PATRIARCHAL COLONIALISM AND EVERYDAY RESISTANCE AT THE DINNER TABLE
For some years I tried to liberate my mother, Vân, from centuries of misogyny and oppression. Perhaps not surprisingly, I had little if any success, and to make matters worse, Mum was less than appreciative.
The paltry results of my efforts became clear to me each evening at dinnertime. The problem was that Mum toiled over every evening meal, preparing several lavish dishes with great artistry, effort, and love. So while my palate and stomach grew accustomed to being pampered, Mum's cooking tended to upset my liberal disposition and New-Age sensitivities. Whenever I asked Mum to teach me how to make beef noodle soup, Vietnamese spring rolls, a ragout or one of her other specialties, she shooed me away. "Go set the table and sit down. I don't need any help from you." After many heated kitchen confrontations, I grudgingly accepted the three pillars of seemingly regressive reasoning upon which my mother based her culinary hegemony: First, that she viewed her cooking with great pride as a critical contribution to the household's well-being that only she could make; second, that it was not for young men (like me) to know how to cook; and third, that "real" cooking cannot be measured and emulated like a scientific experiment but rather must be implanted into girls from a very young age and developed over time into something that resembles both a trait and an art-form.
About a year ago I determined that if I couldn't liberate Mum from the kitchen, I should at least show her appropriate deference at the dinner table. And so, I let my chopsticks rest and glared disapprovingly at my father, brother, and cousins as they devoured their meals before Mum could even sit down. "Why are you holding back?" Dad asked between mouthfuls. "Not hungry? " I coolly explained that since Mum went to a great deal of trouble to make our dinner, I thought it disrespectful of us to start eating before her. No one took much notice; no one that is, except for Mum.
Consciously or otherwise, she frustrated my ravenous appetite and modernday morality by placing dinner on the table and then rushing off to wash her hands or change her shirt, to force me to start eating. Stubbornly, I always waited until she sat down. "You first, Mum," I said through clenched teeth. "Thank you, Son," she sardonically responded before feigning compliance by picking up a small piece of pickled cabbage from a side dish and then waiting for me to tuck in to the main course.
"How could she be so obstinately attached to her backwardness? " I wondered. "It's as if she's embracing her own oppression." There were times at the dinner table when I could empathize with the French and American colonialists; they, too, had tried to force their programs for emancipation and grand civilizing missions onto the Vietnamese, only to be driven away utterly dejected.
WASHING UP AS A CONTEXT FOR PERSONAL-HISTORICAL REFLECTION
One night, after a meal spiced with conflict and subversion, I was left to wash the dishes and took it upon myself to empathize with Mum. Between warm suds and the clinking of cups, I wondered why it was vital for her to start eating after me. I strongly suspected that it had something to do with her propensity for self-sacrifice, which was perhaps more deserving of admiration than frustration. Suddenly, I felt ashamed, knowing how much my mother had sacrificed not only for me, but also for her entire family.
I contemplated how Vân had cared and looked out for her family ever since she was a young girl. Probably her sense of duty had something to do with the fact that her parents desperately wanted her to be a boy, as they already had two daughters and Van's two older brothers had died in their infancy. Sadly, it was generally accepted in 1944 when Vân was born in a town just outside of Sài Gòn that "One hundred women are not worth one testicle."1 Throughout her early childhood years, Vân's parents dressed her like a boy and cut her hair short, in the belief that it would improve their chances of bearing a son. They were eventually successful, but the effect of these ruses, I conjectured, was that from the earliest age Vân knew she was the unchosen one and at some stage gained an enduring impression that she had to constantly prove her worth or make up for some great failing.
