Abstract
<p><em>After the Vietnam War, approximately 100,000 mixed race children between Vietnamese women and American soldiers, who are called Amerasian, were born. The Vietnamese Communists fought against the US, and Amerasians who were part Americans became the enemy of the Vietnamese. Amerasians were raised fatherless in patriarchal society where the presence of the father was essential to one’s social status. They were taunted by their lack of the father. Vietnamese women who had children with Americans were regarded as prostitutes, and Amerasians were looked down by the Vietnamese as the children of prostitute. Many reasons combined, Amerasians were mistreated in post-Vietnam War society, and humiliated as “bui doi</em><em>,</em><em>” the dust of life. </em></p><em>This paper will explore Vietnamese Amerasians’ experiences of war, loss of home and father, diaspora, and trauma by reading Kien Nguyen’s autobiography. The home functions in the novel as the symbol of the family’s destiny. Nguyen’s trauma of postwar experiences was augmented every time he was uprooted from his home. By tracing the changes of Nguyen’s home, we will understand the transition of his life. The US was his last home after the diaspora from Vietnam, and I will examine if the US really healed his trauma of the war.</em>
Highlights
The involvement of the United States of America in the Vietnam War generated various sociopolitical problems in Vietnam such as antipathy between the Communist Vietnamese and the anti-Communist ones, the destruction of the nation, political turmoil, economic devastation, etc
The Vietnamese Communists fought against the US, and Amerasians who were part Americans became the enemy of the Vietnamese
The US was his last home after the diaspora from Vietnam, and I will examine if the US really healed his trauma of the war
Summary
The involvement of the United States of America (hereafter the US) in the Vietnam War generated various sociopolitical problems in Vietnam such as antipathy between the Communist Vietnamese and the anti-Communist ones, the destruction of the nation, political turmoil, economic devastation, etc. Trin Yarborough reports that approximately 100,000 Amerasians were born during the Vietnam War (x) They are called “bui doi,” meaning the dust of life. When France was defeated in Indochina War and needed to withdraw from Vietnam, these mixed children of Vietnamese mother and French father became an issue. Amerasians from the Vietnam War had the totally different path from the mixed race children of French fathers. In postwar Vietnam, Amerasians symbolized the trauma of war for the Vietnamese They were hated and pushed to the fringe of Vietnamese society. Their mothers were discriminated against in Vietnam as women who bore the offspring of enemy Americans. I will analyze the two levels of diaspora Nguyen underwent, and examine how the loss of home deepened his trauma of war
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