An is torn between two worlds, between America and Vietnam. Vietnam his
birth place and hometown and America,
his home where he belongs. Andrew feels
out of place in Vietnam, since by returning to Vietnam Andrew was hoping to see
his hometown as it was before where the people and the country was at its best.
By returning to Vietnam, An hoped to experience
and feel the same warmth and kindness that he so much cherished
and remembered after all these years. However, An soon learned that everything
he remembered from the past had faded
away, and nothing remained from the old days. The country had changed, during his stay in Vietnam An was bombarded with needy people asking him
for help because many of Vietnam’s citizens were living below poverty line.
People didn’t have jobs and couldn’t
live since they had no income to make a living.
While he was in Vietnam, An was disappointed from
his trip because everyone and everything around him was not what it used to be.
He felt alienated and lost which made him see that everything that he cherished
was gone. People were very selfish and only cared about themselves and their
happiness. People only cared about money and wealth, nothing else mattered to
them. An was surprised to see the prevalence
of prostitution and robbery. People were blinded by money that they lost their sense of order and
morality to a point where they cheated
and robbed not only their friends but family members as well.
An was disappointed and felt sad that everything
that he remembered from his childhood had faded away, nothing was left for him
to hold onto. During his stay in Vietnam An detached himself from his
people and ancestral homeland. The more he stayed there the more he
became convinced that he didn’t belong there that he was destined to live in
America. That his future was in America, the place he calls home.
By Elina
It must be a strange feeling--To have been born Vietnamese, or any native to any country, grow up elsewhere, and not be able to identify as part of your country of origin. What's more, he had the difficulty of assimilating in American culture, where he wasn't welcomed. It's a huge step for An to be able to find a place to call home, even though he still is not completely welcomed. It's as if he had to make a place for himself, both in America and in Vietnam.
ReplyDelete-Grace
Because Andrew travels to Vietnam with the intention of 'getting back to his roots', throughout our study of Catfish and Mandala, I think that I wanted to believe that he ideally found what he was looking for. In a way, he did, but what this entry reminds me is that, bluntly speaking, Andrew actually found a lot of disappointment when he returned to Vietnam. The selfishness, the immorality, and the cheating you mentioned that he continously encountered actually did prevent him from making the connection that he was ideally looking for. On the other hand, I think we should also consider Andrew a kind of unique narrator in the fact that his situation as a Vietnamese-American and the kind of issues he was deliberately focusing on affected what he chose to see in Vietnam and what he didn't. Other travelers to Vietnam might not report the same unpleasantness. Still, I think these observations are important to be realistic about the story.
ReplyDelete- Casey
It's all about perspective. From the perspective of the panhandlers, they are not greedy. It is difficult to condemn someone for being greedy when they have relatively nothing. Their actions may at times be unethical, but they always come from a place of having a distinct lack of the quality of life and resources Americans and other countries enjoy. An indicates that he thinks of the beggars as greedy, but this assessment is not entirely fair, and is heavily colored by his American viewpoint, where this kind of behavior is looked down upon. However, the economic conditions in the United States are decidedly different than they are in Vietnam.
ReplyDelete- Gregory