Week 9_Daphne Lun_ASA150E

In Schlund-Vials’ book “War, Genocide, and Justice”, chapter 4 mainly discusses the impact of praCh’s Cambodian-American rap music on the transgenerational and transnational healing of Cambodian and Cambodian-American people. This connects with the issues discussed in class since there is a fine line between reliving the past through the identity of our parents and/or grandparents and establishing a new narrative and identity as Asian Americans. praCh, specifically, uses rap music to connect the old history and narrative to younger generations as a way to inform and establish a method of healing so a sense of self can be established. In understanding the lives and perspectives of Cambodian-Americans today, I can understand how one cannot heal from the trauma of the past if there is not adequate recognition and education of the truth of the war and genocide. I have had conversations with African Americans that believe that instead of relearning African American history, where civil rights and MLK are repeatedly acknowledged, contemporary issues need to be acknowledged and we need to set initiatives to actually promote change, not just talk about the situation we need to change from. The person I was talking to assumed Asian Americans would assume the same for our diaspora, but I reminded her that our wide range of histories have not been acknowledged by the government or school textbooks yet. Without the education of the truth, Asian Americans cannot move on and focus on how to move past our injustices. Even though I acknowledge the Asian diaspora is broad and so different, are we as a race ready to move onto a new narrative of healing if we do not have proper acknowledgement of our history? Attached is a picture of a Taiwanese textbook on the Japanization movement. I think this is an important image because the Asian diaspora is so complex and the American education system likes to clump all ethnicities together, which fails to recognize the intricacies within our diaspora.

Sneider, D. (2019, March 6). Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia. Retrieved from https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00703/divided-memories-history-textbooks-and-the-wars-in-asia.html