Throughout her adolescence Vân took particularly good care of her older sister, Loan, who had contracted polio and had to be carried everywhere or supported on a child's bike (her limbs being too bowed to ride a regular bicycle). Vân was only twelve when her father's fondness for gambling made it necessary for her sell lottery tickets after school to keep the family afloat. Despite the distractions and burdens in her domestic life, she completed her secondary education and in 1966 got a job at the electricity authority in Sài Gòn. Here she met a young man named Thiet and in 1970 joined his family. Nevertheless, Vân continued to support her younger siblings through school and her mother through old age.2
Viet Nam's reunification following the fall of Sài Gòn in 1975 brought about a crackdown on political freedoms and foreshadowed widespread economic impoverishment. Not long after the birth of Vân and Thiet's second son (the author) in 1977, they concluded that there was no future for them in the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. Like hundreds of thousands of others, Vân and Thiet undertook a perilous journey on a rickety overcrowded boat in search of a better life. Throughout their torturous five-day journey, the young parents were scorched by the sun and soaked in the feces of their boys, who were suffering from dysentery. The two infants hovered near death during the family's eight-month stay on the Malaysian refugee island of Pulau Bidong. Vân and Thiet worried incessantly about whether they had made the right decision in leaving Viet Nam and risking their sons' lives. Eventually the infants recovered, and the family settled in Australia where, despite expansive oceans and political divides, Vân maintained ties with her family in Viet Nam. Together, she and Thiet worked tirelessly to raise their sons, for whom they sacrificed everything so that the children would want for nothing. At the same time the couple supported those left behind in Viet Nam: funding small business ventures; desperately trying to sponsor relatives to join them in Australia; and paying for heart operations, funerals, and marriages in addition to giving alms every New Year. "You know," remarked Vân to her son and biographer,
when I was young I never felt like I had anything for myself. As far as I was concerned, I didn't deserve anything . . . I didn't know what security and happiness were until after we came to Australia. Even then it was a struggle . . . and to this very day I can't really be content until my family in Viet Nam and here in Australia is content first.3
Where did this (extra)ordinary woman whom I call "Mum" get her enduring strength, undying sense of duty, and proclivity for sacrifice? By what ethic was she guided? One day I decided to ask her and find out for myself.
MEANINGS, MODERNITIES, AND METHODOLOGIES
Before the results of this inquiry are presented, it is necessary to outline some of the issues concerning definitions, representations, and methodologies that have been confronted and contemplated in the process of compiling this biographical essay, if only because the reader must know something of the ethics and limitations of this work to have confidence in it and, one hopes, appreciate its content.
The first issue concerns conceptualizations of "tradition" and "modernity." In both cases what is not envisioned is a temporal or spatial sphere of uniform content demarcated by concrete boundaries. Nor is it contended that one is inherently good and the other irredeemably bad. More specifically, tradition is not always a shackle on individual freedom and progress or a fixed source of identity enrichment. In the same vein, modernity is not a Weberian "iron cage" that one either totally inhabits or constantly struggles to escape.4 Rather, in both cases what is conceived is a historical set of attitudes concerning the construction of knowledge that emerges, struggling against counter-attitudes in what can be referred to as an "economy of power."5
For the purposes of this essay, "modernity" and "tradition" are used with a dose of caution and irony so as to avoid hubristic monological interpretations. They are harnessed as temporary conceptual tools rather than as fixed bipolar opposites and were discussed with Vân so as to determine definitions that were both personally customized and historically rigorous. "Tradition" refers to the far-from-isolated nor necessarily anachronistic era directly prior to the French colonization of Indochina in the late iSoos. During this period, Viet Nam was ruled by the Nguyen dynasty that Emperor Gia Long established in 1802. Gia Long's reign heralded the resurgence of a conservative Confucian ethic. Most notably, he introduced a twenty-two-volume legal code closely modeled on the Chinese Ch'ing Dynasty's (1644-1911) legal code. This "new-as-old" legislation undermined the official status of women to such an extent that, following the black letter of the law, a husband was obliged to divorce his wife if she committed one of seven offenses: infertility; adultery; neglect of parents-in-law; talkativeness; theft; jealousy; and incurable diseases.6
French colonialism was the catalyst for the introduction of "modern" Western technologies and notions of individualism, liberalism, and science, which eroded elements of the Confucian conservatism advocated by the Nguyen emperors. It is important to note that I do not suggest French colonialism (which also facilitated totalitarian rubber plantations and the proliferation of brothels) practically promoted the emancipation of Vietnamese women or the Vietnamese more generally. Rather, it allowed for the filtering and stimulation of revolutionary ideas that were debated, adopted, and customized by the Vietnamese before being mobilized against both pre-existing and new forms of colonial and patriarchal oppression.
Roughly speaking, then, this essay examines Vân's complex interaction with nineteenth-century Vietnamese-Confucianism and twentieth-century Franco-Vietnamese enlightenment ideals. Some will argue that adopting this indeterminate turning point mistakes Chinese colonial oppression for some "true essence" of Vietnamese tradition and French colonial oppression for some "true essence" of modernity, thereby promoting a demeaning projection of Vietnamese cultural provincialism. Such accusations rely upon simplistic and misleading distinctions between Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese and disregard the, at times, admirable and potent capacity of the Vietnamese for tactical cultural poaching. Take, for example, the beloved legend of Âu Lac, which tells of the birth of the Vietnamese people from the fairy queen Âu Co and the dragon lord Lac Long Quân. There is evidence to suggest that when this legend was coined, Lac Long Quân was portrayed as an eel-like creature rather than a sea dragon.7 His reptilian evolution from eel to dragon occurred as a result of a developing Vietnamese admiration for Chinese dragons. Such is the enduring nature of this admiration that today it would be absurd to regard an eel king as the traditional and one true mythical progenitor of the Vietnamese race. Similar assessments can be made of the Vietnamese national script (quoc ngu'), the epic poem Kieu, and the long tunic (áo dài), which were heavily influenced by external forces and yet are no less Vietnamese for that. As such, this essay seeks to examine the Vietnamese and Van's appropriation of foreign ideas and practices just as much as it does their acquisition and submission to them.
