The Distance Between Us Positionality and the Diaspora from Vietnam to North America in Adrift at Sea, by Forchuk Skrypuch, and “American Address” by Thanhha Lai
Both Adrift at Sea: A Vietnamese Boy's Story of Survival, written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (author) and Brian Deines (illustrator), and “American Address”, a poem included in Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again, refer to the voyage of the “boat people”, which is the name given to th...
Guardado en:
| Autor principal: | |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Artículo revista |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
| Publicado: |
Centro de Investigaciones de la Facultad de Lenguas (CIFAL), Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Avenida Enrique Barros s/n, Ciudad Universitaria. Córdoba, Argentina. Correo electrónico: revistacylc@lenguas.unc.edu.ar
2025
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://revistas.unc.edu.ar/index.php/CultyLit/article/view/51539 |
| Aporte de: |
| Sumario: | Both Adrift at Sea: A Vietnamese Boy's Story of Survival, written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (author) and Brian Deines (illustrator), and “American Address”, a poem included in Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again, refer to the voyage of the “boat people”, which is the name given to the Vietnamese refugees who escaped Vietnam after the war for a posterior resettlement in North America (particularly Canada and the United States). However, the texts present a different view of the new environment and its inhabitants, which becomes significant when considered within Sheppard’s theory of positionality. In this framework, the way entities are positioned with respect to one another is embedded in power relations and can either reproduce or challenge pre-existing configurations. Following this line of analysis, Forchuk Skrypuch’s text, which retells the true story of Tuan Ho, offers a reinforcement of the American paternalistic, savior-like discourse, through which North America is presented as a beacon of hope for the helpless refugees. In contrast, Lai’s poem unveils the hidden motives for the American generosity, such as the feeling of guilt from losing the war. Consequently, “American Address” can be framed within Viet Thanh Nguyen’s notion of minority discourse, one that challenges the official sources of History and offers a narrative that brings to light the distance between the personal version of the Vietnamese refugees, and the national version of North American countries about Vietnam. In this regard, North America built a statement based on forgetting and erasing both the violent implications of its participation in the war, as well as the inequalities ingrained in the notion of the American dream. This article considers how both texts address the same distance (between Vietnam and North America) from contrasting perspectives. In this way, the comparative methodology contributes to highlighting both sides of the same journey. |
|---|