"Viet Kieu"

It's always bothered me hearing the word "Viet Kieu". It has so many negative connotations, one of them being: traitor. I've learned how to swallow it though. I know many people say it casually nowadays without thinking about those sort of things but I can't help cringe a bit inside when I hear it.

When I went to the South last week, we got the chance to visit the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. I thought, yaaay, coool, another museum but I left thinking, "fuck, us Americans are horrible". Granted that the museum was extremely one-sided, I couldn't deny the pictures either. The things that Americans have done are really fucked up. Period. But it put me in a really weird position. I know that I wouldn't be in the U.S. or even looking at these photos if it wasn't for the war. Being Vietnamese American, can I still be considered the same as a white American photographed torturing a Vietnamese soldier? I'm in this liminal space where I'm not truly Vietnamese from Vietnam or truly "American". And furthermore, I'm a product of the Vietnam War. If it never happened, I wouldn't even be where I am right now. So, although I felt a sense of guilt, I also felt like that guilt was misplaced. I dont know.

What heightened my feelings of sadness and guilt were the pictures of Agent Orange victims. When I saw those pictures, it made me think about what the people working at Thanh Xuan must think of us Americans. My mind kept playing back to that moment when one of the nurses stopped his conversation with me to say "Nguoi Viet Kieu ah?" (Are you a Viet-Kieu). When I replied yes, he glared at me with the most disgust I've ever seen. So when I saw these pictures of Agent Orange victims, I wondered if Thanh Xuan people think of me as this traitor, or as this Vietnamese American trying to redeem herself. When people talk about white guilt, I wonder if there's a such thing as "Viet-Kieu" guilt. I know for sure that I came to Thanh Xuan to try and give back to Vietnam, which was going to nurture me in so many ways for the next few months. Never did I make that connection between the Vietnam War, Americans, and myself until now. But the War Remnants Museum definitely put a face to the word "Viet Kieu" for me. It made me think about how I'm positioned in this world and how trapped I often feel.

But nonetheless, I can't say that I would've never encountered these conflicting feelings. I guess you can say its all part of the process of being hear in Vietnam as a Vietnamese Americans. There's just some things we gotta face when we go back to our homeland.