In addition, it must be pointed out that this adoption of Western intervention as an imprecise and still-open historical turning point between tradition and modernity in Vân's Viet Nam should not be uncritically applied to other contexts. Viet Nam's long and rich history, in which Confucianism and women have had varying levels of influence on Vietnamese society, has had many such turning points.8 For instance, the Hong Due legal code, which was introduced in about 1475 by Emperor Lê Thánh Tông, was highly progressive and egalitarian in terms of the property ownership, inheritance, and divorce rights that it provided to women. Indeed, evidence suggests that Vietnamese society in pre-Neolithic times (circa 8000 B.C.) was matriarchal.9 It is not uncommon, then, in Viet Nam (and elsewhere) for the traditions of yesterday to become the modern practices of tomorrow.
Finally, some statements have to be made in justification of the biographical process itself, which is intrinsically transgressive, possesses parasitic propensities, and has as much potential to dehumanize as it does to promote understanding. For these reasons, while this work condemns colonialist and patriarchal oppression, to some extent it also embodies a comparable means of control; that is, an attempt by a politically motivated author to force his grimacing characters into ill-fitting iron suits of coherence, order and eloquence. The harshness of this paradox can be tempered-both by the author and the reader-with an element of reflexivity and humility, particularly in regard to the story's representational scope. And so, it must be acknowledged that this is not the story of ordinary Vietnamese women, but rather a story about one urban southern Vietnamese woman. Nor is this the story of Vân Huynh: after reading (or writing) it, one should not be left with the impression that she is fully known or knowable. Furthermore, on a related point, this essay is not an unsullied presentation of a specimen totally isolated and objectively observed. On the contrary, it is also the observer's story. And, as in the kitchen, the relationship between the "writer subject" and "written-about object" is one in which power and positions of exploiter and exploited are far from fixed or self-evident. With this in mind, it is important to note that this biographical essay is a starting point rather than an end point, an attempt to make enigmas intelligible rather than to solve them definitively. It offers a peephole perspective, not a telephoto or widescreen lens view, and one hopes that as a consequence it is all the more intriguing and effective as a guide to what might be achieved and should be avoided when trying to understand an other. With these issues balancing precariously in my mind, I approached Vân with a question: "Who were your role models during your childhood and teenage years? "
A LITERARY EXPLORATION OF MUM AND "TRADITIONAL" VIETNAMESE FEMININITY
"I didn't have many real-life role models. Characters in stories probably had the most influence on me during my formative years," was her response.10 Vân is thus characteristic of many modern Vietnamese who have shaped and been shaped by a miscellany of books, fables, proverbs, plays, and songs. Indeed, referring to both spoken and written forms of literature, one expert asserted that "Vietnam is and always has been one of the most intensely literary civilizations on the face of the planet."11 Accordingly, it appears that Van's ideal woman took form within a sea of literary characters and through a complex process of cultural osmosis, in which the fish are not always aware of the water that sustains them. Such was the efficacy of this process that years later, after she learned about the fundamental biological components of human beings, Vân maintained that "There are certain elemental characteristics of a Vietnamese woman, an essence that is socialized into her genes."12 In an attempt to comprehend this particular essence, I listened to Vân recite perhaps the most enduring narrative in her vast memory bank of stories, the fable of Luu Bình and Duong Le:
Once upon a time there were two young men named Luu Bình and Duong Le, who were best friends. Luu Bìinh came from a prosperous family, while Duong Le was not so lucky. Being a good friend, Luu Bình helped Duong Le with his finances whenever he could.
Luu Bình, however, was a carefree and profligate character, and it was not long before he squandered away all his wealth. Meanwhile, Duong Le studied hard and became a mandarin. The tables were turned, then, when one day Luu Bình came to Duong Le for a handout. He was refused and, incensed, exclaimed, "After all that I have done for you!"
Feeling betrayed and despondent, Luu Bình went to a tavern with his last few coins. He found consolation in some rice wine and by talking to a woman named Châu Long. "There is only one way for you to get back at him," she said. "If you study hard and become a mandarin, your friend will realize that he was wrong and will have to respect you as his colleague."
"But how will I do this? " asked Luu Bình, "I have no means."
