Fed plans every year, the Festival

and Black April commemoration, and several other smaller-scale seasonal events such as

the Trung Thu [Mid-Autumn Moon Festival], Kings and death

anniversaries, and community health fairs. In addition, the Viet Fed participates in local

fairs and parades such as the Linda Vista Multicultural Fair and San Diego Veterans Day

Parade as well as relevant charity work such as fundraising for San Diego Firestorm

(2003, 2007), Hurricane Katrina (2005) and Asian Tsunami (2004) victims. And, like

other immigrant civic organizations, the Viet Fed participates in local efforts to raise

funds for homeland causes, such as “ [Disabled Veterans ” or orphans

in Vietnam and the many floods throughout the Vietnam countryside. These aid efforts

usually take on the form of benefit concerts, where proceeds from ticket sales as well as

solicited donations during the events are sent to the appropriate recipients. These are the

cultural activities I have had part in planning and promoting, attending and, at times, even

standing up to act as mistress of ceremony. Therefore, my foot is not only halfway in the

door as a “native” ethnographer attempting to keep objective distance to what I observe,

but I’ve been thrust into the midst of all the activities despite my initial reluctance.

101 Two Viet Fed officers who did not know each other prior to their roles in the BoD became quite close and discovered they shared a hobby of photography. On many occasions, they came to each other’s homes to share photography equipment or show their latest photos. Occasionally these two officers would pass along photos they had taken of me (and later, my daughter) during our weekly meetings.

The Viet Fed also acts as representative for Vietnamese American political

interests, therefore during election years, the Viet Fed has spearheaded voter registration

efforts and collaborated with the US Attorney General’s office in making Vietnamese

language voter materials available in San Diego county in 2004. Board members with

connections to local elected officials have also lobbied a flag resolution to recognize the

South Vietnam flag by the city of San Diego.102 Other political activities members

participate in include demonstrations against human rights abuse by the Vietnam

government or protests against ambassadors and other leaders from Vietnam. However,

members do so on their own right and not under the banner of the Viet Fed, since its

501(c)(3) status explicitly forbids political interest activities.

Yet, even if the political activities are relegated to “individual” interests among

the board, members I argue that “cultural” events planned by the Viet Fed have always

been politically-charged sites for constructing imagined community. Always aware of

itself as a refugee organization and deeply concerned with casting itself in opposition to

Vietnam, the Viet Fed demonstrates that cultural sites have high political stakes. The

“cultural” events mentioned are imbued with a distinctly Vietnamese American politics

that demands dialogue with the past. Scholarship on Vietnamese American communities

should seriously consider the multiple dimensions of the “cultural,” the ways in which

these sites call into being the omissions in previous historical constructions of the

Vietnamese diaspora, which may afford us new models for analyzing community and

identity.

102 In Chapter Three, I discuss the meanings tied to this flag resolution in greater detail.

Because the Festival (in late January to early February) and Black April

commemoration (weekend closest to April 30) are important events, but also by now

quite well-rehearsed, the BoD can usually plan for them three to six months prior. The

Festival is much larger in scale and requires more collaboration with outside

organizations, vendors, and city resources and as result the organizers will begin planning

in early fall by reserving the space (either City Heights Urban Village Performance

Annex or Linda Vista library parking lot), obtaining permits, and lining up performers.

For Black April, however, the planning happens two to three months prior when a

committee is formed that includes representatives from elders, veterans, and student

groups. Committees for both and Black April are constituted by an open general

meeting that all member organizations may participate in. These open general meetings

usually occur two to thee times a year and were usually well-attended (approximately 25-

30 organization and non-affiliated delegates). General meetings to discuss Black April

always attracted more (mainly male and first generation) delegates than the Festival

planning meetings, mainly because active community members tended to be those

committed to the goal of preserving South Vietnamese stories and challenging

“communist” history.103 In addition, the widespread appreciation of as a cultural

event gives members rationale to dismiss it as a neutral and “safe” site. On the other

hand, Black April commemorations are unambiguously political in nature, even if the

means to convey refugee politics are cultural (e.g. song, skits). Thus many delegates

103 For instance, elders who came to Black April planning meetings voice “our” collective stake in challenging the celebration of April 30 as a day of liberation and victory over foreign imperialists (as it is celebrated in Vietnam) rather than a day of “national mourning” as it has become for Vietnamese refugees.

participate in the planning process of Black April in order to voice their political interests

and police the bounds of Vietnamese American community and identity.

Slowly, I came to understand, and even appreciate, the distinct rhythm that the

elders had in their community work. Not all members of the Viet Fed work at the same

pace and differences have arisen on numerous occasions, but taken as a whole the BoD

had a certain cohesiveness and predictability. This cohesiveness can be attributed mainly

to their actual and/or ideological location as refugees and opponents of the Socialist

Republic of Vietnam. Members may not agree on how to run meetings or events and

what programs should be privileged throughout the year, but they all “ ”

[oppose communism] to varying degrees. In her notes on a community forum to bridge

the generation gap, one young Vietnamese American activist suggests that elders are “not

anti-Communist just to be anti-Communist,” but rather they see anticommunism as a

vehicle for continuing struggles for freedom in Vietnam. In fact, they see anticommunism

as in sync with a “pro-Vietnam” stance and continue staging protests as a way to make

visible the injustices still occurring in the homeland. The activist quotes an elder’s

explanation: “The hatred is over,” a woman says, “I can live here in this land, enjoy the

things I have, and never remember those terrible days. I can put my past behind. What I

cannot put behind, what haunts me and urges me to be active, is not my own memories –

it is the knowledge that my people still live like that.”104 Like this woman, many of my

respondents suggest that their own activism is a consequence of “caring too much” about

their countrymen, of a sense of their good fortunes for leaving Vietnam when so many

104 From an email article circulated by Yen-Khanh Vu, “To my Vietnamese friends who hate the way our community protests” 27 April 2005.

could not or died in their attempts. Thus, the commitment to anticommunism, for many,

is not merely about preserving memories of the past but about coping with the pain or

guilt of surviving and thriving when so many did not.

/A Place to Stand in the US

[I want to help our community develop and have a place to stand here in the United States…We need to try to preserve Vietnamese culture because that is our source of strength.]105

During an interview a female Viet Fed board member, who

regularly attended meetings and actively helped organize numerous events, described her

community work objective as helping Vietnamese Americans to find a place to stand in

the US. I find this statement compelling because of the way in which she connected this

struggle for belonging in US society with an ongoing struggle to preserve Vietnamese

culture and history, particularly an awareness of ourselves as [refugees of

communism]. Later in the interview, she says, “

[I know there is a communist

contingent in our community wanting to disrupt (our work)…so we must try hard to

educate the (Vietnamese American) youth, let them know why their parents disregarded

105 2004. She works for the Union of Pan Asian Communities as a health outreach coordinator for Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian communities in San Diego. Translation of the interview transcriptions are my own.

all hardships to bring their families here (to the US)].106 Through this statement,

locates one of the many functions of anticommunism in the Vietnamese

American community. It serves as a pedagogical tool for the second generation to learn

their parents’ (and community’s) immigration story; about the sacrifices of the first

generation as a means of understanding the reason they are in the US.

