Questions
for Daughter of Danang (2003)
NOTE: These questions are due on Thursday for TR classes and Friday for MWF classes.
Answer 2 of the 4 questions below in a short
response based on our viewing in Tuesday’s class. We’ll finish the film on Thursday, so you can
see if your ideas and predictions are correct.
1. Why do you think Heidi is really traveling to
Vietnam? What does she want to find
besides her mother, sisters, etc.? Do
you feel she is culturally prepared for what she encounters there? If not, what might she have done to better
prepare for this journey?
2. Is Heidi American or Vietnamese? How does she and others in the film weigh in
on this question? What does it
ultimately mean to be of one culture and not another? Is it speaking the language? Knowing the culture? Or simply one’s family and racial
identity? Can you be part of a culture
you don’t even know you’re part of? Or,
conversely, can you decide to be part of a culture that others would deny
you?
3. What do you think the outcome of Heidi’s trip
will be? She only planned a relatively
short, 7-day journey to Vietnam, and doesn’t seem to have long-term plans for coming back and/or bringing people back with her. How might this shape the end of their trip
and the future for both families?
4. For most Americans today, this film is a journey
into a history we know relatively little about: the Vietnam War. How is this film trying to bring back lost
pieces of history so that we can better understand our own culture? What surprised or confused you about the
history of the war as presented in the film?
Related to this, why is it important to know the history of the war to
understand Heidi and her mother’s story?
Ryan Jolly
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1:
I believe that Heidi is traveling to Vietnam to find her family and the culture that she was a part of at one point. I don't think that she was overly prepared for what she experienced in Vietnam. I understand that there are aspects of this experience that she could not prepare for, such as meeting her family and finding out if they would accept her as part of them. But I think that she could and may should have prepared herself more for the cultural shock of going from Tennessee to Vietnam, which is quite a different environment. If she could simply have learned some of the language, I believe that her experience could have been much different, and probably better. In addition, if she could have researched some of the differences between Americans and Vietnamese, such as how her family was very touchy, I think that she could have been more ready for the entire experience than she was.
Question 2:
In my opinion, Heidi is completely American. Though she is originally from Vietnam, she appears to have been completely "Americanized." Ultimately, to be a part of a culture, one must be completely integrated into that culture. I don't believe that Heidi is at all part of the Vietnam culture, simply because she has been away for so long. However, it does appear that she was a part of the culture, even though she didn't realize it. Everyone seemed to know who she was and everything about her, though she had no idea who they were. My conclusion is that there are two parts of a culture, the first being whether you personally believe that you are part of it: The second being whether others accept you as part of the culture. In this case, I don't believe that she thought she was part of the culture, but the Vietnamese believed that she was. So it seems that being part of a culture is very subjective.
Q.1
ReplyDeleteHeidi is looking for love. Her adoptive mother wasn’t much of a loving mother as she was a material mom. By that I mean that Heidi was pretty much disowned by her adoptive mom because she didn’t want to spend every waking minute with her. So when Heidi went to Vietnam she didn’t expect everyone wanting to hug her, hold her hand and pretty much love her as she is. She was also not very prepared for the environment as well as the non modern world her family lived in.
Q2.
Heidi is American. She knows nothing about her family, culture, or language. Those are major aspects in being who you are. Yes she may be born Vietnamese but really she knows nothing about it. She may choose to go back there and learn everything that would make her part f the culture but currently she is full American. Even the people who have known her for most of her life seen her grow up as an American child (for which she is half American). To be in a culture you need to accept yourself as well as have others accept you.
Elyse Marquardt
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1: Heidi is definitely looking for love and place to belong when she goes back to Vietnam to meet her family. She vaguely remembers her life there as a child, and ever since being brought into the home of an unloving American woman, she has longed to go back to that life and see if she can find the love there that she seems to recall. I don't know if she is prepared for the overwhelming affection which her mother pours out on her upon her arrival, for she seems taken aback by it. She is not culturally prepared at all, for she doesn't know the language and can't even carry on conversations with her own mother. It is a huge adjustment for her, and she is taking a little bit to get used to it all.
Question 2: Heidi probably sees herself as an American; but it seems like everyone else in her life still thinks of her as Vietnamese. Her own American family worked so hard to cover up her "Vietnamese-ness" that it is quite the indication that they never stopped thinking of her as a foreigner, and that they assumed all other Americans saw her that way as well. Once she gets to Vietnam, her birth family wholeheartedly accepts her into the household because in their minds, she never stopped being a member of their family and their culture.
Question 2
ReplyDeleteI believe Heidi is both, but if she could only be labeled one I would say she is more American than Vietnamese. That is what she remembers most in her life and that is the culture in which she grew up. So she best relates to America. While she was born in Vietnam, spent her early childhood there, and her biological family is there she is more American the Vietnamese. I believe the deciding factor is that she relates more to Americans and that is where she calls home.