Feeling sorry for him, Châu Long responded, "I will support you and you can pay me back after you have become successful."
For years the two lived together in a small hut. To Luu Bình's amazement, Châu Long always found enough money to sustain him through his studies, despite the fact that she was a low-paid silk weaver. He fell in love with her, but she refused his advances, saying, "Wait until you're a mandarin."
When the day finally arrived, Luu Bình returned home triumphant from his exams to find that the hut was empty, Châu Long had vanished. He searched desperately for her, to no avail.
Still depressed, Luu Bình sought after Duong Le to tell him of his achievements. When he reached Duong Le's house he was astonished to find Châu Long there. His old companion confessed: "You see, I am a true friend. If I had given you the money years ago you would have squandered it. Instead, I gave up my wife so that you might find success and self-cultivation."13
Through the story of Luu Bình and Duong Le, generations of Vietnamese children learned that true friendship, in fact any relationship of value, necessitates an element of sacrifice. This requires more than simple sharing, as is often encouraged by Western parents to their children. Sharing is temporal and ownership remains fixed, while sacrifice requires that one party give up something, perhaps even risk the relationship itself, for the ultimate well-being of the other. Just as notable in the fable is the exemplary Châu Long. Her absolute subservience and chastity encapsulates a traditional image of the Vietnamese woman as a chattel, a loyal wife and reluctant seductress.
These esteemed feminine characteristics are also present in The Tale of Kieu,14 an epic 3,254-line poem that was (and continues to be) comprehensively taught in every Vietnamese high school to the extent that many students, including Vân, can recite long verses from memory. Written by Nguyen Du in the early 1800s, the poem centers on a talented and beautiful young woman, Kieu, who reneges on a promise to marry her true love, Kim Trong, choosing instead to sell herself into slavery and prostitution to pay for her father's release from jail.15 Kieu endures a chain of sorrowful tribulations, always regretting a past life in which she must have committed the most heinous crimes to deserve such hardship, but also remaining virtuous and true so as to rectify the karmic imbalance, if not in this life, then surely in the next. Finally, at a romantic nighttime meeting when she is given the opportunity to unite with her longlost love, Kieu forgoes unadulterated happiness and gives her younger sister to Kim Trong, believing that she is no longer pure and deserving.
"My fate is fixed," said she
"what is my body worth? ". . .
"Love stands on every street
to satisfy your appetite.
Why waste your time tonight
caressing such a withered flower? " . . .
"[T]o love each other now
is ten times worse than faithlessness!" . . .
Hand clasping sweet hand tight,
each thought the other wise and chaste
Kim lit a candle, placed
more incense on the charcoal of
the brazier, like their love
Warm and bright they saw it shine . . .
"I have found again
my honor and good name tonight."16
Kieu stands at the pinnacle of traditional Vietnamese femininity in both a Confucian and Buddhist sense, a self-sacrificing woman of great virtue and also willfully acquiescent to her destiny.17
Another Vietnamese classic that Vân read enthusiastically was Dang Tran Côn's The Lament of the Soldier's Wife.18 Written in the eighteenth century, it tells the enduring story of a woman left at home while her husband goes to war for the emperor. In this poignant tale of old-fashioned love and loyalty, the author rebukes the social destruction of war and lauds the devotion of so many wives who have waited for their husbands to return from the front. The popular folktale of the Shadow Soldier also portrays a woman whose husband goes to war, leaving her to care for the child inside her and an aged mother-in-law.19 After the woman gives birth to a boy, her mother-in-law dies, and she is left with only her infant son for company. To comfort the little boy (and most probably herself), the mother tells her son every evening that his father is the shadow on the wall. One day, when his real father returns, the son proclaims that he could not possibly be his father because his father only comes after dusk. The soldier is enraged and accuses his wife of adultery. Overwhelmed with shock and shame, she is unable to refute him and, believing that she has no other way to reclaim her dignity, the wife drowns herself. Afterwards, the young boy introduces his father to the shadow on the wall, thereby vindicating his mother, who was faithful to the very end.
Predominant nineteenth-century Vietnamese feminine characteristics were more directly conveyed to Vân through the Confucian notions of the three submissions (tam tòng) and the four virtues (tú dúe), which are summarized in the following popular proverbs:20
A daughter obeys her father,
A wife obeys her husband,
A widow obeys her son.21
Every young woman must fully practice and scrupulously conform to four virtues: be skillful in her domestic work (công), be serene in her beauty (dung), show etiquette in her speech (ngôn), and show piety in her principles (hanh).22
The persuasiveness of feminine virtues was bolstered by exhortations against their polar opposites, such as licentiousness, lethargy, gluttony, and greed. Pedagogical songs embodying these messages were all the more effective because they were sung to and by young girls with whimsical derision.
