The Interdependent: Journal of Undergraduate Research in Global Studies From Huang to Huynh and Back Again: Traversing the Hyphen Between Chinese-Vietnamese Identity Lani Mac |
[email protected] B.A. in Global Liberal Studies, 2019 | New York University, New York Business Immigration Analyst | Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernesen & Loewy, LLP https://doi.org/10.33682/wz3t-j5ry Abstract Among the 1.6 million individuals who left Vietnam in the Indochina Refugee Crisis, hoa people, ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam, were resettled throughout North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Arriving in these new locations, the ethnic Chinese developed “twice-migration backgrounds.” Focusing on either the Vietnamese diaspora or Chinese migration, the present literature does not adequately address the hybridity of Chinese-Vietnamese identity. Exercising an interdisciplinary approach, I combine narrative with theoretical discourse and draw from my family’s migration story, existing research on ethnic identity among Chinese-Vietnamese in southern California, and literature on Chinese in present-day Vietnam. By framing identity as a continuous practice that is carried out in contexts of language, political history, and social environment, I address how first- and second-generation Chinese- Vietnamese Americans experience ethnic identity and suggest an expanded understanding of Chinese-Vietnamese identity that is fluid rather than static. Keywords Identity; Chinese; Vietnamese; American; Chinese-Vietnamese; Berlin; New York; Migration; Language; Ethnicity; Culture; Twice-Migration Background Volume 1 | 2020 wp.nyu.edu/interdependent/ 156 The Interdependent: Journal of Undergraduate Research in Global Studies Introduction When I ask my mother if we should make goi cuon1, she reminds me about my grandfather. She says, even when he was ill, he would still ask her to wrap goi cuon for him.