Question 3
While it appears that Heidi is not planning on staying in Vietnam nor coming back I believe that once she starts to leave she will immediately begin to miss their constant touching and hugs. If she were to choose to never come back her family will feel abandoned and she will forever have a place in her heart missing. She will ultimately regret it. So I hope she will at least come back to see her family every now and then even if her home is in America.
Jessica Olivar
ReplyDelete1. I think Heidi is traveling to Vietnam because she wants to find that motherly love or family love that she has always longed for. She wants to belong somewhere especially since her adoptive mother basically disowned her. She was not prepared for the culture that she would face going to Vietnam at all! I think she should have prepared a year before she even decided to travel. She could have taken a class over their language and culture.
3. I think the outcome of her trip might be something that she does not plan. The cultures are very different from what she is used to so, I kind of see how she would not want to come back or take someone back with her, after all she just met them. I would give it time before I take any drastic measures. I think because of these circumstances Heidi and her family might drift apart a bit.
John Fields
ReplyDelete1. I believe she is travelling to Vietnam because of how her adopted mother treated her. She wanted to feel like she belonged and wanted to feel what it would be like to have a mother who treated her better. I don’t think she was prepared for her journey because first she could not properly communicate with her family because she didn’t know their language. Second I don’t think she was prepared because she didn’t study up on the culture of Vietnam and how they lived their lives without money.
2. Heidi is no doubt an American. She is of Vietnamese heritage, but not of their culture. Her family treats her as if she is part of their culture and in a way it seems that she might think it could be too much for her. She doesn’t speak the language and she doesn’t know anything about their lifestyle. I do believe you can be a part of a culture you don’t know, but it should be more about not being aware that you are a part of it.
Preston Hawkins
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1
Growing up, Heidi says her foster mother was not very affectionate, she did not have a father and I don't think she had any sibling either. By going to Vietnam, Heidi hopes to fill the void in her life left by the lack of family in the United States. Watching her interactions with her family, I do not believe Heidi was culturally prepared for her trip. She should have done research on the culture prior to visiting. She should have learned the mannerisms, how to eat, and especially the language.
Question 3
At the end of her trip when she goes home, I think there will be a bit of resentment towards her. Her family feels as if she is obligated to help them. When Heidi gave her sister some money, Heidi said that she was rude and expected more help from her in the future. I do not doubt that Heidi’s mother genuinely wanted to find her and be a part of her life, but I question the motives of her family. Could her relatives want her there partly just to help finance the family? I’m sure they love her but somewhere in their minds I think they see her as the family’s salvation.
Richard Helms
ReplyDelete1. She was far from prepared, she did not know any of the language and thought that it would be nothing but hugs and kisses once she got there. She did not ready herself to deal with problems within the family such as her sisters poverty. She went into it thinking it was a dream come true and up to this point she is connecting but she does seem to have some regret for coming.
3. I think the outcome of her trip with be her separating from her newly discovered family they seem to already be building tension. From what we last saw of it she seemed as if she was not enjoying herself as much as she did when she stepped off the plane just a few days prior.
Alison Green
ReplyDelete1). I believe Heidi is looking to find closure. She thinks her mother gave her up. She isn't culturally prepared at all. She doesn't speak the language, so she has no idea what they are saying half the time. She just really wants to see her mother again, see where she came from, and then leave.
3). Heidi has no intentions of staying, she has no intentions of taking anyone with her, and she is getting pretty annoyed. Her foster mother wasn't affectionate, so she feels uncomfortable on how "touchy-feely" everyone is. I believe there will be a big fight.
1. I think Heidi is really travelling to Vietnam for some sort of closer and a possible hope for future relations. I also think she was looking for what her adoptive mother never gave her, a loving family that wanted her for who she is not what she can provide. Heidi was not even remotely prepared for her encounter culturally or otherwise. She did not know the language at all, she did not know of any of the customs of Vietnam and she had set outcome in her mind. All these things need to be improved before she ever even decided to travel to Vietnam in the first place.
ReplyDelete2. Heidi while born Vietnamese is an American. Her adoptive mother forced Americanization on her from the get go and she slowly forgot she was Vietnamese originally. I say she is American because she knows English not Vietnamese but more over she knows nothing about Vietnamese culture and tradition. On top of all this she still knew her origin and chose the American culture over the Vietnamese one even though most of her childhood she had to keep her origins secret for fear of ridicule and bullying.
Hayden Blakemore
ReplyDelete1. I believe that Heidi is traveling to Vietnam for some closure, to know that there is a mother that still loves her. She wants to find a family that loves her still and hasn't abandoned her. When she arrived, she was greeted by a lot of the family, and this totally surprised, if not freaked her out a little. Meeting the rest of the family and even some of the village people also helped her realize that she is still loved very much, almost too much. To prepare better for the journey, she should have learned the language, background, and from older histories to that today.
