Gablenz 1

Adieu Saïgon: Exploring Identities and Images of Homes Among Vietnamese Québécois

Neil G. Gablenz The State University of New York at Buffalo

Between 2009-2010, a new Québécoise writer astounded readers and critics alike with her breakout novel Ru. This autofiction presented as a memoir composed of non-linear vignettes tells the story of a former Vietnamese refugee, her journey to Québec with her family, and the birth of her sons in Québec which leads her to critically examine her own identity. She does not want her sons to be ignorant of their Vietnamese heritage, but she also does not want them to differentiate or Gablenz 2 separate themselves from the native and non-native Québécois around them. After all, this woman considers Québec her home— she has Québécois friends, Québécois lovers, and Québécois children. When she has the opportunity to permanently relocate to , she ultimately returns to Montréal. This, of course, does not suggest that she no longer considers herself Vietnamese, it simply demonstrates that she considers herself, to a certain extent, Québécoise as well. The story of the protagonist in Ru is not an unusual one. Many former immigrants and refugees from Vietnam have been faced with such situations since their arrival in Québec following the end of the Vietnam War and the subsequent reunification of the country as a socialist republic governed by an oppressive regime of self-proclaimed communists. As populations of ethnic Vietnamese residents in Québec grew in numbers between the 1980s and the early 2000s, Québécois anthropologists have taken an interest in studying this emerging ethnic group and how they go about their lives as exiles from their native country. These Vietnamese are called Viet Kieu in their language, which translates to “,” and Louis-Jacques Dorais has spent at least two decades studying and interviewing Viet Gablenz 3

Kieu living predominately in Montréal, Québec. In a 1998 study conducted with Chan Kwok Bun, Dorais interrogates identities and how these Viet Kieu construct them, ultimately attempting to determine if the (ethnocultural) Vietnamese residing in Québec see themselves as being Vietnamese, Québécois, both, or neither. This paper will juxtapose Dorais’ ethnography on Viet Kieu populations in Québec with two works of (auto)fiction written by former refugees from Vietnam—D’ivoire et d’opium by Bach Mai (1985) and the aforementioned Ru by Kim Thúy (2009)—in order to discover not only how these Vietnamese or ethnocultural Vietnamese residents of Québec perceive themselves, but also what or where they consider their “home.”

Setting the Scene: Vietnamese in Québec

Earlier ethnographic studies on Vietnamese Québécois show that in 2001, 28,310 residents of Québec reported being of Vietnamese origin or extraction, constituting approximately 18.7% of 151,410 Vietnamese (citizens or nationals who reported being of Vietnamese origin or extraction) nationwide. More than 90% of Vietnamese Québécois lived in Gablenz 4

Greater Montréal, although much smaller populations could also be found in Québec City, Gatineau, and Sherbrooke (Dorais, 2004; Statistics , 2001). Fifteen years later, we see that both the Vietnamese Canadian and Vietnamese Québécois populations are growing considerably and steadily. The most recent census of the Canadian population conducted in 2016 reports that 240,615 Vietnamese Canadians now live in Canada. This is a 159% increase from 2001. Of this number, 43,080 Vietnamese Canadians (17.9%) report that they reside within the province of Québec, indicating a Vietnamese Québécois population growth of 152% between 2001-2016. Even though we see that Vietnamese Québécois in 2016 constitute a smaller percentage of Vietnamese Canadians nationwide, the rate of growth for these two populations are similar. Also similar between 2001- 2016 are the geographic locations of Vietnamese Québécois populations. According to the 2016 census data, 38,660 Vietnamese Québécois (89.7%) live in Greater Montréal, although smaller concentrations of Vietnamese Québécois are also found in Québec City (1,830, 4.2%), Gatineau (840, 1.9%), Sherbrooke (385, 0.9%), and Trois-Rivières (130, 0.3%) (, 2017). Gablenz 5