The seven (wicked) specialties of girls: one, tittle-tatting; two, leaning lazily and wistfully against pillars; three, chasing after boys; four, snacking between meals; five, avoiding work; six, frequently resting; seven, being hasty and careless.23
Vân did not simply digest these sayings without judgment or revision. On the contrary, her undulating journey through adolescence was one of continual synthesis and reinterpretation. She believed, for example, that doctrines like the three female submissions should not be understood literally as a simple domination of male over female. Rather, the three submissions should be read within the context of a grander notion of Confucian benevolence, in which a father has to care for his daughter, a husband has to defer to his wife, and a son has to respect his mother. Where this unspoken contract, hierarchical but not necessarily exploitative, was broken, then there was the theoretical potential, Vân believed, for a woman to temporarily revise her status to maintain both social stability and justice for the individual. Vân thus applied a radical spin on the preconditions and rationale for traditional feminine roles in Viet Nam. The next two sections examine some of the pre-modern and modern influences in her life and the literature that encouraged such interpretations and appropriations.
A LITERARY EXPLORATION OF MUM AND "TRADITIONAL" VIETNAMESE FEMININE RESISTANCE24
"There's no shortage of strong and brave women in Vietnamese history and in stories to whom I and many others have looked for inspiration" remarked Vân, referring to the fact that not all traditional Vietnamese feminine role models are meek and submissive. "Trieu Thi Trinh and the Trung sisters, for instance, are well known for their bravery and commitment to national independence."25
In 248 A.D., at the age of twenty-three, Trieu Thi Trinh led a revolt against occupying Chinese forces atop a gigantic war elephant and wearing a golden tunic.26 Her revolutionary personal-as-political pronouncements were both shocking and inspiring:
I only want to ride the wind and walk the waves, slay the big whale of the Eastern sea, clean up our frontiers, and save the people from drowning. Why should I imitate others, bow my head, stoop over, and be a slave? Why resign myself to menial housework?27
Legend has it that Lady Trieu was nine feet tall, her three-foot breasts were strapped over her shoulders for battle and her voice rang like a temple bell, putting fear into the hearts of men.28 The revolt was suppressed in part because Lady Trieu's army was small and unprepared for siege warfare. However, Lady Trieu also had an Achilles heel. She could bathe in the blood of her enemies but abhorred even a speck of dirt and grime. Knowing this, a Chinese general sent his troops out naked "kicking up dust like wild animals," at the sight of which the great woman fled in disgust, leaving her army in despair.29 With her troops defeated, Lady Trieu committed suicide, only to reclaim some sense of victory in the other world when she haunted the Chinese general who orchestrated her defeat.30 The spirit of Lady Trieu caused a plague that could only be repelled by the hanging of wooden phalluses over doors.31 Later, she appeared in the dreams of Vietnamese revolutionaries, offering support and guidance. Her deeds, words, and aspirations would be celebrated through the centuries by even the most conservative of dynasties.
Continued from page 3.
Perhaps even more famous than Lady Trieu are the two Trung sisters. According to legend, in 40 A.D. Chinese soldiers killed the husband of the eldest sister, Trung Trac. Subsequently, the sisters raised an army and drove the invaders away, ruling as queens for two years, during which time they abolished taxes before being defeated by a resurgent Chinese force. Even then, popular (and Vân's) belief has it that the two sisters made one last great sacrifice to the nation by drowning themselves in the Hát Giang river. Almost two millennia later, their achievements and dedication are still celebrated by Vietnamese. In the process, however, their story has been imbued with patriarchal patriotism. There is, in fact, little evidence to suggest that Trung Trac's husband was killed by the Chinese prior to the uprising. Rather, his murder was manufactured by those who could not or did not want to believe that a wife could ever lead her husband into politics and battle.32 In this vein, the eminent anticolonialist of the early twentieth century, (Mr.) Phan Boi Châu, composed a drama about the Trung sisters in which they were skillfully appropriated to promote the movement for national independence.33 Phan Boi Châu portrayed the killing of Trung Trac s husband as a catalyst for the release of the sisters' innate nationalistic fervor.34 He thereby shifted Confucian feminine notions of self-sacrifice and piety from the home to the nation. Phan Boi Châu urged that when a young woman was teased about whether she was married yet, she should reply, "Yes, his surname is Viet and his given name Nam. He is more than three thousand years of age, has resisted the Han dynasty and beaten the Ming, and yet he does not look old."35 For the sake of being "realistic" however, Phan Boi Châu constructed in the play a patriarchal hierarchy of values and traits that left men unquestionably on top and in the center.36 Thus, when Trung Trac loses her nerve in the face of adversity, she is rebuked by her younger sister: "Come now, we can't give way to ordinary female emotions. We've got to get out and take care of military matters."37
