Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey

For many refugees, notions of the homeland evoke contradictory feelings of nostalgia and anguish. During his visit to Saigon, Tri Huu contends that he has no desire to remember the past. He claims, “I didn’t come here to be nostalgic. To go, ‘oooo…ahhh…this is where I did this and that’s where I did that.’ It’s in the past. What do I care?” (53). Weighed by the painful memories of the war, exile, and his personal sacrifices, Tri Huu chooses to move forward and not dwell on the past as a necessary mode of survival. GB comments on how little he knows about his parents because of his “family’s unwillingness to share the most basic facts” (98). Tri Huu willingly forgets or silences stories of his past and refuses to discuss his feelings with his family. In repressing traumatic events, he dampens any sense of attachment, longing, or positive memories of Vietnam as well, resulting in an existence characterized by coldness, aggression, and resentment.

The memoir repeatedly references a quote attributed to Confucius, which states, “A man without history is a tree without roots” (8). This quote captures the paradox of refugee narratives, in which individuals uprooted from their native land have an elusive sense of home entangled with traumatic events that are painful to revisit.