2.Heidi is American. No matter who her real parents are, she was raised for nearly 20 years in America, where she learned the culture, language, people, everything. Even the aunt said in the video, Daughter of Danang, said that "We made a Southerner out of her real quick." Meaning that they taught her about America and she adopted it as her own county and became American. No matter how hard her family in Vietnam will try, she is American and nothing can truly change that, not even the daughter.
Savannah Lincoln
ReplyDeleteQ1. I think she's really traveling for closure for herself, not necessarily to meet her family. I don't think she's culturally prepared in any way, shape or form. She doesn't know the language or any of their ways. She could've been better prepared if she had taught herself a little about their culture. Maybe studied a documentary or read an essay. Tried to understand the basics of their language.
Q2. Heidi is definitely American. I don't think because you're born somewhere, it doesn't mean that's who you are. The way you grew up, the things you were taught is who you are. I'm three different tribes, but I consider myself seminole because those are the ways I grew up around. If you grow up with it and truly accept the ways, then I think that you're a part of that culture.
Kalli Mowdy
ReplyDelete2/5/15
Question 4: I think that many Americans would like to forget that the Vietnam War even happened. I think that is part of the reason that I know so little about it. What was surprising from the very beginning of the film for me was that I wasn’t even aware that just in order to shine a better light on the war, the United States brought back these “orphaned” children from Vietnam to be adopted. It is so sickening in a sense because many of these kids had families, they had brothers and sisters and they were taken away from all that. I think the film in a sense is showing us that bad things do happen, but we can’t just erase the past and forget it. We can’t ask Americans turn a blind eye from the harmful things we have done. Knowing the history of the Vietnam War is just so important in general, but to really understand the thoughts and the feelings of Heidi’s mom in the show, you have to know what horrible things were going on. The Vietnamese soldiers were burning mixed children alive, and as a parent how could you stand to even take the chance of letting that happen. Heidi’s mom probably thought that the best thing to do at the time was to send Heidi away, to protect her. It’s just one of the numerous sad and tragic outcomes of the war.
Question 2: If you look at the genetics part of it Heidi is both, fifty-fifty. If you look at the culture of it though, I would say she is American, in the way she speaks, acts, and her beliefs. To be part of a culture you have to immerse yourself in the community and believe that you’re a part of it. I think she too thinks that she is American. She said that all through her childhood she was told by her adopted mother to never say that she was from Vietnam. Even her teachers had said that they Americanized Heidi quickly. They said she looked the part of a tan southern girl in Tennessee. I don’t think just being descended from a certain place or ethnicity makes you part of that culture. I mean, yes I am of Choctaw heritage, but I wouldn’t say I am part of that culture. I don’t know the Choctaw language, beliefs, traditions, anything. But you can bet I put that I am Native American on every form I get, which is kind of pathetic. But too many times I think people forget the difference from bloodlines and cultures. There are certainly instances to that people are part of cultures that they don’t realize they are a part of. Even a high school or college for instance, has a certain culture, a way of doing things. Many people fail to realize that it’s a culture. I do certainly believe that you can become a part of a culture that you don’t necessarily belong to. I think of all the clubs in a sense at East Central, like the Native American club, you don’t have to be Native American to join. There is a girl in my sorority that is an officer in the club and she is for sure not a single drop Native American, but I can assure you she is way more a part of the culture than I am.
1. I think a big reason Heidi is traveling to Vietnam is because she is just curious. If I had little specks of memory coming from my childhood I 100% believe that I would try and pursue the memories and see the connection. I think ultimately she would like to find a little piece of herself. I think she really wants to see her culture and herself within it. I do not really think she is prepared for what she is going to find, but I think she finds way more than she ever expected to. Maybe if she had researched their culture a little more she would understand eating at the table and other things like that.
ReplyDelete2. I think Heidi’s outcome is going to be very positive. I think she’ll finally know that somebody loves her no matter what. She will finally know that little piece of her that has been missing these past years. This trip is going to allow her the opportunity to see herself as both Vietnamese and American. I think the biggest thing she is going to get from this trip is love. She said that she can only remember her mom telling her she loves her one time, and her Vietnamese mother told her so many as soon as she got there. I think it will have a positive aspect on her life and the life of her mother because now her mother has closure and she knows that Heidi knows she was forced to give her up.
