Mẹ-search, Hauntings, and Critical Distance

Abstract

My paper reflects on the intimate and inextricable connections between my life experiences as a subject of war and my academic research on Vietnamese refugees and the Vietnamese diaspora. I juxtapose personal experiences with theoretical musings in order to position myself as a writer and scholar. The essay recounts a memory of my father's death, a return trip to Vietnam, and stumbling upon a picture of my mother in the Southeast Asian Archive in California, among others, as it makes a claim on the value and necessity of subjective experience in the process of critical, academic scholarship.

Keywords:

• autoethnography
• Vietnamese refugees
• critical scholarship
• hauntings

Notes

[1] In Vietnamese, ‘mẹ’ is the word for ‘mother’.

[2] George M. Foster discusses the ‘image of limited good’ as a societal belief that there are insufficient goods to go around. It is this discourse that feeds into fear of foreigners and immigrants, who ostensibly ‘take away’ already scarce resources.

[3] A body of scholarly work that supports this conviction exists, especially from areas of feminist and autoethnography research. See for example, works by Carolyn Ellis, Jane Tompkins, and Diane P. Freedman, among others.

[4] Constructed in between the 4th and 13th centuries CE, the Mỹ Sơn temple complex was the religious and cultural center of the Hindu-influenced Champa Kingdom that ruled what is now central Vietnam. During the Vietnam War many of the temples were damaged and destroyed by American bombing. It is now a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site.

[5] ‘Việt Kiều’ is the term for overseas Vietnamese.