The elusive poet of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Ho Xuân Huong, proved far more difficult to appropriate for the purposes of men and the state. The daughter of a concubine and a concubine herself, Ho Xuân Huong's poetry presented a powerful critique of the Confucian submissions and virtues that had been ascribed to and by so many Vietnamese women. Why should a woman be subservient to a man or anyone else for her entire life? How many women had been abused and kept down by men because of their adherence to supposedly virtuous forms of speech and action? What purpose did feminine chastity serve other than to fulfill the desires of men to own and exploit women? Why shouldn't a woman have just as much freedom, justice, and sexual pleasure as a man? And why shouldn't she be able to define what freedom, justice, and sexual pleasure mean to her? These were but some of the courageous questions that Ho Xuân Hu'ong asked through her poetry in an effort to highlight the patriarchal double standards and institutionalized oppression within Vietnamese society. In a masterful and mischievous use of metaphor, she harnessed the popular imagery of food to reproach these injustices and at the same time celebrate the stoic ability of women to subsist and subvert from within. Few poets could match her bravado or capacity to express the inexpressible:
Jackfruit
My body is like a jackfruit on the tree,
My skin is rough and my flesh thick,
Honorable sir, if you like me then stake me,38
Please don't finger me, my sap will stain your hands.39
Drifting Dumplings40
My body is white and my lot in life round,
Seven times floated and three times sunk
In the mountains and rivers (of my homeland).
Firm or runny, it depends on the hands that knead me,
Yet I preserve the crimson purity within.41
Ho Xuân Huong also wrote poems attacking established institutions such as the imperial court, pagodas, religiosity, and polygamy at the same time she promoted and explored the intricacies of free love, single motherhood, vaginal desire, and shit. Not surprisingly, she was widely condemned as obscene and anarchical by her contemporaries.42 And when official condemnation and censorship could not contain her message, scholars tried to erase her oeuvre from the annals of history by accusing her of plagiarism and asserting that only a man could produce such explicit material.43
Nevertheless, more than one hundred and fifty years later, when Ván was in high school, Ho Xuân Huong's poems remained in popular circulation. Even then, however, in an era of self-professed enlightenment and equality, they were not readily taught in schools.44 Perhaps this would have pleased the supreme iconoclast, as she would not have wanted her work to be sanitized and fetishized by bureaucrats and censors. More important that it survive and be disseminated by young women like Ván, through hushed whispers and concealed scraps of paper, in all its intended filth, beauty, goriness, and wisdom.
Inspired by Lady Trieu, the Trung sisters and Ho Xuân Huong, Ván gained the impression that even if the world was not ostensibly inclined toward the feminine, there were tactical means by which a woman could make do and perhaps even excel. Ván was particularly aware of the patterns of oppression, resistance and appropriation in the life stories of Vietnamese heroines. Through courage, cunning, and personal sacrifice, each had overcome great hardship and achieved significant prestige. Nevertheless, their lives and legacy were continually dogged by incumbent patriarchal powers. Ván would become acutely aware that her fight was never-ending; that to get through everyday life she would need great prudence, vigilance, and endeavor as victories could swiftly turn into defeats and vice versa. Many years later she would comment to her son and biographer:
From a very young age, I abhorred anything approaching an "easy come, easy go" attitude. I knew that I had to put my entire heart, soul, and energy into life and never give up. Your grandfather, he was a wonderful man but was prone to gambling. He believed in luck and fate and used to say in times of despair, "The heavens conceive elephants and bestow the grass for them to eat."45 That sort of means "things will take care of themselves." I didn't agree. I couldn't accept fate or resign myself to the charity of the heavens.46
Accordingly, Ván became adept at meticulously preparing herself and her loved ones for every possible scenario in life, especially the worst ones. Her ability to sense the slightest hint of danger suggests the existence of an (extra)ordinary human radar that is both far-reaching and ever-attentive. This radar would prove critical in years to come, protecting her loved ones from the havoc of the 1968 Tet Offensive, the Orwellian oppression of post-19/5 Viet Nam, the pirates and villains that plagued her family's escape from their homeland, and would somehow enable her to always know when her teenage son was sneaking home late at night. Her incredulity toward the heavenly conception and care of elephants also reflects a conception of the individual as capable of forging her or his own destiny. It is to the literary origins and practical manifestations of this notion that this biographical essay now turns.
