Dao Strom’s Grass Roof, Tin Roof as Settler Refugee Critique

Abstract

Dao Strom’s Grass Roof, Tin Roof as Settler Refugee Critique Michele Janette (bio) As the fiftieth anniversary of the “Fall of Saigon” approaches, and as the global displacement of peoples has persisted and indeed accelerated during these past five decades, two new developments in Asian American and refugee studies have emerged to help us, in the words of Aimee Bahng, “stay in the game and face the end times ethically” (Aimee Bahng and Thea Nagle). Scholars such as Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Candace Fujikane, Jonathan Okamura, Quynh Nhu Le, Dean Saranillio, Juliana Hu Pegues, and Iyko Day have begun to map the terrain of what Gandhi calls the “distinct yet overlapping modalities of refugee and Indigenous displacement, shaped by entangled histories of war, imperialism, settler colonialism, and US military violence” (2). Concurrently, the insights of Vietnamese diasporic artists and scholars who write from and through the expertise of refugees themselves have become increasingly important to navigating the complex, diasporic, transnational, and migratory futures that face us all. Scholars such as YӃn Lê Espiritu, Mimi Thi Nguyen, Long Bui, Catherine Fung, Marguerite Nguyen, Lan Duong, Ma Vang, and Viet Thanh Nguyen as well as writers and language artists such as Monique Truong, Bao Phi, Aimee Phan, Beth Nguyen, Lan Cao, and—again, this time in his role as Pulitzer Prize–winning fiction writer—Viet Thanh Nguyen, have proffered paradigm shifts in understanding refugees not as helpless victims in need of rescue by mighty nation-states, but as astute yet insufficiently recognized observers and critics of geopolitical and social dynamics who themselves understand the offer of refuge itself not as simple humanitarian generosity but also as a self-aggrandizing global alibi for continuing harm. Writer and musician Dao Strom has not, to date, been analyzed in relation to these critical currents, but I argue here that her 2003 [End Page 399] novel, Grass Roof, Tin Roof (GRTR), which predates much of the better-known work of the above scholars and writers, proleptically offers similar refashioning of the conventional refugee figure and interrogates settled narratives of western refuge and opportunity, enacting alternative engagements and epistemologies possible through critical refugee art. It does so in part through its depiction of refugee characters themselves, including primary narrator April, her brother Thien, and their mother, Tran. April, Thien, and Tran are part of the 1975 refugee exodus from Vietnam, spending several months in refugee camps in both Guam and California. In these ways, Strom’s narrative matches the outlines of many Vietnamese refugee stories. The family’s resettlement in California, however, is not the typical or familiar story of church sponsorships and Vietnamese kinship communities. April’s family does not leave Camp Pendleton for any “Little Saigon” enclave, nor is her citizenship tracked along the path of sponsorship by any church or blood relative. Instead, Tran marries a white immigrant from Denmark, Hus, and the blended family settles in the Sacramento area of California, where a third child is born: Beth. All of these plot points and characters are based on the author’s own family story. Strom fashions her family’s experiences into the interwoven and often internally fragmented stories that comprise Grass Roof, Tin Roof, with most chapters beginning with a first-person recollection from the point of view of April, who is based on Strom herself, and then continuing in third person, often nonlinear narratives focalized through the point of view of each family member: mother Tran, stepfather Hus, April, brother Thien, and sister Beth. Through the parts of the novel that offer a bildungsroman of refugee children April and Thien, Strom refashions the refugee figure to emphasize critical acumen and creative collaboration; through the parts of the novel that are focalized through stepfather Hus, Strom deconstructs white settler nostalgia and mythologies. Critical Refugee Refashioning Mainstream media and popular films have historically represented refugees anonymously, en masse, and voicelessly. Vietnamese refugees [End Page 400] of the 1970s in particular were iconically depicted as “boat people,” first crowded into overflowing boats seeking haven on the South China Sea, and then suffering in refugee camps, overwhelmed and under-resourced. They were “made recognizable,” as Marguerite Nguyen and Catherine Fung note, “by common signifiers...