Although the majority of Vietnamese arrived in Québec as political refugees between 1975-1981, a few college-aged Vietnamese nationals were already present in Québec as early as 1950. Dorais (2004) calls these early immigrants the “first wave” of Vietnamese . These Vietnamese nationals entered the country on student visas for university studies in engineering or applied sciences. Because French was their second language rather than English, these college-aged Vietnamese enrolled in Québec’s francophone universities. They were supposed to return to French Indochina at the end of their studies, but many managed to stay in Canada, finding work either as consulting engineers, university professors, or professionals working for the government. These nationals were primarily male; therefore, those who did not find a Vietnamese wife typically married local women. In 1974, approximately 1,500 students and former students of Vietnamese origin were living in Canada, and at least 1,100 (73.3%) were residents of the province of Québec. They managed and ran their own ethnic associations, owned a few ethnic businesses, and organized public celebrations for ethnic festive celebrations such as Têt (Lunar New Year) (Chan & Dorais, 1998). Gablenz 6

The Vietnamese population in Québec increased substantially between 1975-1981. After the communists conquered the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in April 1975 and created the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in which they assumed all political power, as many as 7,700 political refugees from South Vietnam eventually arrived in Canada through United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) resettlement camps in neighboring southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, Japan, the Philippines, and Singapore). Of this group, roughly 5,050 refugees (65%) either settled or were settled in Québec. In this second wave of immigration between 1975-1978, the majority of refugees were anticommunist ethnic Vietnamese (as opposed to Vietnamese of Chinese extraction, or Sino-Vietnamese) from the middle and upper classes who, as their economic privilege demonstrates, spoke French as a second language and could join either their children or other relatives who had the financial capital to resettle in Québec. Those without family members already settled in Québec were allowed to stay because they were proficient in either French or English (Canada’s two official languages) and they possessed professional skills that Gablenz 7 appealed to the Canadian immigration authorities. (Chan & Dorais, 1998; Dorais, 2004). The third wave of Vietnamese refugees arriving to Canada between 1979-1981 was a much more diversified group of people than their predecessors in terms of ethnic origin and socioeconomic status. It is in this third wave where we see the beginning of a mass exodus that the Western news media would call the “ crisis” because those fleeing political persecution and, to a lesser extent, economic hardship did so with makeshift boats and rafts. Much of the reporting done on this refugee crisis was between 1978-1979, when emigration was at its highest, although emigration from Vietnam would continue through the early 1990s (UNHCR, 2000). These refugees were majority Sino-Vietnamese and minority ethnic Vietnamese from lower- and lower middle-class backgrounds in both rural and urban areas, although some more affluent individuals (such as traders, professionals, and functionaries) also arrived in this third wave. Whatever their ethnic or socioeconomic background, the majority of these refugees spoke neither French nor English and did not have any children or other relatives already established in Canada (Chan & Dorais, 1998). Gablenz 8

Vietnamese (and) Québécois: Identities and Allegiances

As previously stated, this paper draws from the ethnographic research on Vietnamese Québécois collected by Chan and Dorais (1998) and Dorais (2004). In both studies, the authors collected their data by conducting interviews with residents of Vietnamese ethnocultural origin between 1996-1997. These participants are diversified amongst themselves. They are roughly one-half male and one-half female comprising three different age brackets: under 25 years of age, between 25-49 years of age, and 50 years of age and older. Three-quarters of the participants reside in Greater Montréal and one-quarter reside in Québec City. Only 7% of the participants arrived in the province of Québec as university students before the Fall of Saigon in April 1975; 14% arrived as refugees during the years 1975-1979; 29% arrived as “boat people” refugees between the years 1979-1981; and the remaining 36% arrived as either refugees or chain migrants after 1982. All participants are of Vietnamese ethnicity except one man who reported being half-Cambodian from his father’s side and half-Sino-Vietnamese from his mother’s side. Gablenz 9

The participants are asked questions regarding their own conception of identity, the role that language and culture play in one’s conception of identity, and their own relationships with Vietnam and Québec. What is discovered is that while roughly one-third of the participants consider themselves only Vietnamese, the majority of participants, including both those born in Québec and those born in Vietnam, emphasize having a bicultural Vietnamese and Québécois identity:

My heart and spirit are always with my country [Vietnam]. I want to do something for my country. I am more Vietnamese than Canadian. Maybe this is due to age. Maybe younger people feel more Canadian than Vietnamese. (Man, aged eighty-two) I am a Quebecer of Vietnamese ancestry. We follow all Vietnamese traditional customs, but now we live in and we like the people here. (Woman, aged seventy-two) I am a Quebecer with Vietnamese roots. …[M]y parents have always preserved their culture at home. But I went to school here, and most of my friends are Gablenz 10