This immigration story is intimately linked to a model minority discourse for

Asian American immigrants. My interview with speaks to the inherent

contradictions of the model minority discourse because of the expectation that

Vietnamese Americans will be able to (in fact, they deserve to) find a “place to stand” in

the US after all the sacrifices made by “heroic” Vietnamese refugees who escaped

communist tyranny. Lisa Sun-Hee Park explains that the discursive construction of Asian

Americans as the model minority hearkens back to a longer tradition of the “American

myth of national origins” whereby immigrants escape political or economic oppression

with little or nothing and ultimately achieve the American dream. Yet this “patriotic

drama” is truly paradoxical for Asian Americans because “According to this narrative,

the role of the good Asian American is that of the perpetual foreigner/victim who must be

rescued, welcomed, and domesticated again and again.”108 In order to stake a claim to the

US nation-state as the “good immigrants,” Asian Americans must continually

106 Ibid. 107 Throughout the dissertation, I refer to my interview subjects by respectful “kinship terms” that my interviewees and I used during times spent doing community work as well as while socializing outside of Vietnamese Federation events. The terms used are either = “Aunt,” “Uncle” or either aunt or uncle, but designated for those with more seniority. 108 Park 2008, forthcoming.

acknowledge their foreigner status.109 If, like other Asian immigrants, Vietnamese

Americans have a stake in this model minority myth, how do their refugee narratives

corroborate or complicate the existing configurations of this troubling paradigm? I

suggest that anticommunist discourse simultaneously relies upon and disrupts the model

minority paradigm by asserting the primacy of homeland concerns and an attachment to a

[refugee] identity. Parallel to Cuban American community and identity formations

(often considered the model minority of Latino groups), Vietnamese Americans’ vexed

relationship with their homeland and their tokenization as deserving refugees in the US

set them apart from their Asian American peers.110 It is, thus, important to understand

how the refugees themselves make use of anticommunist discourse in their everyday

practices, and to interrogate how these practices may enable us to understand the

construction of “refugee” identities beyond state-sanctioned narratives.

The other issue brought up, the concern that infiltrators are

disrupting the elders’ task to educate Vietnamese American youth about their history, has

been a recurring theme in a majority of my interviews with Viet Fed members. The

notion of infiltration, which I initially dismissed as extreme or paranoid, can

actually be contextualized historically by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s

aggressive campaign in the mid-1990s to recruit Vietnamese Americans to support their

effort of detecting and capturing communist spies from Vietnam. In 2005 and 2006, I

109 In Leland Saito’s work on Asian American, Latino, and white communities in suburban LA, he argues that certain Asian American groups invoke the “good immigrant” image which serves to distinguish them from other racialized minorities and the negative connotations associated with their communities. See Saito 1998 and 2001. 110 Cheris Brewer Current recently argues that Cuban refugees have been “ideologically valuable” in the US during the 1960s and 70s as a means of demonstrating America’s moral position against communism. See “Normalizing Cuban Refugees: Representations of Whiteness and Anti-communism in the USA During the Cold War,” Ethnicities 8:1(2008): 42-67.

received numerous scanned or photocopied documents through various Vietnamese

community and politics listservs that attempted to re-ignite the issue about communist

infiltration. I followed these leads and found they were documents circulated by the FBI

and translated and printed in the leading Vietnamese-language newspaper,

Daily News in 1996 after President Bill Clinton restored diplomatic relations with the

Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In a FBI notice, Vietnamese refugees are asked to assist

the US government with information:

With the increased number of Vietnamese refugees in the United States, we think that the activities of Communist espionage has kept up the pace and multiplied vigorously. To prevent this growth, the FBI is once more requesting the help of Vietnamese refugees, those who had relations with, or who had communicated with the Vietnamese Communist regime in the past…If you want to assist the United States Government and fellow overseas Vietnamese in eliminating the activities, threats, and abuses, etc. by the underground Communist spies, please contact us immediately.111

In a 1996 article printed in the South China Morning Post, FBI spokesman George Grotz

is cited as claiming that Vietnamese agents have infiltrated Vietnamese American

communities in California and Texas, home to a large contingent of anti-Hanoi activists.

Grotz suggests that these communist spies may be responsible for the home burglaries,

gang activities, computer chip thefts, and economic espionage that were of key concern

to the FBI at this particular historical moment.112 Given that the criminalization of

Vietnamese Americans by US mainstream media’s emphasis on “food, festivals, and

crime” 113 during the 1980s and 1990s (particularly on gang activity and home invasions),

111 Thông cáo [Notice] by U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Advertisement on Nguòi Viêt Daily, Saturday, February 17, 1996. 112 Greg Torode, “Visa Bids Delayed by FBI’s Spy Fears” in South China Morning Post 23 March 1996, pg. 12. 113 The borrow the triad of “food, festivals, and crime” from Jeffrey Brody, Tony Rimmer, and Edgar Trotter’s (2000) study of media representations of the Vietnamese American community, in which they

I suggest that the opportunity to re-cast Vietnamese refugees as the model minority and

deserving refugee came by way of the FBI’s spy-hunt. If the Vietnamese refugee

community responded cooperatively, as they did with 200 leads, they may resist, in some

small measure, the dominant media’s criminalization of their community.114 Calling out

the “communists,” placing blame on communist infiltrators and spies, would distance the

“good immigrants” from the undemocratic, un-American enemy alien presumably hiding

in their midst. This is mutually beneficial for the state and for Vietnamese refugees, as

subjects of the state, in maintaining democratic ideals and preserving national affiliations.

Even while Vietnamese refugees are cast as perpetual foreigners just as previous Asian

immigrants groups, they may express allegiance to their country of refuge through this

communist spy-hunt. Thus, Vietnamese American anticommunism can be understood as

a complicated negotiation of political allegiance and social belonging.115

In many weekly meetings, the concern about “communist infiltration” has

cropped up when members assess the organization’s strengths and weaknesses in

programming for the community. During a meeting on September 1, 2004, the perceived

crisis of communist infiltration was the main agenda item. This meeting was well-

attended by Viet Fed advisors and concerned delegates in addition to the regular board

members. That evening, I showed up late to a conference room filled with first generation

find that a disproportionate number of articles having to do with Vietnamese Americans focus on one or a combination of these topics. 114 No arrests were made based upon these anonymous phone calls/leads, but the targets of community suspicion were newspaper reporters and community activists. 115 Ngo (1997) argues that “The main actor that has been supporting, financing and supplying the rationale for the [Vietnamese American] anti-communist viewpoint has always been the U.S. government.” In his conference paper on this topic, he shows how the US government set up a “Chiêu Hôi Open Arms program upon the Vietnamese American community [in San Jose]” in 1975 modeled after the one they set up in Vietnam in the 1960s to persuade to join the US side.

men and several women who discussed the growing tension over the Party, a

group that espouses anticommunist ideals but is often suspected of being in concert with

During the meeting, I made the following observations:

One of our board members suggest that we need to “fortify” the community (or protect it) from infringing communist elements. No names were explicitly mentioned, but some members made reference to the organization called “ .” All members present agree that a committee needs to be formed to see to this matter, that way the Viet Fed will not be directly implicated in any “political interest” organizing. Several advisors share their concerns about the growing contingency of communists in San Diego, providing the evidence of “communist performers” at dinner-concerts given at some local Vietnamese restaurants. Just last week Trang Restaurant had a “communist performer.” I want very much to ask why the performer is labeled a communist—is it merely because s/he is from Vietnam or does s/he espouse Socialist principles through music? But I do not ask, for fear of appearing dumb, uninformed, mis-educated by my western schooling. Or maybe it’s more about being viewed as a researcher and not “one of us.”116

In all my community work experience, I was struck by how elders seemed to

unanimously agree on criteria for judging communists versus anticommunists at these

venues, but in private conversations with me, I hear a slightly different version of their

anticommunist politics. Their conversations with me usually revealed a moderate

position. For example, one elder said to me in a matter-of-fact way, “I go to protest

because I want to show I care about my community and my country. I go but I don’t

know if that’s the right way, you know, the best way to do things because sometimes it

make us look bad too.”117 As a community leader, this elder was very cautious about

sounding too critical, but it was obvious that he does not always agree with the hard-line

position of his peers. However, these personal feelings were usually put aside in the 116 Field Notes 1 September 2004. 117 2006

interest of appearing in solidarity against a perceived threat to their goal of sustaining a

refugee identity. This particular meeting resulted in the formation of a committee called

[committee for community protection and

development] whose purpose was vaguely discussed as acting as a watchdog of sorts for

“communist activity.” After several months, the committee informally disbanded due to a

lack of participation.

