Living Without Quê

Abstract

In existing scholarship, the formation of the Vietnamese Diaspora is often described as a result of the Second Indochina War. In this essay I examine other national and international historical events, such as the Vietnamese government's persecution of ethnic Chinese, the Cold War and French colonization of Vietnam, that contributed to the internal multiplicity and diversity of the Vietnamese Diaspora. Reading Thuận's novel Chinatown within the theoretical framework of freedom, I argue that a centuries-long history of political negotiation between Vietnam and international actors such as China and France has resulted in the oppression, internal exile and displacement of not only Vietnamese people, but also ethnic Chinese. Through an analysis of the relationship between the Vietnamese narrator and her ethnic Chinese husband, I reflect on the difficulties and potential of diasporic subjects to imagine a different kind of freedom that can challenge the different power dynamics regulating their life in both Vietnam and in the diaspora.