The Nguyen family, in the early 1980s in San Jose, Calif., where his parents owned the New Saigon Mini Market, Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America.
And yet today Vietnam, while being independent, is hardly free.
But you also know how much I love this country and how much I care about all our children. At last, my father had claimed America. In a day when “friendships” come and go as easily as choosing a Facebook status, true friends are hard to find. And while there is some truth to that, it was also simply a continuation of French colonization, a war that was racist and imperialist at its roots and in its practices. Your friends don't want you to lie to them, but they also don't need you to lay your negative opinions on them. Being immune to the flag and the anthem does not make me less American than those who love those symbols. Still, no matter how weary they were, they always made dinner, even if dinner was often just boiled organ meat. Whatever they saw in their homeland, it affected my father deeply. This is a romantic love, set to accordion music or Édith Piaf, which I feel only fleetingly. That’s Why I Have to Tell the Truth About It ... Too many people, from the highest office in the land down, have used those symbols to essentially tell all Americans to love it or leave it. Yet", Juli Slattery, author, "Finding the Hero in Your Husband", Beverly Willett, Coalition for Divorce Reform.
That’s Why I Have to Tell the Truth About It.
I hardly ever got to see them. Even if my Vietnamese is imperfect, which it is, I am still connected to Vietnam and to Vietnamese refugees worldwide. Perhaps he never made it past being offended by the first quarter of the novel, which condemns America’s war in Vietnam. I should be grateful.
You are doubly blessed if that same friend weathers the storms of life with you – even the storms that you may have foolishly created yourself. All felt unnatural. See more. In this case, again, you have the choice to make your comments brutal or gentle. Every country believes in its own best self and from these visions has built beautiful cultures, France included. It's a fine line between honesty and rudeness sometimes. Democracy, equality, justice, hope, peace and especially freedom, the freedom to write and to think whatever I want, even if my freedoms and the beauty of those principles have all been nurtured by the blood of genocide, slavery, conquest, colonization, imperial war, forever war. and "Finding the Hero in Your Husband," among others. As for those who say this sentence, do you mean it with gentleness, with empathy, with sarcasm, with satire, with any kind of humor that is not ill humored? The current Administration is threatening even naturalized citizens with denaturalization and deportation. It's a fine line between honesty and rudeness sometimes. It is hard to say, because I had never said “I love you” to anyone, my parents included, much less a country.
This is how I know that I am still Vietnamese, because my history is in my blood and my culture is my umbilical cord. She is also the author of "Passion Pursuit: What Kind of Love Are You Making?"
Perhaps it is not so far-fetched to imagine that one day someone like me, born in Vietnam, might be sent back to Vietnam, despite having made more out of myself than many native-born Americans. I admit that those symbols mean little to me, because they divide as much as unify.
So it is that every day I ask my son if he has eaten yet and every day I tell my son I love him. It isn't easy to be honest when you know it might hurt your friend or even end the friendship. But I was never hungry. It can only be felt. If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. At the same time, I wanted to keep my Vietnamese name. Is such a telling American?
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And yet every country is also soiled in the blood of conquest and violence, Vietnam included. Friends want people who will tell it to them straight and not lie, but how to do that without causing problems? There are two types of situations when your friend is going to need your honest opinion: when they ask you for it and when you need to step in and tell them something for their own good. I could never go back to Vietnam for good, because I could never be a writer there and say the things I say without being sent to prison. Most of us are deceiving ourselves in any number of ways every day. Back then I only wanted to be American in the simplest way possible, partly in resistance against my father’s demand that I be 100% Vietnamese. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, I Love America. My love for my countries is difficult because their histories, like those of all countries, are complicated. By using LiveAbout, you accept our, How to Deal With a Friend Who Talks Over You, How to Gracefully Change the Subject When Talking to Your Friend, Social Etiquette Mistakes That Friends Make, How to Deal With a Friend Who Has Cheated, Your friends don't want you to lie to them. You know that I tell you exactly what I’m feeling, and that I’m no fan of politics. you could say: In these examples, you're still being honest, but you're doing it in a way that isn't hurtful. Anyone who has heard this sentence knows it is a loaded gun, pointed at them.