The everyday work of anticommunism: “ ” [labor of war]

Community volunteer work has often been described as both a labor of love and a

form of “ [struggle, battle, fight]” by many first generation Vietnamese

Americans because of the time, energy, and many personal sacrifices they must make in

order to serve the greater good as well as the ideological/political challenges that come

with doing anticommunist community work. This labor comes with few tangible rewards.

In addition, many members take it upon themselves to finance some of the organization’s

events out of their own pockets.118 Indeed, the dedication the elders have to this unpaid

work reveals the ways in which affective structures maintained during the routine

meetings sustain them in their efforts to strengthen a Vietnamese American community

and preserve its “cultural integrity.” This cultural integrity has been contingent on an

anticommunist politics that is part and parcel of the relationships forged in community

work. That the members all align themselves with South Vietnam and a refugee identity

allows them to connect deeply and personally with each other and work together to create

118 Because the Viet Fed does not have a dependable, continuous source of financial support, each e-board must creatively find funding outlets through soliciting donations, putting on fundraising concerts, etc. However, it is not uncommon for the Viet Fed coffers to be empty thus making it necessary for members to use their own resources to fund events. Often, members will not take reimbursements for money they have spent on supplies for the Viet Fed.

a social space where the hurts of history can be collectively healed through active

participation and collaboration.

Anticommunism does not just color individual perceptions or influence individual

actions in the Viet Fed, but rather serves as the common ground from which to enter into

community work. This is, perhaps, the crux of their attempts to recruit young people. The

generational difference between “elders” and “youth” for Vietnamese Americans is more

than just a problem of language and “Americanization.” The generational difference also

has to do with their first-hand and second-hand memories of South Vietnam and the war,

and thus their emotional proximity to the twin causes of being “pro-Vietnam” and

anticommunism. That the membership of the Viet Fed is comprised of Vietnamese

Americans who are anticommunist is unspoken but widely accepted. Because of its

history as an organization founded by Vietnamese refugees in the difficult years

following displacement from the homeland, the Viet Fed has tacitly become an

anticommunist organization, similar to many other Vietnamese American social or

cultural organizations across the US. Vietnamese American social and cultural

organizations serve as ideological sites for the dissemination of a South Vietnamese story

that parallels the work of political organizations. Kim-An Lieberman’s study of

Vietnamese American anticommunist activism on the internet reveals how political

organizations have used the internet as a new frontier of struggle against the Socialist

Republic of Vietnam. She argues that, “[t]echnically, the Republic of Vietnam fell with

Saigon, but in many senses it has been resurrected on the Internet.”119 In mapping the

anticommunist agenda of over two dozen websites devoted to Vietnamese American

119 Lieberman 2003: 74

anticommunist activism, she discovered many more that may not be political in nature,

but closely align themselves with an anticommunist politics. Lieberman’s study proves

useful in highlighting the role of Vietnamese American organizations in furthering an

anticommunist politics within the realms of both the political and cultural. Furthermore,

the resurrection of South Vietnam (via the use of only Saigon rather than Ho Chi Minh

City as place-name and the deployment of the former flag of the RVN) on these internet

sites also reveals that anticommunist discourse and practices are not about refugees who

are unable or unwilling to let go of the past, but rather a way to write a history of

Vietnamese America that must traverse the landscapes of war, loss, exile, and return.

Anticommunism proves to be a complicated engagement with these stories.

However, this does not mean that anticommunism is understood or practiced in

the same way by all individuals, both in the Viet Fed and beyond. Meanings of

anticommunism and modes of relating to the past and to the Socialist Republic of

Vietnam vary depending on multiple factors, including time of departure from Vietnam,

social status/occupation both in Vietnam and the US, gender, and generation. These

differences are made most visible to me at the weekly meetings because this space offers

the proximity and the relative safety to air out differences in order to present a coherent

message and a cohesive front during community events. While the levels of political

participation (in the homeland and the US mainstream) vary among members of the Viet

Fed and the ways in which they engage in anticommunist discourse and practices may not

always cohere, they do share the fundamental point of view that Vietnamese communists

( ) are the main perpetrators of not only the loss of South Vietnam and the

scattering of Vietnamese across the globe, but also of continued human rights violations

in Vietnam.120 Some members charge the US or even the Republic of Vietnam with more

responsibility for the outcome of the war and their own fates as refugees while others are

more adamant about placing the blame entirely on . Some rarely or never

engage in anticommunist protest and demonstrations, focusing instead on the cultural and

social needs of the community. Others orchestrate the protests or turn out to every single

one. Some consider writing “news” articles condemning misdeeds or fiction

that portrays as villains as their contribution to the effort of “ .” Still

others are more proactive and form committees, interest groups, or organizations that

explicitly oppose the Hanoi regime. Yet, those who never turn out to protest are not

necessarily disinterested or apathetic and they certainly do have a stake in the

anticommunist position, if not the public articulation of anticommunist politics.

Therefore, my reformulation of anticommunism as a cultural discourse helps to account

for those who have been left out of the politics of anticommunism because they do not

identify with its binary and divisive premise or because they have been branded

communists for facilitating dialogue on Vietnam in the diaspora.121

120 As indicated by the international organization, Human Rights Watch, concerns related to Vietnam include the persecution of religious figures, artists and writers, political dissidents, ethnic minorities, and street children and the lack of regulation of human/sex trafficking. See http://hrw.org/doc/?t=asia&c=vietna. 121 In her discussion of Cuban exile politics at the end of the Cold War, Maria de los Angeles Torres shows how old issues of the Cuban American Right resurfaced during the time when Cuban refugees (rafters, or balseros) washed up on the shores of Miami in the late 1980s. However, the US government continued its no-engagement policy with Cuba. Two exile positions in the Cuban American community emerged which she calls “anti-dialogue” (those who advocated the overthrow of the Cuban government through military action and those who promoted ongoing economic and political embargoes) and “pro-dialogue” (those who called for normalized relations with Cuba). Neither side was for Castro, but the tactics are different. Her formulation of pro-dialogue and anti-dialogue attempts to move the discussion away from pro-Castro or anti-Castro political positions, but it nevertheless casts an ethical dilemma of having to choose a side in order to participate in Cuban American community discourse. See In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999).

While the leadership of the Viet Fed is comprised of mainly members of South

Vietnam’s urban elite, the BoD represents a diversity of experiences and perspectives.

Past presidents have all held professional titles such as pharmacist, research scientist,

hospital administrators, etc. However, on the board there are members who are

unemployed (or on disability), an elderly home-maker, a social worker, a photographer, a

computer technician, an electrician/photographer, and several other professionals. These

individuals bring to the board different levels of knowledge and experience with the

Vietnam socialist regime because of their different times of departure from Vietnam;

some interact daily with mainstream American institutions while others remain mostly

insulated in Vietnamese American family and community life. These individuals

represent smaller member organizations, but they also represent the views of those who

are not present at these intimate gatherings.122

Vietnamese American anticommunism can be understood as a modality for

Vietnamese refugees to insert themselves into American society, not just as a reactionary

form of homeland politicking.123 Understood in this way, it becomes a useful conceptual

tool for studying Vietnamese diasporic community and identity. I argue that

anticommunism has served, thus far, as an acceptable means for Vietnamese Americans

122 During an open meeting hosted by the San Diego police department in 2005, I witnessed how Vietnamese elders who do not belong to community organizations were also deeply invested in preserving South Vietnamese history. After a long dull meeting where the elders were admonished by the authorities (the elders were stripped of their own authority in this case) on proper protocol for reporting crime and staying safe and proper ways to discipline their children, elders brought up their own concerns regarding the commemoration of April 30, 1975 during the “Other Business” portion left open at the end of the meeting. During the last thirty minutes, elders who had been silent and unengaged became animated and “authoritative” in discussing their concerns about preserving South Vietnamese history. Field Notes from “Vietnamese Advisory Board Meeting” at the Multicultural Community Relations Office of the San Diego Police Dept (Mid-City) 3 March 2005. 123 Ong and Meyer (2004) and Collet and Furuya (2005) studies of Vietnamese American community and political incorporation where they discuss anticommunist politics as homeland (or transnational) politics that does not impact address domestic issues for the community.

to stake a moral claim to being in the US as the “deserving refugees” of a US war

wherein Americans can still emerge as the moral victor decades later. As Espiritu has

compellingly argued, US mainstream press coverage of the 25th anniversary of the “end”

of the Vietnam War indicates an active re-scripting of America’s loss as a moral victory

through offering up victimized Vietnamese refugees as living evidence of US good

intention n, humanitarian heroism, and, ultimately, the US’s “we-win-even-when-we-lose

syndrome.”124 Given this heroic retelling of the Vietnam War story in the US, how do

those Vietnamese refugees who lived through the war and endured its consequences

construct their own narratives on US soil? How do their narratives conform with, counter,

or remain otherwise ambivalent to this heroic historical re-scripting? The next section

addresses a popular motif in Vietnamese American public discourse, the “thank you

America” position that Vietnamese Americans articulate through community work, in

order to unpack the ambivalence that lies underneath such seemingly accomodationist

politics.