Christian Beeler
ReplyDelete1. To me, it seemed that Heidi went to Vietnam, not only to conjure feelings from her childhood when she saw her family, but also to conjure up memories that were probably long gone by this point. I can only imagine that she felt, not only that she was torn from her family, but also torn away from her home... Her culture, memories, the childhood she would have had with actual brothers and sisters and a mom that truly cared. I would say that she was probably not as prepared as she would have liked to be when she relived the culture of Vietnam so many years later. I think that finding out where her mother was and that her mother had tried communicating with her kind of blinded her from anything other than reuniting with her. There was one point shortly after Heidi arrived in Vietnam that she was walking the streets and she was amazed by people cooking on the streets. She passed a store near the road and she said, "Hi," to a man, as if she expected him to understand, and he responded with his native language, and all she could do was laugh awkwardly, and respond in English again saying, "I don't know." There was another point after she actually reunited with her mother that her mother was having her recite some statements in her native tongue, and she would repeat it, everyone would laugh, and Heidi would say, "What did I just say?" She didn't care about taking preparations like learning the language, experiencing the almost too-spicy food, but if it were me, I'm almost positive the only thing on my mind would be that I would be reuniting with my family, and as soon as I had the funds to make the trip, I would make the trip.
3. I can only imagine how traumatizing saying goodbye will be this time around. I understand that it was probably the best thing in Heidi and her mother's life when they were reunited after so many years, but how much more painful will that make their goodbyes? Or will it be more of a sense of relief once Heidi leaves? Like she has finally found that missing part of herself because she has been reunited with the root of her culture, although she is American by every standard. I am anxious to see how the remainder of this film turns out. I think it will be a happy-medium. She will experience both, heartache of leaving again, but she will feel relief. She finally got to see her mother again. What a testimony.
Faith Armstrong
ReplyDelete1. I think Heidi is travelling to Vietnam to find her mother because she has all of her good memories of her mother that are fading fast. She wants to see what it is like in Vietnam because she hasn’t been there since she was a child. She probably has questions that she wants to ask her mother. Who wouldn’t? She wants to find the love from her family that her adopted mother never gave her. I don’t think that she feels culturally prepared because she can’t speak any Vietnamese and she knows nothing about the culture. Instead of going into it completely blinded, she could have researched it some. I don’t know how much research she did, if any, but that would have been helpful. Maybe she could have even discussed with the lady who went with her what it was like where she was going.
2. I would say that Heidi is Vietnamese. I feel as though she, and everyone else in the film say that she is American because she has grown up in America. However, I’m not sure that I would agree that she is American. I think that your culture is ultimately your family and racial identity, now whether or not you choose to live in your culture is another story. Many would disagree, but it would be the equivalent of me saying that I want to be Vietnamese, theoretically speaking. If I said I knew the language, I lived there for a number of years, and I was very familiar with their culture and way of life, therefore, that makes me Vietnamese. They would probably laugh at me, and everyone here would probably laugh at me as well because no matter how hard I tried to be Vietnamese, that’s simply not who I am. I’m an American. That’s not to say that you can’t live in the culture and speak the language. In my opinion, it is highly possible to be part of a culture you don’t know you’re part of. Heidi didn’t realize she was part of the Vietnamese culture. She thought she was an American because that’s all people had been telling her. They didn’t let her have any education about her Vietnamese background. I could see where if p had grown being an American, you would think that you were American, but to reiterate what I said earlier, that doesn’t make her American. I also think that you could decide to be part of a culture that isn’t yours. If I wanted to be Vietnamese, I could easily learn about their culture and who they are, which, in a sense, is becoming part of their culture. Still yet, I would not be Vietnamese.
Krysta Brown
ReplyDelete1. The main reason Heidi is traveling to Vietnam is to find her birth mother. However, she did absolutely nothing to learn about her original culture nor their language. She chose ignorance and when she was greeted with every bit of culture that she did not know about she got angry. She made no effort to truly learn anything and so she found anything different and chose to become angry and slam a door on her family.
3. The trip ended badly not because she had poor planning alone. The trip ended badly because she was not open to the option of having her family in her life for a long period of time. If she had been open to the possibility of helping her relatives who wholeheartedly wanted her in their life her trip and life could have ended so much better.
Ashlyn Thompson
ReplyDelete1. I think Heidi went to Vietnam mainly looking for her birth mother, but also love. Love that her adoptive mother didn't give her. She says in the movie that she went looking for someone to love and care for her, but all of these people were just "touchy feely." She did nothing to prepare for the trip as far as learning the language, learning maybe what they're about and their culture. When she was greeted by her family in an unfamiliar way she got upset and tried to shut herself out. She could have better prepared by learning about the culture and what is most important to them. She could have also learned the language a little bit. Maybe if she learned all of this she wouldn't have been so upset or would have understood them a little more.
3. It seems that Heidi does not plan on coming back to Vietnam anytime soon. She doesn't act like she enjoys it too much. Then again, having to leave her mother a second time could be heartbreaking. Even though Heidi is in Vietnam she seems to still be "distant" somehow. I feel like it will end badly because she went to find her mother and the love that her adoptive mother never gave her, but her birth family is very "touchy-feely" and that is something that she isn't used to nor likes. She also doesn't seem to be anxious to bring her family back with her.