Or have you said it? In another example, if your friend asked, "Does this outfit look good on me?"
But do it in a loving manner. Vietnam is not his country. An American veteran of the war, an enlisted man, wrote me in rage after reading an essay of mine on the scars that Vietnamese refugees carried.
You may even tell your friend, “I’m only going to bring this up once. Answer them gently, without trying to give them a dig or take them down a notch.
I had tried various American names on for size. They loved me so much that they worked themselves to exhaustion in their new America. Perhaps they feel that deep, emotional love when they see the flag or hear the national anthem.
): to tell the story of Lincoln's childhood.
Check yourself to make sure you respond without jealousy or anger, which can also add to brutal honesty rather than gentle honesty. If we love our countries, we owe it to them not just to flatter them but to tell the truth about them in all their beauty and their brutality, America included. Oratorio: I Will Tell You The Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About I... United States Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith presents a ten-poem sequence capturing the lives and stories of African American soldiers and their families during the Civil War. And no. If, like me, you are convinced that if you have a problem with honesty, it’s only a teeny-tiny one, hang on for a fun ride. My parents and their parents never knew anything but French colonialism.
Con an com chua?” This is how hosts greet guests who come to the home, by asking them if they have eaten.
French rule ended only 17 years before my birth. But when he spoke to his child in Vietnamese, his voice was very tender.
Too many people, from the highest office in the land down, have used those symbols to essentially tell all Americans to love it or leave it.
By signing up you are agreeing to our, Pence Overruled CDC Experts to Seal U.S. Why don’t you go back to Vietnam? What a gift to have a friend who will risk telling you the truth to your face instead of chattering behind your back. The genocide committed against them by white settlers is Thanksgiving’s ugly side, not quite remembered but not really forgotten, even in France, where images of a half-naked Native American in a feathered headdress can also be found.
Anyone who has heard these five words knows what it means, because it almost always refers to America. Love it or leave it.
There is a very fine line between saying you are concerned and saying you judge your friend’s decision. LiveAbout uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience.
For example, if your friend is doing something dangerous or reckless, you should talk to them. He spoke southern Vietnamese on his cell phone. I was weary and did not write back to him. The principles. Then the U.S. re-established relations with Vietnam in 1994, and my parents took the first opportunity to go home.
That is how I feel the love of country for Vietnam, which is one of my countries, and that is how I feel my Vietnamese self. “Love it or leave it” is completely American and yet un-American at the same time, just like me. Con an com chua?” He looked a little rough, perhaps working class.
Aware of my colonization, I do not love France the way many Americans love France, the ones who dream of the Eiffel Tower, of sipping coffee at Les Deux Magots, of eating a fine meal in Provence.
It says that you care about the person even more than you value the friendship.
The country in which I am writing these words is France, which is not my country but which colonized Vietnam, where I was born, for two-thirds of a century. Borders, Where China Stands on the U.S. Presidential Election, Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know now on politics, health and more, © 2020 TIME USA, LLC.
Most Americans will not feel what I feel when they hear the Vietnamese language, but they feel the love of country in their own ways. This is a heavy burden to lay on one’s son, although it is no heavier than the burden placed on me by my parents. Is it not more important that I love the substance behind those symbols rather than the symbols themselves? All of that is America, our beautiful and brutal America.
I grew up with these customs, these emotions, these intimacies, and when I heard this man say this to his child, I almost cried. But if I also felt uneasy, it was because I could not help but wonder: Which America was it? A name like Ellison compresses the beauty and the brutality of America into seven letters, a summation of despair and hope. I wanted an American name for him that expressed the complexities of our America. He will also — I hope — know a father’s love that is less complicated than mine.
Some Americans like to believe that the greatness has succeeded the horror, but to me, the greatness and the horror exist simultaneously, as they have from the very beginning of our American history and perhaps to its end.
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