The “Thank You America” Position and its Contradictions

The BoD is comprised of a mixed group of Vietnamese refugees from the 1975

wave and subsequent ODP or HO categories. However, in the life-span of the Viet Fed

(from 1984 to 2006, the end of my term) there have been a total of 8 presidents and all of

them came from the 1975 cohort.125 Consequently, the leadership’s perspective has been

skewed towards South Vietnam’s urban elite. This seems a key factor in determining the

continuity of anticommunist ideology in the Viet Fed with pre-1975 South Vietnamese

124 Espiritu 2006b. 125 The current president (number 9) is the only president who came to the United States after 1975 and is a 1.5 generation Vietnamese American. He began his term in the summer of 2006, the end of my research and executive board term.

anticommunism, or “non-communism.” In his current historical study of South

Vietnamese urban society, Tuan Hoang argues that anticommunism (or non-communist

perspective) before 1975 was the movement of an intellectual class in South Vietnam

who, through experience rather than ideological difference, believed Marxism to be a

repressive and counter-nationalist system. Instead, they advocated a “pro-bourgeois non-

communist culture” that is distinct from western capitalism for their newly independent

country. Hoang’s work addresses the dearth of information on South Vietnamese non-

communist discourse during the period when the RVN and DRV each fought for their

own mode of governance as the US increasingly exerted its power over the South in the

late 1950s into the 1960s.126 That those belonging in the ranks of South Vietnam’s

leadership have been able to parlay their skills and status to become community leaders

in the US explains the extension of this anticommunist movement to differentiate South

Vietnamese experiences and perspective from both the communists and Americans into

the contemporary diasporic context. Furthermore, understanding the continuities between

Vietnamese American anticommunism and South Vietnamese anticommunism keeps us

from valorizing the investment community leaders have in maintaining a version of

history that includes South Vietnamese as active agents rather than merely puppets of the

US. This effort must be understood, in part, as a mission of the bourgeois who have lost

their footing since the fall of Saigon. However, I am not interested in evaluating the first

generation’s motives for holding on to anticommunism, but to understand how it has been

deployed and how its meanings have shifted. The context for anticommunism has

126 Tuan Hoang’s (Department of History, University of Notre Dame) dissertation is a work in progress and he has shared a chapter draft with me on the topic of the intellectual and experiential foundation for Vietnamese anticommunism in the 1950s and 60s.

changed dramatically since 1975 and, under new conditions of displacement and loss, I

am particularly interested in understanding the work of anticommunism as a modality of

remembering.

Nu-Anh Tran’s analysis of South Vietnamese identity construction in the 1960s

reveals a strong desire among the urban intelligentsia to solidify a national identity that

would stand apart from their American allies, particularly as the American presence

appeared to be a corrupting force in Saigon society. Elaborating on the effects of the

American presence in South Vietnam, Tran argues that South Vietnamese urban elites

sought a precarious nationalist identity that remained always anticommunist and often

anti-American. By examining reader responses in a popular Vietnamese newspaper in

response to a US navy serviceman’s racist caricature of Vietnamese, Tran shows how the

“simultaneous expression by letter-writers of gratitude, on the one hand, and defensive

anger, on the other, reflects the contradiction inherent in the Republic of Vietnams’

reliance on American military and economic power and its formal status as a postcolonial

independent state.”127 The contradiction has changed for South Vietnamese as they have

become even more dependent on the US nation-state in their new roles as refugees after

1975, but the desire to preserve an identity unique from Americans and in

contradistinction to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam remains a driving force in

community work. The prior contradictory and conflict-ridden relationship with the US

nation-state and the ongoing negotiation with their refugee status add another dimension

to Vietnamese Americans’ anticommunist position. Perhaps in exile the sense of gratitude

Tran refers to has become compounded while the defensive anger has mitigated, resulting

127 Tran, N.A. 2006: 170

in what I call a “thank you America motif” pervasive in Vietnamese American public

demonstrations. However, in my community work I found that this “thank you America”

public statement papers over many differing and ambivalent perspectives.

The “thank you America motif” must be understood as part of a complicated

history of South Vietnam-US relations that has implications for how Vietnamese

Americans imagine community and identity today. For example, Viet Fed members

responded quite differently to a “thank you America” advertisement our organization put

out for Thanksgiving 2005. Several months after the thirtieth anniversary of the “Fall of

Saigon,” several independent delegates came to a Viet Fed weekly meeting to garner

support for their idea of posting an advertisement in the San Diego Union-Tribune

newspaper to thank the American people for accepting Vietnamese into the fold. The idea

was to mark 30 years of exile with this gesture of gratitude. After the small advertisement

was published over the Thanksgiving holiday, the following week’s BoD meeting agenda

did not include an agenda item to discuss its impact, but it nevertheless came up as a

topic of interest to all the members present. While the idea to raise money and buy an

advertisement did not originally belong to the Viet Fed, as an umbrella organization that

attempts to represent the interest of the Vietnamese American community at large, the

advertisement was credited to our organization.128 Thus, over the holiday weekend the

president received numerous phone calls from his friends on the city council as well as

other “ giving him positive feedback. Some people

thanked him for posting the ad, some people praised us for being grateful rather than the

128 Printed at the bottom of the advertisement was a contact phone number belonging to the Viet Fed President.

“typically ungrateful” immigrants who only criticize the government. In my field notes, I

recorded the discussion as follows:

So, over the Thanksgiving weekend, phone rang off the hook, he said. He told the rest of us that the ad was a hit with city officials (big surprise there!) and “Americans” in general. I wasn’t sure who he meant, but he said “ [American people]” called him to say “thank you for posting that ad,” or we did good, or they were happy to see it because it shows that Vietnamese Americans feel grateful to the US because all we ever hear is criticism of the US from immigrant groups. also said he got a call from a US Vietnam vet and they had an hour-long conversation about the war and the communists.129

Interestingly, city officials and other “friends of the Vietnamese community” (as one

board member referred to the callers) saw this as an opportunity to reward the “good

immigrant” with praise and compliments. This actually happens quite often with city

council “proclamations” at our cultural events and even a resolution that named a day

after our president. However, the alliance forged between the US veteran of the Vietnam

War and the Vietnamese refugee community also reveals another dimension to the work

of anticommunism. At our large-scale community events, we usually see several US vets

and a few use our listserv to continue their own anticommunist activism.

hour-long conversation with a veteran about the war and the communists, however,

reveals that the “thank you America” position, in line with anticommunist practices,

enable personal connections to be established between the American vet and the

Vietnamese refugee community.

