R3 Excerpts/Response - Marlene McManus

Angie Woodmansee
"Le's characters depict the suffering of individuals whose experiences do not fit into the ideal American narrative because they are tied to a history that "a nation tried to forget," yet with her narrative structure she simultaneously combats the notion that the American narrative is necessarily linear (Barroga, as cited in Lowe 1)...While the girl is bringing light to some of the least acceptable or intelligible histories of immigrants in the United States, Le structures the narrative in such a way that the American narrative ideal is questioned as the only means of representation in the nation's historical consciousness."

Samantha McFadden
"For many people, the Vietnam War had a beginning and an end. The Gangster We Are All Looking For shows us that for others, it is a place in time whose repercussion will resonate for the remainder of their lives. The idea of 'countermemory' is prominent in both works. While Le's narrator and her family struggle to fit into American society and move forward after the war, Nguyen argues that this is nearly impossible to do so. He points out that Asian Americans "belong in America neither in memory or in the past," which shows that they will constantly have conflicting feelings about both of their cultures."

Jean Dao

“Le allows this traumatic family history to seep in and out of the story, dropping a line here and there and then quickly countering it with the mention of a current issue that faces the family. In doing so, she mocks up the behavior and attitudes of those wishing to oppress the histories of Asian Americans. This memory and countermemory, I believe, are the strongest in the story; they blanket the vignettes in a certain obscurity and darkness that draw from other historical and national memories. Le slightly glosses over the fact that the narrator and her family flee from the Viet Cong, bringing in only key pieces of information that remind readers of the circumstances in which the girl, her father and the ‘uncles’ arrived in the United States.”

Andrew Anderson

“America likes to pride itself on being accepting and open to all. When parts of its history don’t jive with this ideal, there is a tendency to navigate around them and exclude them from the national narrative. It then falls upon people like Le to stand up and tell the real stories. This can often be a difficult task due to pressures from within the Asian community itself…Kingston and Le both choose to “speak of things others would rather not speak of, or hear about, or pass on into memory (Nguyen, 9).” Through their writing, they are bringing the countermemory closer to the light and making it just a little more visible to the rest of the world.”

Dan Parker

“This very concept, portrayed in Viet Nguyen’s Speak of the Dead, Speak of Viet Nam as the countermemory, states that to transcend the equally confining national and minority memories to achieve a unified history of the national imagination, the minorities must envision the totality of their realities by invoking the dualistic notion of themselves as both victims and victimizers…The national memory, exploiting the horrifying pasts of a particular people in various mediums such as film, serves only as a catalyst in the nation’s metamorphosis into a single moment of historical cruelty, while the minority memory, conversely attempting to escape these restraints by forgetting these tragic images, paradoxically succeeds only in limiting its own reality by disregarding a necessary portion of its cultural identity.”

R3 Response

Each of the responses I edited this week meditate upon Nguyen’s description of ‘countermemory’ and its significance as a necessary alternative history, juxtaposed with both the propagated national and minority memories. Providing specific examples from the novel, including the narrator’s smashing of the glass animals with the butterfly, the father’s violent episodes, and the mother’s repeated refusal to acknowledge her drowned son, and even the narrative style of the novel itself, the response authors pose the minority-generated countermemory as a powerful rejection and reformation of the national consciousness. They also speak of how the generation of a countermemory can help immigrants and nations alike cope with traumatic periods of history, such as the Vietnam War. Both the Vietnamese refugees and the nation of America actively engage in the production of a countermemory concerning the war, though these ultimately prove to be ‘countermemories’ of each other, with riddled contradictions and targeted deletions between them. Each of the authors recognizes the circular route and seeming irreconcilability of such opposed histories (particularly outlined in a quote from Angie Woodmansee’s response), yet stresses that the presence and dynamics of such memories cannot be ignored, for it plays a vital and vivid role within the lives of those whom it concerns, including the family in Le’s novel.

I personally found Le’s novel to be incredibly dense in its symbolism, and had difficulty navigating through it until our class discussion. Becoming enlightened to the Foucauldian concept of countermemory through Nguyen’s critical piece, Speak of the Dead, Speak of Viet Nam, I was able to perceive the delicately entwined dual layers of the novel: the surface layer, colorful images and blurry recollections of a refugee childhood related through the eyes of an innocent, and then beneath, the weight of the historical circumstances the child relates and how they contribute to the formation of self and the reformation of family and memory. The minority construction of a countermemory proves itself necessary, not only to reconcile the past, but also to negotiate the minority’s future in a new homeland. This, Nguyen states, is the challenge and fate facing every Asian American.

I believe, however, that Nguyen is somewhat hypocritical in his essay, for he begins by saying that Asian Americans need to stop playing the victim in the national discourse, but then in his second section, writes in a self-pitying tone of the distressing treatment of Asian Americans in this country:

“Our forgettability defines us as an American minority, a trait we share at present only with Native Americans. But whereas Native Americans are seen as belonging to the land, when they are recalled at all, Asian Americans are seen as foreigners or aliens who have not been here for long, and who do not speak the language well. Asian Americans belong to America neither in memory nor in the past (Nguyen, 13).”

Regardless of the hypocrisy in the second half of his essay, Nguyen makes clear the importance and process of the creation of a countermemory not only for minorities, but for entire nations. Both his essay and our discussion in class has caused me, personally, to reevaluate my perceptions of, and participation in the American national memory.