“Family Is the Beginning but Not the End”: Intergenerational LGBTQ Chosen Family, Social Support, and Health in a Vietnamese American Community Organization

ABSTRACT

Homophobia and anti-LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) discrimination within ethnic communities can negatively impact the health of LGBTQ people. The formation of chosen families has been a source of social support that may have health benefits for LGBTQ people. This ethnographic study explores how participation in a LGBTQ Vietnamese American community organization reveals the salience of chosen family in informing individual members’ perceptions of their health and well-being. Fifteen members were interviewed and over 30 were included in a 6-month participant-observation period. Three themes emerged: 1) queering family and kinship, 2) Vietnamese motherhood and the social reproduction of the family, 3) social ties and community connectedness as relational dimensions of health. Findings suggest that specific ethnic social support via chosen family formations for LGBTQ Vietnamese Americans can shape individuals’ sense of self, sense of belonging, purpose in life, and consequently perceptions of well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Chosen family
• LGBTQ
• Vietnamese
• social support
• health
• ethnography
• community

Acknowledgments

I thank Purnima Mankekar, Chandra L. Ford, Gilbert C. Gee, and Thu-Hương Nguyễn-Võ for providing critical guidance and feedback on the master’s thesis version of this paper. I also thank Emily Ng for research assistance in transcribing the English interviews. I am grateful for the anonymous reviewers’ comments along with Natalie Bradford, Rebekah Israel Cross, Taylor Rogers, Michele Wong, Keva X. Bui, mads Le, and Sean Tan’s feedback for strengthening this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institutes of American Cultures and the Asian American Studies Center from the University of California, Los Angeles under 2018-2019 Research Grant Program in Ethnic Studies. The author is also provided general support from the Health Policy Research Scholars, a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.