This discussion of how the public responded favorably to the president as a

representative of the “grateful” Vietnamese refugee community compelled

129 Field Notes. 30 November 2005.

bring up a comparison of the “disastrous consequences” of the Vietnam War to the

current war in Iraq:

then said that this war in Iraq is going to yield the same disastrous consequences, but he blames the media for swaying public opinion against the war. To this, jumped in and said he thought that the media wasn’t doing that. In fact, there’s less coverage than during Vietnam. He said he doesn’t think public opinion is against the war, but did not comment on whether or not the war is just. He merely said that he thought refugees would get the same unfair treatment as he saw in 1975. Americans don’t want us/them, said. They have to receive refugees to uphold an international humanitarian image, but it’s their fault that Iraqis are going to be homeless refugees. They may fare worse than us. Several people nodded in agreement to this prediction, but everyone did not seem to agree with s views. It seems as though there is a big split between those in favor of the war in Iraq and those against it, but the subject was brushed aside by the more interesting topic of the thank you America ad. It seems like whenever a touchy subject crops up during the meetings, we somehow get steered back to a subject that ties us together as a “refugee” community, thus averting the danger of getting torn apart by other political differences.130

and were both former presidents around the same age and socio-

economic background, but their feelings toward the US are quite different as

demonstrated by how they discussed the war in Iraq. On many different occasions I have

heard openly express his critique of the US government’s foreign policy, but

he supports the “thank you America” efforts because he views it as a strategic way of

earning trust and political clout in the US in order to get legislation passed such as the

flag resolution recognizing the former South Vietnam flag. In part, ’s pro-

America stance is a consequence of his close and successful working relationship with

Americans in South Vietnam where he served as a hospital administrator (a job he was

130 Ibid.

able to resume after some time in the US) whereas did not have very much

contact with Americans prior to entering the US. Furthermore, s work in the

US is quite insulated in the Vietnamese American community—he has a pharmacy that

serves primarily Vietnamese American clients whereas prior to his

retirement, worked for large American companies.

In an interview, another Viet Fed member I call explained his pro-

America perspective:

I am pleased with the way my family is today, both in terms of financial and social status…In fact, if I die tomorrow, I have nothing to regret. In fact, I have a lot to thank America for. A lot to give credit to the 1975 event because that’s the mark that changed my life completely. And I think it’s for the better. But as you know, America is not a simple society…131

He continued talking about the citizenship process and the ways in which immigrants

have to work hard in order to succeed. For this first generation Vietnamese American

man, the loss of his homeland and separation from his family, which he poignantly shared

earlier in the interview, is made bearable by the tale of personal success and sense of

indebtedness to America. Thus, the “thank you America motif” we see in public may be

viewed as a collective gesture for Vietnamese Americans attempting to make sense of the

senselessness of war and the losses endured in its wake. Many of my respondents have

similar views about the US because they compare their lives to family or friends in

Vietnam and believe that they are the fortunate ones, the ones who left.

Profiles of the ones who left

131 2004.

The ones who left Vietnam carried with them memories of a country that ceased

to exist after 1975. Its capital toppled under the invading communist army and the victors

abruptly changed Saigon to City. More than thirty years later, many

Vietnamese refugees continue to hold on to the hope of return, but return to a homeland

free from communism. In a poem written by Lee Pham, a Vietnamese expatriate and

close friend of a Viet Fed board member, sentiments of return abound:

Thirty years later we are proud freedom seekers, Who braved the perilous jungles and mighty seas, Seeking asylum in oversea shelters And havens of happiness for refugees.

Thirty years later anger and hatred are still boiling, Blaming the communist aggressors and allied betrayers, For sowing sadness, aching and biting, In the hearts of Vietnamese country losers.

Thirty years later we solemnly murmur Motherland, with God's grace someday We will return and determine anyway, To build a new Vietnam, better and greater?132

Once Vietnamese who lost their nation entered the US as refugees, they must find ways

to carry on, to cope with their new lives. The participants in my study told their life

stories to me willingly, some with more flourish than others. They shared with me their

hopes of return to Vietnam, but they also expressed great concern over creating and

sustaining a strong sense of Vietnamese identity and culture in the US. In the following

four narratives, paraphrased, translated, and shortened from the life histories I gathered in

the study, I wish to show the multiple ways Vietnamese refugees think about the

132 From a poem by Lee Pham, circulated by email, “Thirty Years Later: A Tribute to the Memory of Thirty Years of National Shame.” 28 April 2005.

homeland, their lives in the US, as well as their views on community work. I do not mean

for these four narratives from members of the Viet Fed to stand in for the totality of first

generation experiences, but rather as illuminating examples of how some negotiate this

awkward concept of “refugee.” These four narratives help contextualize the lived

experiences and beliefs of Vietnamese refugees in the US.

133

I was born in Hue, in the central region, in 1933. I left Vietnam in January of 1991 because after the South fell, I was imprisoned from 1975 to 1985. After I was released at the end of 1985 I got help from the United States and came through “vien H-O” which is Humanitarian Operation.

When I was in Vietnam, I studied Law but did not finish my education. I joined the military and served for twenty-three years as

. I specialized in telecommunications. I can speak French and English, but my French is better. In 1956, I got married and we had twelve children. They are now living all over, one in France, two in Canada, two in Vietnam, some are here…four passed away…it’s normal to have many children in Vietnam. I almost resettled in France to join one of my children.

I came to San Diego in 1991, but I have been to the US before, in 1956 as a student when I studied in New Jersey for some time. But I resettled in San Diego in 1991 because of my wife, who came to the US before I did. Today I am retired, but I remain active in community work. I used to do all types of work though. I’ve been a salesman, I’ve worked for Goodwill, then I worked for the city doing outreach for environmental issues.

Right after I came to San Diego, I began participating in community work. Right away, so around 1992. First, I was chairman for the organization to free political prisoners in Vietnam. I have solicited money for “ from individuals and companies to send to the people in Vietnam. I used to have the position of Vice President of External Affairs of the Vietnamese Federation. I was a member of the party in Vietnam and we’ve continued our organization here in the US. I’ve been an advisor for many other organizations in the community and now I’m on the board of advisors for the Viet Fed. Another community activity I do is to write for the local newspapers, stories about the political situation in Vietnam.

133 2004. Interview was conducted in Vietnamese.

The most important issues for me are political and cultural because those two things work together. You cannot speak of the political without including the cultural. I have participated in many protests and I always feel a powerful sense of solidarity and pride in my community during those events. But it is not always necessary to protest. Sometimes there are other means of achieving a goal to get our issues recognized. And sometimes you just can’t go, you have to take care of business at home. I participate in community activities sometimes with my grandkids. The goals I have are first, to preserve and strengthen Vietnamese culture here, number two is to fight for freedom in Vietnam, number three, to expose the reality of the people’s plight in Vietnam, how they continue to suffer under the oppressive communist regime. We should work for Vietnam to realize the saying, “ [Prosperous people, strong nation].” Today over here, we are gaining an education in the US but it’s our responsibility to preserve our culture and heritage so that we can improve Vietnam. We need to remember, “You are Vietnamese” no matter how long you have been here. Even if you’ve lost your country, you should not lose your roots.

Vietnamese language is the most important thing to focus on with our youth and we can do it through the churches, temples, cultural centers, and organizations such as the Viet Fed. It doesn’t matter if you get your US citizenship, you should still keep your sense of identity by maintaining your language. That’s what our ministers should preach in church. I am Catholic and I think the Catholic organizations should take up more responsibility to teach the youth Vietnamese.

I have not been back to Vietnam and I won’t go back as long as the political regime is still communist. I am anticommunist. My activism in the US makes it unsafe for me to travel in Vietnam. I am not scared, but I will not go back there.

I was born down in the Delta in the city of , which is like

the capital of the Delta region. It was 1939. I obtained a B.A. from Singapore at the Southeast Asian Union College in Singapore. And then I went to Bangkok, Thailand for 3 years to take the Medical Technology and X-Ray Technology diploma.

I left Vietnam toward the end of April, 1975. The reason I left Vietnam was because the South was falling into Communist hands. I was with Americans so much and so they think that I might be in danger with the Communist coming so we evacuated out. I was married at that time and we had two daughters. They were able to leave, but not with us because we were not sure whether we can leave or not and as a precaution

134 Interview was conducted mostly in English.

we sent them a couple of days ahead of us in one of the evacuation planes. We landed in El Toro Marine Airbase. But then they bussed us to Camp Pendleton, but we stayed only one night. We were taken out because we belong to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which is a large organization and we have arrangements that they can take us all out to Loma Linda University.

