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 Vietnam, 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 “Overseas Vietnamese,” 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 Canadians (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 Canada, 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%) (Statistics Canada, 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 immigration to Canada. 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 “Vietnamese boat people 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