A LITERARY EXPLORATION OF MUM AND THE "MODERN" INDIVIDUAL WOMAN IN VIETNAM
During her adolescent years, Vân also read scores if not hundreds of modern Vietnamese novels, which molded her self- and world image. For Vân and many others, the most popular and enduring works in this genre were created by the Self-Strength Literary Group (Tu Luc Van Dòan), whose members in the 1930s sought to modernize Vietnamese society through their literature, journalism, and political activity. The group was stridently urban and Western-oriented, to the extent that in 1936 one of its members, Hoàng Dao, issued ten theses for a new life, the first of which was "Following the new, completely and decisively following the new."47
When Vân was in eighth grade, she was faced with the terrifying challenge of making her first-ever class presentation, a challenge that would serve as her first encounter in a long-running collision and collusion with individualism and modernity. The task before her was to analyze the Self-Strength Literary Group novel, The Flower Vendor.48 In The Flower Vendor, authors Nhat Linh and Khai Hung skillfully illustrate the tensions between tradition and modernity and cogently assert the efficacy of Western individualism and romantic love. To nurture her blind husband and save enough money for an operation that would restore his sight, the eponymous flower vendor works tirelessly day and night shouldering her wares to the market. Despite (and in part because of) his wife's old-fashioned loyalty and assiduousness, as soon as her husband regains his vision, he cheats on the flower vendor and leaves her for two upmarket call girls. In fact, goes the moral of the story, it was the flower vendor who could not see. Blinded by piety, she could not prevent the neglect nor resist the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her husband until her chance to blossom had almost passed. Nhat Linh and Khai Hung's message is one of both admiration and condemnation for the traditional Vietnamese woman, whose meekness and adherence to old-fashioned obligations can so often compromise both her own well-being and universal (liberal) notions of social justice.
Vân read the book with the weight of worlds upon her. She understood the imagery and meaning within, but such was her fear of public speaking that she could not savor the story line or recognize any correlation with her own circumstances. This fear largely grew out of Vân's impression of herself-a single young woman-as having little inherent value in and to society. The notion of her giving a speech, of expressing her own opinion to others as if it mattered, and the prospect of absolute centrality and isolation for one so ordinary, seemed both radical and frightening. Vân was more accustomed to education being a top-down affair, in which teachers project their knowledge and virtue down into ostensibly docile student minds (a legacy of the classical Chinese system or hán hoc). French colonialism had introduced to Viet Nam the notion of education as a process of drawing out each student's unique interpretations and talents, so that by the 1950s there had been a significant shift, not only with respect to what students were learning but also to how they were learning it. Technological advancements also played a key role in driving this revolution toward modern education (tân hoc). For instance, while in elementary school Vân had had to copy everything down from a blackboard, in high school she was introduced to a miraculous Roneo copier that could make exact paper duplicates from wax templates with lightning turns of a handle. Laborious (w)rote learning was thus steadily losing its utility and appeal vis à vis more interactive methods.
It was in the context of these swirling cultural and epistemological winds that Vân found herself standing before her peers and teacher, far from ready to do her speech. The teenager stuttered, made inaudible lulls and occasional squeaks. Vân buried her head in her chest and hardly opened her eyes as she struggled through the ten-minute ordeal, at times straying from the paper and recalling vaguely related statements of fact and fancy. Afterwards, sweating profusely, Vân sat down without receiving even a consolatory word or pat on the back. Nevertheless, this much was clear: she had made it through her first major test into a new age of individualism.
The coauthor of The Flower Vendor, Nhat Linh, also wrote Breaking the Ties,49 a momentous novel that Vân read during high school and that had a major influence on how she and many other Vietnamese viewed the world and themselves. First published in 1935, the novel epitomizes a series of works that sought to illustrate the unjust and obsolete nature of traditional Confucian role-based relationships in Viet Nam and simultaneously champion the wonders of the modern Western world. In Breaking the Ties, Nhat Linh depicts the trials of a young woman named Loan, who under the pressure of filial piety marries not her beloved, but rather her betrothed, a man named Thân. Loan and Thân's wedding day forebodes imminent and intense conflict. When the bride is taken to the groom's house, she finds a charcoal brazier at the doorstep over which she must leap.50 The charcoal, her primitive mother-in-law believes, will incinerate any evil spirits that might have attached themselves to Loan and burn off all her intransigent and rebellious attributes, thereby preparing her for a life of servitude.51 Outrageously, Loan knocks over the brazier with her foot and then feigns clumsiness.