Well, they took us to Loma Linda and in our group we have about 200 people. I was working with the authorities that were trying to relocate all the people there. I stayed there for about a week in Loma Linda helping them to relocate all the people. And then I came to San Diego We were able to go together. We had met up with our girls in Guam.

My wife was a nurse in Vietnam and when she first came here she went to special training to take the board exam for nursing. And she worked as a nurse in a hospital for a year or so. Then my wife decided that she doesn’t want to do nursing and she was a good cook, so we said why don’t we open a restaurant and see how it goes. So, we look in the paper and we saw a place, small place in North Park that they want to sell for ten thousand dollars. It was a Vietnamese restaurant, one of the first Vietnamese restaurants in town. It did well and we even moved to a better location in Mid-City.

At the same time, I was working at Paradise Valley Hospital as the Director of Material Management while my wife and the rest of the family run the restaurant. I would say that I’m a regular, middle class American. It is a lot different when I was Vietnam. Even though when I was in Vietnam I was an assistant administrator for a hospital, but at that time I receive the top salary of, equivalent to 75 dollars a month.

I was involved in the community for a long time. I don’t know how long it was, but shortly after I arrived here I started getting involved in the Vietnamese community. I was the first president of the Indochinese Chamber of Commerce here in San Diego. Now they change it to the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce. I was involved with the Vietnamese Federation for a long time. I was Vice President. I was the Chairman of the Board of Delegates and I worked in many other capacity with the community. When I moved my business into Mid-City, not only did I get involved in the Vietnamese community, but I’m involved in the community at large too. So I get involved with the Mid-City Redevelopment Corporation and I get involved with City Heights Business Improvement District, many other programs. I was on an advisory board for small businesses for the mayor of the city for six years. And I was on the advisory board for the Police Chief for a long time. So, a lot of involvement in the community.

My thinking is, the Vietnamese community is a group of people that came to this community. We need to understand the community here and we need to make them understand us. It is only true understanding hat we can have a good relationship. We can avoid a lot of misunderstanding.

I want the community to know that we come here, we contribute to the community, we don’t want the people to look at us as a group of refugees. In reality we are refugees, but we are a very industrious, hard-working group of people and we can do anything if we set our mind to do it. My main goal of my community work is to preserve the Vietnamese culture at the same time to have our community assimilate to the whole community.

I’ve been back to Vietnam once in 1999, just to bring my wife’s father’s body home. He died here and he wanted to be buried at home so we made arrangements to bring his body home so I accompanied him to go home. So, the whole trip is just about ten days. Take care of the funeral and everything and then we came back here. I haven’t been back there and I don’t think I will ever be back as long as the communist government is still there.

I was born on September 14, 1954, which was the year of the

migration of Vietnamese from North to South Vietnam. My family came from the north that year, from Hanoi. We’re a Catholic family that just could not live with the communists. I know it was hard for my family to leave because for many generations they have built their lives in Hanoi. But all I know is the South. I lived with my family in Saigon. There were ten of us children. One now resides in Germany and the rest are in San Diego. I would describe us as a very close-knit family.

I graduated from high school and then had three years of law school. I studied French and today I can speak it quite well. Sometimes I would throw in a French word when I speak English. In Vietnam, when one graduates from high school, one can take a test and enter law school. We left Vietnam on April 24, 1975 due to the communist invasion of South Vietnam. My uncle worked for the U.S.-South Vietnam military so we were able to evacuate by airplane. I was 20 years old at the time and did not realize that I would be going to the U.S. My uncle deceived me. At the time, I had a boyfriend in Vietnam and my family was worried that I would refuse to leave if they told me their intentions. I had no knowledge of English, no preparation for coming to the U.S.

We arrived in Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania in May of 1975. We only stayed one month in the refugee camp and then we were sponsored to San Diego. We made the decision to come to San Diego because of this opportunity that just opened for us.

Currently, I am a Health Coordinator for Union of Pan-Asian Communities (UPAC). I’ve been working for them since 1991. Prior to this position, I was a student teacher at Hoover High School teaching

135 2004, 2006. Interviews were conducted in Vietnamese primarily.

French. Prior to that, I was an elementary school teaching assistant. I got my Associate’s degree. Since I came to San Diego, I have been involved in the Vietnamese American community. First I started by volunteering with parents in Linda Vista at the daycare center. Then at Linda Vista Healthcare Clinic. I was teaching at the time, but wanted more. So I went to school to study Electronics/Technology at American Business School. I applied for a technician job at Gremlin Industries. And so I became a personal assistant for 2 years. I brought in many Vietnamese into electronic positions.

Then I went back into teaching for about a year. At that time, my boyfriend from Vietnam managed to escape by boat and come to the US. I found him through friends and we got married, had kids. I’ve been married since 1982 and we have two daughters, a senior at UCSD (21) and a junior at SDSU (20). My husband is in the landscaping business. He was a lawyer in Vietnam and came to the U.S. in 1981. My husband and children do not really participate in the activities that I do in the community but they are very supportive. Sometimes I cannot do too much because I have an elderly father to care for and I have to be sure to keep an eye on my girls’ education. But my girls are very good.

I started out volunteering at schools and clinics, then went to UPAC. I have always loved charity work. Now I work with the Vietnamese Federation on cultural and educational programs. The most important thing for me is to retain Vietnamese culture, because children who grow up here are becoming too American and forgetting their roots. It’s necessary to give them guidance, especially with language. I am not too concerned with politics, like the protests. They are a way for some people to voice their ideas and I have been to many of those before, but not too much anymore. I think we need people to focus on social issues, health, education. That’s how we can strengthen our future generations and maybe they will be the ones to go back to Vietnam and improve the situation.

I have only been back to Vietnam once, to close a chapter in my life. I probably will not go back there. Most of my family is here now. There are still people we have contact with and we help them out when we can, send money and presents during special occasion. But I cannot stand to go back and see how my countrymen are still poor and the country has not shown much progress. Maybe if things are better, and there’s no more communism, I would go back to visit often, maybe for vacation. I accept that my life is here now and my kids are Vietnamese American.

I was born in the North and moved South with my parents in 1954

when the communist took over Hanoi and North Vietnam. I came to the US in 1975 with my fiancée. We were evacuated by the helicopter the last minute before the fall of Saigon. We were lucky to get out. When we first arrived, we had the choice to go to several different refugee camps. We chose California because we knew that the good climate would be more suitable for new immigrants like us, you know Vietnamese. I happened to have a job offer from a sponsor who lived in Rancho Bernardo and it was within my technical skills.

I came here when I was 28 years old. We didn’t have relatives. Just me and my fiancée and a few months later she became my wife. We married in Rancho Bernardo. So it was quite some experience that the two of us we had to figure out how to survive then adapting to this new society.

I consider myself not a typical Vietnamese because I did go to school in New Zealand before 1975. I got 2 degrees, bachelors and masters, before I went back to Vietnam in 1972. So when the 1975 incident happened, I was more westernized and I feel that I’m better equipped than other Vietnamese at my age. I finished high school in 1965 and was selected into what they call Colombo Plan,137 meaning scholarship for high school graduates.

I was privileged with 2 English-speaking degrees. I was very well catered to when I got back. And in fact I got a top-notch job with the government. I worked in economic development and my boss was the Deputy Prime Minister. So, in 1972 I worked for the government until 1975 when the communist approached Saigon. I was rescued in the last minute by helicopter as I said in what the Americans call Operation “Frequent Wind.” The helicopter picked us up and transported us to a carrier in the Bien Dong, South China Sea. They dropped us off in one of the two bases in the Philippines, Clark Air Base and Subic Base. And then there was a military plane that took us to Midway Base in the Pacific Ocean and then from there to the United States.

