Professor Valverde’s book, Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora, focuses on the transnational connection between Vietnamese American diaspora and Vietnamese nationals living overseas in Vietnam. Chapter 4 “Defying and Redefining Vietnamese Diasporic Art and Media as seen through Chau Huynh's Creations,” specifically stood out to me, because it is ironically prevalent in today’s issues. Chau Huynh presents her exhibits, but the media has shed a negative light on her work and has misinterpreted it as communist propaganda. Even though art is open to multiple interpretations and perspectives, Chau’s artwork was disregarded as anything but offensive, because the media portrays her as pro-communist.
The controversy of Chau’s artwork is one of many examples where the media have curated associations of communism with Vietnamese history. It reminds me of a previous discussion we had in class in which history has multiple truths and perspectives. Instead of listening to one side of the story and quickly formulating an opinion based on one perspective, we must try to gather different insights to understand the full picture of history. Disagreement, judgement, and tension arose from this misinterpretations and miscommunication, but we can resolve that by ensuring marginalized stories and experiences are no longer silenced.
Question: Is there still tension between the Vietnamese and the U.S? How has their relationship changed since the war?
Source for image: http://dqmailart.blogspot.com/2017/01/chau-huynh-024.html
Citation: Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline. Transnationalizing Viet Nam: COmmunity, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora, 2012.
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