From Street Gangs to School Clubs: the Vietnamese American Youth Since 1975 ______
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FROM STREET GANGS TO SCHOOL CLUBS: THE VIETNAMESE AMERICAN YOUTH SINCE 1975 ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton ____________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History ____________________________________ By Silvia Hsu Cheng Thesis Committee Approval: Allison Varzally, Department of History, Chair Lisa Tran, Department of History Susie Woo, Department of American Studies Spring, 2018 ABSTRACT Since the influx of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States at the formal end of the Vietnam War in 1975, dominant narratives have portrayed Vietnamese Americans as the benefactors of a war fought at the cost of American lives. This thesis argues that throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, 1.5 and second-generation Vietnamese American youth contested this narrative by challenging racial stereotypes, forming social groups, engaging in political activism, and creating films and literature to interject their own voices. The youth rejected inherently racist expectations of being “model minorities” by joining gangs or sometimes straddling both the gang life in secret and the ideal student image in public. Sociopolitical groups like the Vietnamese Student Associations attested to the fact the younger generations wanted to maintain traditions and values of their parents. Their literature and films focused on the realities and challenges of life in America, complexities of growing up in between two cultures, and the true impact of United States intervention in Vietnam. Through their writing and filmmaking, the youth revealed issues with racism and challenged the notion that life in the United States was great and beautiful because of American benevolence after the Vietnam War. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. iv Chapter 1. THE VIETNAMESE IN AMERICA.................................................................... 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Background ........................................................................................................... 3 Historiography and Methodology ......................................................................... 12 2. REJECTION OF THE ‘MODEL MINORITY’ ................................................... 16 3. COLLECTIVISM AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN SOCIAL GROUPS ........ 48 4. NEW VOICES IN FILM AND LITERATURE ................................................... 61 5. CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................. 70 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 73 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to begin by thanking my entire committee for their support and recommendations throughout this process. I am especially grateful to my committee chair, Dr. Allison Varzally for her guidance, positivity, and endless patience for my slow progress. I always left our meetings reassured that I was on the right track. I would like to extend a special thanks to my good friend, Arturo De Leon Tell, who has pushed and supported me throughout this entire process. I could not have finished this feat without his knowledge and experience in the pains of thesis writing. I am also thankful for my supportive colleagues and optimistic students at Rosemead High School who encouraged me to continue writing at all costs. Finally, I must thank my family, friends, and loved ones, who dealt with me over the course of the past year. I am especially appreciative of my mom, Kuei Cheng, who chose to show her support by cooking meals for me on many occasions. iv 1 CHAPTER 1 THE VIETNAMESE IN AMERICA Introduction The formal end of the Vietnam War in 1975 brought over 1,322,000 Indochinese refugees to the United States over the course of more than two decades.1 Between 1975 and 1995, 424,590 Vietnamese resettled in the U.S.2 Despite the government’s attempt to disperse refugees to different cities throughout the U.S., Vietnamese immigrants did not remain in those locations; they partook in secondary migrations to cities with larger, already existing Asian populations. By 1990, California was home to nearly 40 percent of the refugees from Southeast Asia.3 Nearly half of the nation’s Vietnamese population resided in the state’s county of Orange, primarily in Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Westminster. Large populations also resided in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles 1 This figure combines the 822,977 refugees who fled their homelands and resettled in the United States between 1975 and 1985 and more than 500,000 persons who were resettled through the Orderly Departure Program from 1979 to 1999. Established in 1979, the ODP helped immigrants (who were family members of refugees already resettled in the U.S. and Amerasian children of U.S. soldiers) leave Vietnam and directly arrive in the United States. “Flight from Indochina” in State of the World's Refugees, 2000, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees http://www.unhcr.org/3ebf9bad0.html. 2 This number does not include those who arrived through the Orderly Departure Program—only refugees who were resettled in the U.S. after fleeing to a “first asylum” country on their own. 3 Jeremy Hein, States and International Migrants: The Incorporation of Indochinese Refugees in the United States and France (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993), 73. 2 County and San Jose of Santa Clara County.4 Since the late 1970s, Little Saigon, an ethnic enclave in Orange County, emerged as the largest Vietnamese community in the country. 5 Today, the community serves as a cultural center, commercial hub, and historic reminder of the old Vietnam. The influx of immigrants not only changed the demographics of America, but also the discourse on the Vietnamese as an ethnic group and their citizenship in this country. Before the mass arrival of immigrants, American perspectives dominated the narrative on the war, refugees, and their resettlement. Gradually, scholars and filmmakers incorporated more voices of Vietnamese themselves. Yet, in many ways, immigrant voices served to reinforce the narrative of the U.S. as its savior. Since the country’s involvement in Vietnam’s war, discourse in favor of overseas intervention relied on an anti-communist foreign policy. When the last of troops pulled out of Saigon, America was able to reclaim itself as the hero of desperate refugees fleeing the evils of communism brought by the relentless North Vietnamese troops. Utilizing the myth of the “good refugee,” Americans attempted to justify a lost war into a good and necessary war.6 Although 2,000 refugees requested to be repatriated and challenged the idea that they needed to be saved, their voices were suppressed as the U.S. government quietly 4 Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 46. 5 Cities in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County saw an influx of more ethnic Chinese Vietnamese while cities in Orange County experienced an increase in ethnic Vietnamese. Oftentimes, the ethnic Chinese from Vietnam will identify only as Chinese. 6 Yen Le Espiritu, Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es) (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014). 3 sent them back to Vietnam and continued to frame themselves as liberators of the Vietnamese from the Communists.7 Early voices of Vietnamese Americans appeared in publications such as James M. Freeman’s Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese American Lives and Sucheng Chan’s collection of student essays in The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation, which echoed and reinforced the savior narrative.8 Focus on educational and economic successes of the “model minority” served as proof of America’s accomplishments against communism and dismissed the reality of war-related poverty and struggles of immigrants. Gradually, the conversation shifted as the 1.5 generation and second-generation Vietnamese Americans entered into adulthood. By the late 1980s, Vietnamese American youth had different stories to tell, which oftentimes filled the voids or clashed with voices of the first-generation. Thus, this thesis argues that the 1.5 and second-generation Vietnamese youth contested the prevailing narrative about them in a few ways, which included rejecting the “model minority” stereotype, establishing and participating in political and social groups, and claiming a space in the discourse to “take back their history” through literature and the arts. Background Vietnamese Americans are defined as persons of Vietnamese ancestry, or those who left Vietnam after 1975. This includes ethnic Vietnamese who left other Southeast 7 Heather Marie Stur, “‘Hiding Behind the Humanitarian Label’: Refugees, Repatriates, and the Rebuilding of America’s Benevolent Image After the Vietnam War,” Diplomatic History 39, issue 2, (2015): 223-244. 8 James M. Freeman, Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese American Lives (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989). Sucheng Chan, ed., The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New Beginnings (Philadelphia: Temple