In Midway we had a choice, between California and some other camp. We stayed [in Camp Pendleton] between May and like 2 or 3 months. It was a very boring time because we didn’t know what happen to our relative. We don’t know what the future is going to be, in terms of job and where we’re going to live, what kind of life we’re going to have, you

136 2004. Interview was conducted in English, with occasional Vietnamese. 137 The Colombo Plan originated in Colombo, Ceylon in 1950 for Commonwealth countries to achieve security, but its means were mainly economic assistance to underdeveloped countries in South and Southeast Asia. Original member countries were Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom but have since expanded to include Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaya, Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, the United States, Malaya, and Singapore.

know. I remember when I was in that helicopter flying out of Saigon, looking down, the smoke look very tragic, very sad, and I told myself and my fiancée, “Are we doing the right thing?” Because I was not convinced that we are losing our country. We are getting out for good. It’s very emotional and very stunned kind of moment. I did ask myself, “Am I doing the right thing here?” This look like I am deserting both my job and my country, and is it the right thing and the right moment to do it? I just can’t think that I can drop everything off and you know I didn’t feel it was the right thing to do at the time. Now looking back it was the right thing to do because some of my coworkers and friends uh they were not as fortunate as myself getting out of the country at the right moment. Some of them were sent to reeducation camp, meaning prison… So both my and my wife’s family, we left them and we didn’t know what happen to them and that’s why when we were in the camp we keep thinking about that and there’s no way to contact them. So it was a tough time.

While I was in the camp there’s a delegate from Canada who had an office inside the camp and he said “Listen refugees, Canada’s a big country and we need people, more people, especially skilled people with English-speaking degrees.” I happen to have an English-speaking degree, so I am qualified to be one of those they recruit. “If you would like to move to Canada we’re going to make it be easy for you. We would fly you to Canada right away, like tomorrow. We will help you to find jobs, because Canada needs skilled people.” And I almost took their offer because I thought “These darn Americans, I cannot trust them anymore, you know. They have abandoned us and why should I? I don’t have to need their help now? “

” They already failed us. And because of them, because of their policy, I’m like this. Not knowing about my loved ones, what happened to them. I always wanted to go to America, but not like this. As a refugee, you know.

When I first came here, I realized the kind of life I have is dual- faced, meaning part of, half of me is trying to survive here and then integrate into the mainstream. The other half, I still look back at Vietnam. But for me, politically I am very clear. I’ve never been back to Vietnam, even though I would love to go back to visit my birthplace and Hanoi. I left when I was six years old. I still remember Vinh Ha Long very vividly in my mind. That’s why when I left with my parents and I saw Vinh Ha Long at that time, that’s the most beautiful place I had ever seen in my life and I’ve seen many other places in the world—New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore. So, it’s not because I’m Vietnamese I am saying that part of my native country is beautiful. But I think I have an unbiased comparison.

For me, the problem between me and Hanoi’s still there, still valid. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t been back even though I’d love to be

back. Hopefully, I could do that before I die. That’s my dream, if you will, my resolution, whatever you want to call it.

*****

For these four individuals whose lives in pre-1975 Vietnam, migrations from

Vietnam, and experiences in the US were all different, social science literature often

groups them into the category of the South’s urban elite.138 Yet, even among the educated

urban elite, their approach to anticommunism and the Vietnamese American community

in the US are shaped by a range of experiences. Out of the four, was the

only veteran of South Vietnam’s armed forces. The other two male subjects,

and were civilian employees of government-related industries and

affiliated with Americans through their high levels of education and executive-level

occupations in Vietnam. My only female subject featured, had relatives

in the military.

I highlight these four narratives in order to show a variety of ways refugee

subjectivities are constituted at multiple sites, including the 1954 uprooting of North

Vietnamese Catholics into the South, subsequent journeys out of Vietnam in 1975 via

different first asylum camps in Southeast Asia where they were yet unable to absorb the

shock of leaving their homeland, or the government initiatives such as the Humanitarian

Operation program that sanctioned the migration of re-education camp survivors. In each

instance, the notion of being a refugee is structured not only by the state, but also by the

emotional attachment to their ancestral homes (e.g. or a

138 See Kelly 1977, Montero 1979, Portes and Rumbaut 1996, Rumbaut and Portes 2001, Takaki 1995, and Vo 2000b,

commitment to improving the homeland, and a strained desire to return. For my

participants, the strained relationship Vietnamese refugees have to their homeland is

enunciated best through their compassion for the suffering of their countrymen who

remain. Thus, the economic underdevelopment, political corruption of the government,

and the increasingly apparent contradictions between socialist ideals and capitalist

practices in their homeland help strengthen their moral high-ground as refugees fleeing

an oppressive regime. Thus, the injustices some feel they have suffered in the past are

coupled with a “pro-Vietnam”/pro-democracy cause in the present. Therefore, when they

express a desire to return, or a story about an actual return visit, my participants will

usually insert a critique of the Hanoi regime. For many Vietnamese refugees, then, the

problem with Hanoi is still relevant.

Sentiment

One of the ways anticommunism has functioned within the space of the

Vietnamese Federation meetings is as a portal, an entrée, into a collective remembering

of South Vietnamese lives, places, and intangible sentiments tied to them. For example,

in the summer of 2005, then Prime Minister of Vietnam, came to the US

for a meeting with President George W. Bush amidst protest from many groups in

various Vietnamese American communities. This was a hot topic at our weekly meetings

during the mealtime ritual. At one of those meetings a Viet Fed member turned towards

another and commented that he thought is was a shame that someone born in the South

and possessing so much potential should fall into the Communist Party so willingly. The

other member responded that is Russian-educated, as though that should

explain his socialist tendencies. Everyone else seemed to quietly agree. The conversation

then turned into a swapping of stories about personal experiences with post-1975

Vietnam government reforms such as [Renovation policy] and

[New Economic Zones] which several members used to demonstrate how the

political system, education, and economy became bankrupt after the communist

takeover.139 From narratives about friends who lost family fortunes and land to more

personal tales of struggling to escape Vietnam, the conference room was awash in

recollections about a time and place that still haunts the elders’ lives. One member, a

woman in her fifties, shared a story about her intent to use rat poison on herself and her

younger siblings during the hours when news of North Vietnam’s forces entering Saigon

came to her family. “I would have rather died and taken all of them with me than let the

communists seize everything. I heard about what they were doing to southerners they

called ‘traitors.’”140 Others present at the meeting nodded in mutual sympathy and

understanding. Not everyone at the meeting actually experienced life under Vietnamese

communism having left the country promptly after the “Fall of Saigon” in 1975, but all

could relate through their connections to loved ones and friends who had. I was the only

one in the room who had no direct recollections of South Vietnam, and I knew

instinctively that these memories were called upon partly for my benefit. Except for my

new husband, I was the only second generation Vietnamese American there and some of

the “uncles” nodded in my direction when telling about their stories of suffering. I felt the

139 is the set of new economic reforms instituted by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1986 in which they abandoned the older policies of collectivizing agriculture and industry in favor of permitting free-market enterprises into Vietnam. were previously undeveloped areas in Vietnam where the new Socialist government sent former Republic of Vietnam leaders to work after 1975. 140 Field notes. 21 July 2005. Comments are translated from Vietnamese by author.

burden of being privy to such stories, as an ethnographer who must then translate their

meanings to an academic audience and as a “youth” who must then integrate this

knowledge into my future work with the community. Even while the food made the post-

meeting chats pleasurable for me, I sometimes felt pained by these expectations, worried

that I would ultimately fail in both capacities. Why I keep coming back, then, must have

something to do with the lure of food.

