Sunday, May 20, 2018
Echoing Losses: Multi-Generational Loss of Identity
Aimee Phan’s We Should Never Meet considers the lives of orphans of the Vietnam war, and their sense of isolation and abandonment. In the stories “Miss Lien” and “We Should Never Meet”, Phan unpacks these sentiments as the narrative moves between Lien’s first hand experience of the war and the necessary actions required to survive. And, later, in “We Should Never Meet”, the experiences encountered by orphans living in the United States after the war.
As the Vietnam war consumes her village, Lien is forced to relinquish her former child identity in lieu of one of adulthood and provider. Despite her parent’s attempts to shield Mai and her siblings from the war, the ever closer bomb raids slowly creeping to their village marks the inevitable coming war. Mai being the hope for the future, is tasked with moving to the city in order to provide her family with a means to survive (Phan 16). Just as their home is ravaged and destroyed, Mai herself has her identity stolen as she becomes the victim of rape. She feels unable to confide in her family of the resulting pregnancy as her reliability in the familial institution is disrupted. Although not an orphan herself, Mai no longer has the family and paternal reliance she once counted on resulting in a sense of abandonment and alienation.
These themes translate into “We Should Never Meet” where Kim, an actual orphan now living in America essentially inherits the sentiments experienced by Mai. Unable to understand the rationale behind her parent’s “abandonment”, Kim and her ex-boyfriend Vinh harbor resentment towards older Vietnamese generations as they blame them for their loss of identity. Childhood and the loss of innocence are the most enduring casualties of the war as Mai and Kim are each tasked to find new identities capable of maneuvering through the debris and remnants of a warring Vietnam.
By Oscar A.
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I think you might be referring to the wrong character in your second and final paragraph, it should be Lien not Mai. However I still believe you are right about the common themes between the two stories. In both "Miss Lien" and "We Should Never Meet" there is this sense of abandonment as both Lien and Kim feel alone with only themselves to rely on. This theme as you said, also translates to Vinh who I think tries to find himself within his gang just as Kim tries to find herself with the store owner; Lien tries to find herself by taking care of herself.
ReplyDeleteBy Marisa M.
I agree with Marisa that while you did mean Lien instead of Mai, I think the point comes across just as well. I like how you emphasized the distrust of older generations that are demonstrated through Lien and the two Vietnamese refugees Kim and Vinh. Their lack of reliance on a stable foundation based on family causes the Vietnamese people in the collection of short stories to alienate and discriminate against each other. Their lack of compassion in a time of need and hardship is especially heartbreaking when it is evident that they suffer needlessly.
ReplyDeleteBy Kevin D.