Quebecers, and because of that, I have adopted many aspects of Quebec’s culture. I am a Vietnamese Quebecer. (Man, aged twenty-three, born in Canada) I consider myself a Canadian, a Quebecer, and a Vietnamese. I migrated to Canada [in 1978], I live in Quebec, and I have a Quebec-Vietnamese culture. I feel well adapted here, but my Vietnamese roots are very strong. (Woman, aged twenty-nine) First of all, I am a Quebecer. But also, I am Vietnamese. I was born here, I am a Quebecer, and I feel like one. But at home, with my parents, I behave like a Vietnamese. (Man, aged twenty-one, born in Canada) (Chan & Dorais, 1998, pp. 294-95)

While we see that older participants tend to emphasize their Vietnamese identity (“I am more Vietnamese than Canadian.”), they also acknowledge a part of their identity that is Canadian or Québécois, sometimes even giving their Canadian or Québécois identity semantic precedence over their original Vietnamese identity (“I am a Quebecer of Vietnamese ancestry.”). By contrast, younger participants (especially those born in Canada) Gablenz 11 emphasize their Québécois identity but also acknowledge their Vietnamese heritage and the important role it plays in their own identities (“I am a Quebecer with Vietnamese roots.”, “I consider myself a Canadian, a Quebecer, and a Vietnamese.”, “First of all, I am a Quebecer. But also, I am Vietnamese.”). We also see that the role of Vietnamese heritage is so prominent to one young participant, he refers to himself as a “Vietnamese Quebecer” even though he was born in Canada, in contrast to the older participants who identify as Canadians of Vietnamese ancestry even though they were born in Vietnam. On the basis of their participants’ responses, Chan and Dorais find it reasonable to infer that Vietnamese identity is primarily ethnocultural, with the exception of a few older participants who consider themselves political exiles and identify as Vietnamese who live in Canada. They note that when participants are asked to define who they are, many refer to a culture and ways of life that is considered Vietnamese or Vietnamese Québécois rather than to a nation-state. We see, however, that the vast majority of respondents indeed refer to a nation-state, but this nation-state to which they report belonging is Québec (and/or sometimes Canada) rather than Vietnam. Does Gablenz 12 this mean that these participants have a Vietnamese or Vietnamese Québécois sociocultural identity and a Canadian national identity? Chan and Dorais find it doubtful that their older participants truly feel as if they belong to the territory and the people of Canada the same way that native-born (Vietnamese) Canadians do. On the other hand, they claim that most Viet Kieu believe that Vietnamese culture intrinsically comes from Vietnam; thus, Vietnamese sociocultural identity cannot be entirely separated from some form of Vietnamese national identity. Even though the majority of participants, if not all, report that they are concerned about the state of Vietnam and inform themselves regularly on news and events happening there, very few of them have actually visited Vietnam. Although some participants state that they would like to spend a short vacation in Vietnam, none of them wish to resettle there permanently. Many participants, especially older ones, still associate Vietnam with personal trauma and suffering, as one woman explains: “I do not want to go back…because I lost a lot there. In 1980, my husband and my mother died, and I also lost my cousins” (Chan & Dorais, 1998, p. 299). Of those who have visited the country, most express shock and disappointment with the experience: Gablenz 13

I spent three months in Vietnam in 1995. I was really out of my element, though we saw our relatives and friends. We found that our house had been taken over by the communists. My son spent several months there to see if he could find work, but he was disappointed. He came back to . Everything has changed. It is crowded, polluted. We feel at home here in Montreal. (Woman, aged seventy-eight) I went back a few years ago; I was shocked. People were poor. There is war, misery. I do not remember it was so bad when I left the country to study abroad. People were sick, and the food was dirty. And it was very hot, very humid. I was not used any more to such a climate. (Woman, aged forty-six) (Chan & Dorais, 1998, 298-99)

