This week, we finished Thi Bui’s graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do. Based on her memoir, we did some more interactive reading and investigated more thoroughly why Bui’s memoir juxtaposes the American perception of Vietnamese/Vietnamese Americans and, at large, Asian/ Asian Americans and refugees by examining influential media such as documentaries and photographs. Namely, we watched the introduction of Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s documentary, The Vietnam War, and looked at famous “Vietnam War” photographs to examine how these artists have urged Vietnamese/Asian bodies to be pitied and American veterans to be honored and sympathized. By doing so, these artists inevitably valorize American values such as patriotism by portraying their subjects in an individualistic manner that emphasizes, if not, dramatize their representation.
In response to these influential pieces, Bui’s memoir is an attempt to recognize that Vietnamese people are not just victims but are human beings who are resilient. Bui’s memoir is not a reimagining but a disruption in the American cultural production that convinces that Vietnamese people and/or refugees have stories that are not just as complex as the American story but integral within the U.S. narrative; her story is the reconciling of generational trauma that is made by the consequences of war.
Although Bui’s is an excellent disruption within the American discourse, there are problems in which her memoir does ascribe to American values simply because of the medium she is writing in, the autobiography/memoir. The autobiography is innately an individualistic piece that invites American exceptionalism, which in some ways, can encourage the perpetual romanticizing/fetishization/victimizing of the Asian body. In other words, Bui’s influence is susceptible to American exceptional culture because of the genre she is writing in. Despite this, Bui’s project is an invitation to reimagine Vietnamese American bodies, which compelled us to examine other artists that do something similar.
In contrast to the photographs produced during the “Vietnam War,” we look at some of An-My Lé’s photographs as a way to see how photography as a medium can reimagine Vietnamese American bodies. Her use of a wide scope does not focalize the subject but instead portrays her subjects to be homogenous with their environment. In doing so, Lé’s photography deconstructs and criticizes American cultural depictions of war and the Vietnamese bodies in order to reimagine Vietnamese subjects to be not a part of the American nationalistic and militaristic agenda.
In order to bring this all together, we ended up having before and after drawings of our understanding of the “Vietnam War” to imagine and re-imagine our conceptions of the “Vietnam War.” Next week, we’ll be reading the introduction and first chapter of Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America. (The reading be found in the Google Drive) Have a great weekend!
P.S. These are some of the photos that we examined and some drawings that everyone did! To check out other resources like An-My Lé's website and some of the resources I used, I'll be attaching them below. Other works cited can be found on the Google Slide of Friday's meeting (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1db8uAhO-yOWqrlcqN6zC2LorVLtNtzS-ycCivhY372Y/edit?usp=sharing):
An-My Lé's website - https://anmyle.com/
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary of the Vietnam War - On Amazon
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