Food was an important, though never acknowledged as such, aspect of the weekly

meetings. Immediately after the formal business discussions, members who remained

share an informal meal prepared by the president’s wife.141 She also catered for many

Viet Fed events, particularly the inauguration ceremony and the feast. Despite the

relative invisibility and marginality of women in leadership positions in the Viet Fed,

their behind-the-scenes work has been crucial for sustaining the organization through the

years. During my two terms on the BoD I noted that women’s labor was nowhere more

apparent than in the actual sustenance prepared by the president’s wife. According to

Angie Yoonkyung Chung in her study of Koreatown organizations, “Cooking has

become one critical way in which 1st generation and 1.5 generation women have made

their mark on organization-building processes, particularly in an ethnic culture where

food is central to bringing together members for social, political, religious, and cultural

occasions.”142 Interestingly, in her assessment of 1.5 and 2nd generation organizations,

Chung contrasts the “Korean-style gatherings” of one organization that included many

first generation members with a 2nd generation organization that was more

141 The president of the Viet Fed and his wife once owned a Vietnamese restaurant in San Diego and her culinary skills are well-known and appreciated in the Vietnamese American community here. 142 Chung 2001: 316.

“Americanized” and businesslike. In this younger organization, members did not rely on

the social space called into being by sharing food since everyone brought their own sack

lunches. Chung’s observations correlates with my assessment of the “Vietnamese way”

of conducting meetings that elders upheld, which was made obsolete once the BoD

turned over to 1.5 generation leadership after my last term. I attended several meetings

with the new board since the 2006 turnover and noticed the “unnecessary” mealtime was

no longer a part of meeting rituals.143 During several conversations with the new

president, a man in his mid-thirties, he explained to me that his goal for higher efficiency

and a more business-like environment. I mourned the disappearance of the “Vietnamese

way” of doing community work on numerous occasions when my husband, my sister and

I would talk about the changing face of the Viet Fed.

For first generation members I worked with, the mealtime ritual seemed to open

up a pleasant social site for affective structures of community work to emerge. If,

following Raymond Williams’ multivalent interpretation of culture, we take culture to

mean both a process of whole ways of life and the inner process of intellectual life, it is

plausible to discuss anticommunism as a structure of feeling defining a distinct

Vietnamese diasporic culture. From the silent haunting of refugee memories in the home

to the public scripting of those memories at community events, the sense of community

and identity are very much structured by affect and certainly traverses everyday life as

well as the intellectual and artistic life of Vietnamese Americans. This structure of feeling

is spontaneous, unrehearsed, and most apparent to me during the mealtime ritual at the

143 The term “unnecessary” was used by the new Viet Fed president (2006-2008) to describe the old e- board’s practice of eating in the conference room.

Viet Fed meetings. During this hour, members were much more at ease and brought up

all kinds of stories. That is, members shared with each other stories about their families,

gossip about others in the community, jokes, and advice/ideas on a range of topics from

health to hobbies. At mealtime, the atmosphere of the conference room (equipped with a

microwave oven and disposable dinnerware) was relaxed and congenial. While I initially

dreaded the long meetings in the beginning of my field work, I quickly came to enjoy the

meetings precisely because of the mealtime when both my appetite and my curiosity

about these men and women as real, relatable people (not community leaders) would be

filled.

In an ethnographic study of everyday life in a middle-class Indian American

community, Keya Ganguly discusses the meaningful role of food and the practice of food

consumption. She contrasts immigrant Indian and western “practices of social nicety” or

being polite—that is, the Indian practice is to accept and offer food and hospitality while

the western practice is “to listen to one’s interlocutor, not to talk all at once, to maintain

established boundaries of space between persons, and so on.”144 Ganguly explains that

the sensory relationship differs remarkably because western culture privileges the

individual (specifically, the individual’s sense of seeing, hearing, and speaking) while

Indian immigrant life privileges the collective as demonstrated through cooking and

eating at weekend feasts.

Culinary activity functions as a sort of ‘technique of nearness,’ gathering up into present space the magic of the past and permitting the imagination of ideas, objects, and events that are no longer available or repeatable

144 Ganguly 2001: 135-6.

except in a relay through food matters. Eating well and in the company of others, then, is about not paradise lost but paradise regained.145

Following Bordieu and de Certeau’s work on everyday life and the place of food in

French culture, Ganguly offers a reading of the collective eating ritual of Indian

immigrants as a way to reflect on their anxieties with negotiating American bourgeois

life.

I find this work useful for understanding how such a seemingly mundane act as

eating served an important function at the Viet Fed weekly meetings. More than just a

practical task for meeting-goers after a long day at work followed by a long meeting, the

mealtime ritual provided a social space that bridged the awkwardness of meeting as

organization associates to gathering as friends (and family). The Vietnamese food itself

evoked feelings associated with South Vietnamese home-cooking and comfort food. The

president’s wife usually prepared several of her specialties that varied each week such as

[rice porridge] and [salad], [noodle soup], and [curry].

In this space the gender roles were made most apparent as men wait to be served

by the two female members regularly in attendance. Even while the president brought the

food—obviously a sign of hospitality he took upon himself as the “man of the house,” so

to speak—he started off the mealtime with serving himself and inviting others to partake

of the food. Following his cue, the two women (one an elder in her late seventies and the

other a woman in her fifties) usually got up and served the food to the men sitting around

the conference table. I usually helped them, feeling like an unnecessary fixture in the

corner most of the time anyway. I often felt at a lost as to how to conduct myself in these

145 Ibid.

circumstances. While I am obviously younger than the other members, I also held the

position of vice president for the last term which prompted more respectful treatment

than some other elders received. I was expected to perform various brokering roles with

youth and the American mainstream, and the elders often made exceptions for my not

fully understanding etiquette or formalities.

One of the women who regularly attended meetings explained to me how she

views her role in the Viet Fed, “

[I am not interested in political issues. Politics is very complicated. I’ll

leave that to the men…My work focuses on social and cultural issues.] This

explanation was given to me after I asked for her views on Vietnamese American

community politics, particularly why anticommunism continues to be a driving force

behind the events I have witnessed. Despite having just energetically condemned the

Socialist Republic of Vietnam and sharing with me her suspicions of communist

infiltrators in the community during the course of our three hour interview, she backed

away from my direct question concerning politics, retreating to the safety of her “social

and cultural” work. I initially thought it odd that she would choose to characterize her

work as only social and cultural when a large part of her concerns for the Vietnamese

American community revolved around the deeply politicized issues of “communist

infiltration” and the “loss” of subsequent generations of Vietnamese Americans to

socialist, leftist politics. Her full-time job is in the area of healthcare, so she serves the

146 2004.

Viet Fed as the health representative. During our interview, we spent a great deal of time

chit-chatting about the flag resolution, what is at stake in recognizing only the South

Vietnam flag as the symbol of Vietnamese Americans, as well as various protests and

demonstrations going on in different Vietnamese American communities across the US. I

thought our conversation focused heavily on politics—whether we choose to label it as

politics of exile, the homeland, or the community.

answers actually reflects the contradictions of Vietnamese American

community and subjectivity that cannot be easily folded into narratives about “culture” or

“politics” alone, but must necessarily encompass and interrogate both simultaneously.

The difficulty which has with the notion of “politics”—as an isolated practice

for the men in her community—suggests that we need to redefine “politics” to encompass

the cultural and social practices that create meaning for Vietnamese Americans. So too,

“culture” needs to account for the historical and political trajectories that define the limits

of a Vietnamese American diaspora. Furthermore, re-conceptualizing politics and culture

in this way also gives due importance to women’s work, particularly first generation

immigrant women who tend to carry out the invisible labor that helps sustain their male

counterparts in their public roles as community leaders.

Beyond victimization (which is a community discourse that demands retribution

as well as reparation) and agency (which is too simplistic a formulation that considers

Vietnamese Americans as heroic in their struggle to contest national erasure of their

history), I wish to approach anticommunism as a continually shifting discursive terrain

that enables as much as it delimits first (and even subsequent) generation Vietnamese

Americans in their efforts to forge meaningful relationships in diaspora. In the meeting

space, I argue that anticommunism has many different functions, including as a way to

recollect stories of a shared (imagined) past in South Vietnam, as a means to silence

dissent, as a means of mobilizing and energizing those doing volunteer work, and as a

means of making sense of their struggles as refugees in the US. In the following chapter I

examine the work of mourning and remembrance in for Vietnamese Americans during

the annual “Black April” commemoration to illuminate how anticommunism functions as

a “technology of memory.”