Both participants who share their experiences with going back to Vietnam are older women who were born there. Although we do not know when either of these women arrived in Québec, it is reasonable to deduce from their reported experience that they Gablenz 14 have been living in the province long enough to become acclimated and feel “at home” in their new environment, as emphasized by the younger of these two women when she recalls: “And it was very hot, very humid. I was not used any more to such a climate;” and by the older of these two who says: “We feel at home here in Montreal.” The overwhelming unfamiliarity experienced by these women who returned to their native country is particularly striking because it is contrary to warm feelings of familiarity that one may expect or anticipate to experience upon return to one’s native country after having lived in a foreign space for one or two decades. Let us take the case of the seventy-eight-year-old woman for example: first of all, given her age and some facts that we know of her (she was born in Vietnam, she immigrated to Montréal, she has relatives and friends still living in Vietnam), it is reasonable to infer that she has spent far more of her life in Vietnam than in Montréal. In spite of this, she states that when she had returned to Vietnam for three months, she felt “really out of her element” even though she was in her native homeland among her relatives and friends, and that she feels “at home” in Gablenz 15

Montréal. Why is the native space now foreign to her? Because, as she says, “Everything has changed.” While many immigrants and perhaps even some refugees may be able to visit their native spaces if given the means and the opportunity to do so, this is not the case for the Vietnamese refugees now resettled and established in Québec. For many of these refugees, if not all, their native country, South Vietnam, no longer exists. As we know, the current Vietnamese nation-state, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, was formed after the South Vietnamese capital Saigon was captured by North Vietnamese communists who then reunited the two halves under a unitary communist government that consequently became economically and politically isolated in Southeast Asia (Murray, 1997). Dedicated to their ideology, the (North) Vietnamese communists persecuted the (South) Vietnamese anticommunists, arresting as many as 300,000 soldiers, government officials, and civilian supporters who were subsequently incarcerated in the infamous communist-operated “reeducation camps” (Troung, 2010). The city of Saigon was promptly renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the revered North Vietnamese leader. To put it simply, South Vietnam and Saigon were replaced by a new country and a new Gablenz 16 city with new leaders, new laws, and a new prevailing ideology. Everything had indeed changed. We also see that the aftermath of the war, the Fall of Saigon, and the reunification of Vietnam affects the native space to extents greater than the sociopolitical sphere. While the older woman speaks to the changes in Vietnam’s political regime and how that has affected her perception of her native country in her statement, the younger woman who visited Vietnam post- reunification speaks mainly to the socioeconomic differences between Montréal and Vietnam. She immediately remarks “I was shocked. People were poor. There is war, misery.”, alluding directly to the visible economic effects that war exacts on a local populace. She also mentions that “People were sick, and the food was dirty,” drawing attention to the stark contrast between an economically secure nation-state like Canada that possesses and produces substantial capital, and an economically insecure nation-state that possesses and produces far less capital such as the newly reunified Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In Québec, a geopolitical subdivision of the larger nation-state Canada, this greater economic security affords documented residents traditional work opportunities as well as a socioeconomic “safety Gablenz 17 net” of sorts in the form of government-funded social programs (e.g., unemployment insurance, subsidized housing, low-interest loans, etc.) and privately-run non-profit organizations. In order for these programs to be successful and continue to exist, the government levies taxes and fess against