Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Masunaga - Week 10

In Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde's chapter, Vietnamese Diaspora Revisited, Valverde highlights the beating of Phuong Ho by San Jose police officers and how a miscommunication and police brutality reached Vietnam.  Information that not only outraged Vietnamese Americans but also was featured in Vietnamese news outlets and prompted the Vietnamese Government to take action. The interconnectedness between Vietnamese in America and in Vietnam has rapidly developed with telecommunications advancements. The internet and the role it plays in anticommunist rhetoric is interesting as well. Even in Vietnam when the government saw the internet as a threat to their authority, they could not stop the rapid exchange of information. The existence and persistence of the anticommunist sentiment in the US by Vietnamese Americans is interesting to learn about. The connections that they have with Vietnamese in Vietnam through the internet via forums was interesting to learn about as well.

I wonder if the other forms of connectedness, like humanitarian work, is more potent in that there are actual people providing services to communities in Vietnam.  The development of such projects set up by Vietnamese populations overseas would be interesting to read about in how this disaporic community relates to their homeland and the dynamics of services they provide. I know, from the reading and class discussion, that the question of authenticity is brought about with different disaporic Vietnamese people return to Vietnam. How do such questions or inquires of authenticity play into how they view themselves in connection to Vietnam?

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