all documented residents, whether they were born within the country or abroad. This is because they are, in theory, able to benefit or potentially benefit from this socioeconomic structure by virtue of their documented residence. It could be argued that the inclusion of documented immigrants in such programs helps them integrate and cultivate some sort of respect or allegiance for the host country that may (or may not) exist alongside one’s allegiance to their native country. We see examples of this thinking demonstrated in interviews with 1.5- and second-generation Vietnamese American college students who are asked questions about ethnic patriotism and American citizenship. Some of these participants see a transactional nature to acquiring American citizenship through naturalization, giving answers along the lines of: “[Y]ou have to give to get, you have to give something back in return” (Brettell & Reed-Danahay, 2012, p. 67). We also see similar Gablenz 18 examples of this idea across the Atlantic Ocean in France at a ceremony celebrating the naturalization of a group of African immigrants where government officials give speeches touting the necessity that these newly-naturalized citizens do their best to adopt the French ways and customs since the nation-state has deemed them worthy of being granted French citizenship (Fassin & Mazouz, 2009). Of course, we can never know with certainty if such socioeconomic programs contributed to this younger woman’s feelings of greater familiarity with Montréal as opposed to her native Vietnam; however, we can reasonably infer from her preoccupation with comparing the socioeconomic conditions of Montréal and Vietnam that the economic security of a nation- state is important to her. This, of course, is not to say that socioeconomic security is the most significant factor when considering the experience of immigrants and refugees in the host space and how they adapt (or do not adapt) to the new host culture. We must acknowledge that there are many other factors and variables to consider, such as ethnic populations already established in the host country, reasons for immigration, and the amount of time one has spent living in the host space. While it is reasonable to assume that the Gablenz 19 seventy-eight-year-old woman has spent the majority of her life in Vietnam, such a fact is less certain where our younger participant is concerned; she states: “I do not remember it was so bad when I left the country to go study abroad,” but she does not state when she left Vietnam and if or when she returned from her studies abroad. Based on the participants’ biographical information provided by Chan and Dorais when detailing their methodology, it seems likely that this woman may have arrived in Canada as a student before 1975, may have found work, and may have been able to reside legally in Québec, but we cannot state this with absolute certainty. We do know, however, that in spite of factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic background, and time of arrival in Québec, the vast majority of Chan and Dorais’ Vietnamese Québécois first-, 1.5-, and second-generation participants report seeing themselves as being both Vietnamese and Québécois/Canadian. Although most report having varying intensities of ties to Vietnam and are interested in what is currently happening in and to Vietnam, they also express feeling “at home” in Québec and report having no desire to permanently relocate to Vietnam. Younger participants emphasize their ability Gablenz 20 to navigate these two cultures (usually separated as behaving “like a Vietnamese” at home or with family and behaving “like a Quebecer” in public and with friends), viewing their biculturalism as something positive or at least neutral rather than something negative. We will also see that these ideas and feelings are not recent developments in Vietnamese Québécois populations as of 1997. We will, in fact, see similar expressions in two works of (auto)fiction written by Vietnamese Québécois former refugees—D’ivoire et d’opium by Bach Mai (1985) and Ru by Kim Thúy (2009)—that were published both before and after the publication of Chan’s and Dorais’ ethnographic studies, thereby demonstrating that many former immigrants and refugees from Vietnam at different moments in history have been able to adopt and maintain a bicultural Vietnamese (and) Québécois/.

Adieu Saïgon: Identities and Allegiances in Vietnamese Québécois Literature

While there is a significant Vietnamese Québécois population in Canada which has been present almost four Gablenz 21 decades (or more, if the few pre-1975 Vietnamese student immigrants are included), there unfortunately is not a significant body of Francophone Québécois literature written by Francophone Vietnamese Québécois. Such writers were virtually unknown in Québec until Kim Thúy published her debut novel Ru in 2009. According to the author, the title was chosen because of its signification in both French and Vietnamese—in French, ru means “little stream” or, more figuratively, a “flow,” whether it be of tears, of blood, or of money. In Vietnamese, ru signifies “lullaby” or “cradle” (2009, p. 7). The (auto)fiction, which is written not as a traditional novel but as a collection of vignettes, was very well received by both literary critics and the general public. It was so successful that it won the 2010 Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction, a year when the established, prolific, and critically acclaimed Haitian Québécois Dany Laferrière’s seminal work L’énigme du retour (also a work of autofiction) was also nominated (Laferrière would be elected to the Académie française in 2013 and formally inducted in 2015). Thúy was also awarded the Grand prix littéraire Archambault for Ru in 2011. Its English translation, also titled Ru, by Sheila Fischman (2012) was also celebrated: it was a shortlisted nominee for the Giller Prize Gablenz 22 in 2012 as well as the Amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2013. It won the CBC’s annual competition “Canada Reads” in 2015, championed by Cameron Bailey, the artistic director for the International Film Festival (CBC, 2017a). Ru is also included on the CBC’s list of “150 books to read for Canada 150” as well as Radio-Canada’s list of “100 livres d’ici à faire lire à ceux qui nous dirigent” (CBC, 2017b; Radio-Canada, 2017). More recently, Thúy was shortlisted in 2018 for the New Academy Prize in Literature (which replaced the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature) and was awarded the appointment of Compagne in the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec in May 2019 (Tremblay, 2019). Ru tells the story of An Tinh Nguyen, a fictional Vietnamese former refugee who is both protagonist and narrator in the text. Despite the different name, many readers and critics have noted the striking parallels between Thúy’s lived experience and An Tinh Nguyen’s lived experience in the text. The (auto)fiction novel begins with An Tinh explaining that, like Thúy, she was born in Saigon “pendant l’offensive du Têt, aux premiers jours de la nouvelle année du Singe, lorsque les longues chaînes de pétards accrochées devant les maisons explosaient en polyphonie avec le son des mitraillettes” (2009, 11). An Tihn spends much of the first Gablenz 23 quarter of the novel retelling her experiences as a young girl growing up in an upper-class family in a Saigon “où les débris des pétards éclatés en mille miettes coloraient le sol de rouge comme des pétales de cerisier, ou comme le sang des deux millions de soldats déployés, éparpillés dans les villes et les villages d’un Vietnam déchiré en deux” (Thúy 2009, p. 11). From the very first sentences, we understand that An Tinh is acutely aware of the abundant incredible violence that permeates Saigon and the two . However, this knowledge does not seem to have adversely affected her childhood, perhaps because her family’s affluence and position shielded her from directly confronting the scenes of war and scenes of horrible violence that she describes abstractly. She acknowledges this by stating, as if fact, “Petite, je croyais que la guerre et la paix étaient deux antonymes. Et pourtant, j’ai vécu dans la paix pendant que le Vietnam était en feu, et j’ai eu connaissance de la guerre seulement après que le Vietnam eut rangé ses armes” (Thúy 2009, p. 22). Perhaps it is because An Tinh does not have any direct interaction with the unimaginable violence caused by the war that Ru does not dwell on violence, but on immigration, on Gablenz 24 adapting to a new country, on memory, and on what An Tinh imagines is her home. While still young, her native Saigon falls to the North Vietnamese communists and her family flees with other families in a boat. They eventually arrive in Malaysia, where her family spends three months in a Red Cross refugee camp before the Nguyen family is granted refugee visas to Canada. The family is resettled in Granby, Québec, where An Tinh must learn not only a new language (French), but also how to live in a new country and a new culture. Rather than experiencing discomfort and unease with the prospect of living in a completely foreign environment, An Tinh finds herself enchanted by everything Granby and Québec have to offer: from the cold wintery weather to the cheerful and warm disposition of the Québécois volunteers helping resettle the Nguyens. She even embraces the negative aspects of the town, such as the humidity in the summer and the presence of mosquitos, declaring: “Pendant toute une année, Granby a représenté le paradis terrestre. Je ne pouvais pas imaginer une meilleure place dans le monde, même si nous y étions mangés par les moches autant que dans notre camp de réfugiés” (Thúy, 2009, p. 35). It is at this point that we begin to Gablenz 25 see An Tinh becoming accustomed to her new life in her new home. As the novel progresses, An Tinh recounts her family’s move to Montréal, her studies at university, her (native) Québécois lovers, her two sons, and her job that took her back to Hanoi, Vietnam for three years. While in Vietnam, An Tinh considers an idea she calls “le point d’ancrage du premier souvenir,” which, to her, is a sensory experience that recalls her first memory of significance that she associates with a geographical location such as Montréal, much like Proust’s famous “épisode de la madeleine.” When An Tinh’s Québécois lover Guillaume arrives in Hanoi for a brief visit, she remarks that the scent of the Bounce laundry softener on his shirt arouses inside her feelings of longing and homesickness—not for Vietnam, but for Québec:

J’ai découvert mon point d’ancrage quand je suis allée accueillir Guillaume à l’aéroport de Hanoi. Le parfum de l’assouplissant Bounce de son t-shirt m’a fait pleurer. Pendant quatorze jours, j’ai dormi avec un vêtement de Guillaume sur mon oreiller. … J’accompagnais Guillaume dans ce marché de nuit toujours avec un de ses pulls Gablenz 26

par-dessus ma chemise parce que j’avais découvert que mon chez-moi se résumait à cette odeur ordinaire, simple, banale du quotidien nord-américain. Je n’avais pas d’adresse civique à moi nulle part, je vivais dans un appartement du bureau à Hanoi. … J’ai constaté pour la première fois que le Bounce, l’odeur du Bounce, m’avait donné mon premier mal du pays (Thúy, 2009, p. 117).

Just as the madeleine dipped in tea transports Proust’s narrator in Du côté de chez Swann back in time to episodes of his childhood in Combray, the Bounce softener on Guillaume’s shirt fills An Tinh with a feeling of great longing for her home that can be summed up by the scent of Bounce, which she considers a “odeur ordinaire, simple, banale du quotidien nord-américain.” Despite being at that moment in the country of her birth, she suffers first attack of homesickness when she smells a scent that reminds her of her “North American life” in Montréal. We see that this scent gives her comfort; every night Guillaume is in Hanoi, she sleeps with an article of his clothing on her pillow, and she always wears one of his pullover sweatshirts over her shirt. Not only does this illustrate the significance she ascribes to Bounce Gablenz 27 laundry softener and how its scent reminds her of her home, Montréal, but we also see how this tangible memory of Montréal affects An Tinh and provokes a longing for her home. Although we cannot know to what degree An Tinh considers herself Vietnamese, Québécoise, or Vietnamese Québécoise, it is reasonable to infer from her expressed feelings towards Montréal that she, like Vietnamese refugees before her, must see herself at the very least a Vietnamese (and a) Québécoise. Despite the commercial and critical success of Ru and the accolades Thúy has received for it, there are remarkably other few examples of Francophone Vietnamese Québécois literature. A rare different example predates Ru by nearly thirty years, meaning that it was published in the waning days of the “boat people crisis.” Like Thúy, writer Bach Mai was born in Saigon (albeit earlier, in 1953), but from this point these two Vietnamese Québécoise women tread two different paths. Rather than immigrate with her family to Canada, Mai studied abroad in Europe, attending university first in Paris, then in Brussels. Mai came to Montréal in 1977, where she found work as a journalist for Radio-Canada. In her articles and radio interviews, she Gablenz 28 addresses the state of human rights in war-torn countries, particularly those in Southeast Asia (Mai, 1985). Similar to Ru, Bach Mai’s D’ivoire et d’opium (1985) tells the story of a protagonist who doubles as the novel’s narrator called Michelle Melville (nicknamed Mimi) who arrived in Québec as a refugee from Vietnam. Michelle is a member of a Canadian filmmaking crew who travels to the Golden Triangle: an area along the Ruak and Mekong rivers where the international borders of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos converge to collect film for a documentary on elephants. They are also aware, however, that the Golden Triangle has the reputation of being one of the most dangerous places in the world for being the world’s largest producer of heroin from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Unfortunately, the film crew accidently stumbles upon an organization of opium traffickers who fear that the journalists will expose them. The film crew escapes, Michelle’s Canadian lover Philip is killed, the rest of the crew returns to Montréal, the documentary is produced and released, and the narrative ends with Michelle’s boss informing her of a new project that might interest her which would involve her traveling to Central America. While Ru is organized as a collection of vignettes, Mai categorizes Gablenz 29

D’ivoire et d’opium a “roman documentaire:” its narrative is told in traditional prose, but each chapter takes place at a different moment in the journey from Montréal to the Golden Triangle. Also interspersed in this documentary novel are 29 black-and- white photographs of the author and a filmmaking crew at different moments throughout the narrator-protagonist’s journey (permitting us to assume that Michelle is, in fact, an autofiction counterpart to the real-life author Bach Mai). While none of the novel’s narrative takes place in Michelle’s (and Mai’s) native Vietnam, this does not mean that the idea of return to one’s native space is absent from D’ivoire et d’opium. At the beginning of the narrative, Michelle’s film crew starts their overseas journey in Bangkok, which is about an hour’s flight from Saigon. Because of the crew’s geographical proximity to Saigon, Michelle schedules a meeting with the Vietnamese ambassador in Bangkok, Monsieur Binh, hoping to be approved for a permit to enter the country and visit her parents, other relatives, and friends who still live there. Monsieur Binh is very suspicious of Michelle, the fact that she left Vietnam to study in France, the fact that she currently lives in Montréal, and that she is a journalist. Despite her attempts to assure the ambassador that she does not Gablenz 30 intend to write an unflattering portrayal of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in a Canadian newspaper, Michelle is warned that she cannot be guaranteed an entry visa. To add insult to injury, as the two part, Monsieur Binh tells her: “à votre âge, je songerais à fonder une famille au lieu de courir après les éléphants dans la jungle…” (Mai, 1985, p. 38). As the film crew’s time in Bangkok comes to a close, Michelle divides her time between her work and thinking about the Saigon of her memories as well as the current Saigon that is inaccessible to her. She considers her native city’s noble heritage, its glorious reputation as “La Perle de l’Extrême-Orient” when it was under the “protectorat de la « mère-patrie »,” remarking that many around the world, including both Europeans and Asians, thought of Saigon as “une version asiatique…de Monaco” (Mai, 1985, p. 48). She also remembers how Saigon changed during the war, transforming from “La Perle de l’Extrême-Orient” and “La Grande Courtisane” to “La Putain de l’Asie.” No longer the glittering and shimmering Asian version of Monaco, Saigon has become infested with thousands of bars, prostitutes, drugs, and Amerasians: children born of two different worlds whose own status and identity are themselves just as uncertain and unstable Gablenz 31 as the new Saigon around them. As her time in Bangkok ends, Michelle is overcome by nostalgia and melancholy. Before the film crew’s departure, she receives the official letter from the Embassy of Vietnam in Thailand informing her that her application for an entry visa has been denied. This inability to return to her native city marks a definitive, irreconcilable rupture between Michelle and Saigon: “Cette Saigon que je ne pourrai revoir, les rues de mon enfance que je ne pourrai retraverser, ma mère que je ne pourrai jamais embrasser…par un NON bref, précis et brutal, une fin de non-recevoir pour ma demande de visa” (Mai, 1985, p. 49). Just like the past, Saigon is inaccessible.

Bonjour Montréal: Identities and Allegiances in the Postnational State

Colonialist rhetoric notwithstanding, Michelle’s attitudes and feelings towards Saigon as well as Vietnam as a whole are both similar yet remarkably different from the portrayal of Vietnam in Ru and the descriptions offered by Chan and Dorais’ research participants. Whereas the majority of the interviewed Vietnamese Québécois and Thúy’s narrator-protagonist in Ru lose their close Gablenz 32 connection to the native space as their sense of “home” (that is, where they experience a feeling of belonging to the people and society) is gradually replaced by Québec and/or Montréal throughout the immigration and resettling process(es), the distance and lost connection Michelle experiences between her and the Saigon of her childhood memories is primarily the result of the ravages of war and the progression of time rather than a change in her sense of identity and/or self-expression. Even though she does not directly address these ideas in the novel, we can reasonably infer from the wistful and nostalgic tone conveyed when thinking of Saigon after she correctly assumes that she will be denied an entry visa to Vietnam that Michelle still harbors an emotional connection to her native home and wishes to visit. What is less certain is if this portrayal of a Saigon in decline is motivated by Michelle’s own convictions, or if she is projecting this unflattering description onto the Saigon of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to help her cope with the denial of her entry visa and the sense of loss that she subsequently experiences. Without a personalized description of her new home, Montréal, to compare to her description of Saigon, we unfortunately cannot know if she considers herself “at home” in Gablenz 33

Montréal, like An Tinh in Ru. In fact, this nostalgic pining for a Saigon that Michelle believes no longer exists—as well as any mention of a home—is not raised anywhere else in D’ivoire et d’opium. Despite the differences between these two Francophone Vietnamese Québécois texts regarding their portrayals of Vietnam and/or Saigon and Québec and/or Montréal, we cannot ignore the striking parallels between experiences of the two narrator-protagonists and the reported experiences of Vietnamese Québécois participants in Chan and Dorais’ 1998 study. We also must not underestimate the significance of Québec (and by extension, Canada) as the host space for these Vietnamese Québécois. Whereas many modern nation-states emphasize the immigrant’s duty to assimilate to the host culture and society, Canadians have long described their country as a “cultural mosaic” (in opposition to the American “melting pot”), meaning that each cultural group retains their ethnocultural identity while contributing to the nation as a whole (Gibbon, 1938; Porter, 1965). Prime Minister Justin Trudeau referred to these very ideas in 2015 when he claimed that the shared values of openness, respect, and compassion “are what make [Canada] Gablenz 34 the first postnational state” (Lawson, 2015). Perhaps it is no mistake that we see these ideas of the cultural mosaic and the postnational state reflected in the identities and expressions of self of Chan and Dorais’ Vietnamese Québécois participants. Should we, as citizens and as humans, aspire to replicate these participants’ feelings of belonging to immigrants and refugees in our own native spaces, perhaps we should begin by interrogating our own identities, attitudes, and allegiances. Perhaps we should expand our own conceptions of home beyond the singular geopolitical space where one is born and/or lives. If we are to learn nothing else from An Tihn Nguyen, Michelle Melville, and Vietnamese Québécois themselves, let it be that “home” is wherever we truly feel “at home.”

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