The villain of the story is Thân's mother, who treats Loan like an animal or chattel that has come into her possession. It is not uncommon to find such abusive mothers-in-law in Vietnamese families; this bitter woman, however, is particularly callous in her adherence to the ways of old. When Loan gives birth to a baby boy who falls ill, the young mother stands aside and allows her mother-in-law to hire a traditional healer. The healer's barbaric and brutal practices serve only to bring the boy to the brink of death, so that by the time Loan is able to provide her son with Western medical treatment, it is too late. The mother-in-law shows only contempt for the grieving Loan: "What you have to realize is that he may be your child, but he's my grandchild. If you want to kill him, then you can't just go ahead and do so. You don't have the right."52
Loan's marriage deteriorates, and before long Thân is unfaithful and has an illegitimate child. His mother forces Thân and Loan to accept the child's mother, Tuat, as Thân's concubine. During the ceremony to introduce Tuat into the household, Loan is revolted by the humiliating and inhumane treatment dealt out to her and, particularly, to her husband's new concubine. She is thus reminded and reprimanded, "Where there are rituals, those rituals must be performed; above must be above, below must be below."53
Tension in the house escalates, until one night the situation erupts when Loan refuses to turn off her night lamp until she has finished reading, believing that her husband wants to strip her not only of her illumination but also her enlightenment and dignity. Moreover, it is only eight in the evening, and she knows that Thân is anxious to bring on the darkness so that he may slip downstairs to be with his concubine. The couple launch into a bitter argument that wakes the entire household. Invariably, the mother-in-law enters the fray, exhorting her son to beat Loan for her insolence. Loan sticks up for herself, which only further angers the mother-in-law, whose demands that Thân assault his wife become edicts for murder: "Beat her to death for me! Once she's gone I will accept the blame."54
Unable to hold back any longer, Loan stares her mother-in-law straight in the face and makes a clarion call for liberal individualism that would shake the existing social hierarchies and resonate through Viet Nam for generations, "You are a person and I am a person. Neither of us is any better or any worse than the other."55 At the behest of his mother who does not want to "dirty her hands," Thân attacks his wife. She grabs a knife in self-defense, and in the subsequent tussle Thân falls upon it and dies. Despite the fact that she has been arrested and handcuffed, as she crosses the threshold of the house on the way to jail, Loan feels she has escaped from imprisonment.
Like Ho Chí Minh and other modernist authors, Nhat Linh uses a courthouse as a metaphorical tool to make his case for the justice and expediency of the new over the tyranny and futility of the old.56 The prosecution accuses Loan of being arrogant and romantic and rebukes her for trying to fulfill "the wonders of what she read in books with the commonplace reality before her eyes."57
Who knows how many young girls whose heads have been turned by that blast of romanticism I've just mentioned have forgotten all about their heaven-mandated roles of being devoted daughters-in-law and gentle wives, of being pillars of the family like the virtuous women in old Vietnamese society. In their twisted state of mind they want to destroy the family, which they mistakenly look upon as a place of imprisonment for them. . . . If the family is destroyed, the society will be destroyed; and it will be our fault.58
It seems that all is lost for Loan until her lawyer gets under way, passionately and rationally arguing that Loan is not a criminal or a threat to society. She is a victim of tradition.
Find Loan guilty of the crime of murder? Loan did not murder anyone! Find Loan guilty of disturbing the family? Loan was the very person who most earnestly wanted to live in peace with the family. The only thing of which Loan is guilty is going to school, with her books tucked under her arm, to try to develop her intellect and become a new person, and then to return to live with old-fashioned people. That is her only crime. And that for crime she has already atoned with untold misery.59
In the end, Loan is found not guilty, and modernity is gloriously vindicated. She celebrates by getting drunk and proclaims, "Today I am breaking the ties with my old life. . . ."60
Like many young Vietnamese, Vân admired Loan's courage and Nhat Linh's creative genius; however, she did not try to recreate the wonders of such books in her reality. Vâns commonplace reality was in fact far too complex for her to think and act as if she were a juror in a courtroom. There were few opportunities for young women to choose justice over injustice or the new over the old. To live efficaciously, Vân often had to juggle various conflicting social and individual prerogatives. She had to remain loyal to her birth family even after she was financially independent. She exercised free will in marrying Thiet, but without question she also moved in with his family, who were complete strangers to her. On her wedding day, Vân was surprised to find on the doorstep of her new home a brazier from which ferocious flames flew. She did not jump over the flames as her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law expected, nor did she defiantly kick the brazier. Vân deftly stepped to the side and strode in. Like Loan, Vân also suffered the death of her babies and the scorn of her in-laws, and she feared the imposition of concubines. Unlike Thân, however, Thiet was always supportive of his wife and valiantly stood up to the cruelty of his mother and older sisters. After five years of marriage, they bore a healthy boy (the author's older brother), whom Vân sincerely describes as her "savior." Eventually, she would gain the respect of her in-laws, and years later Vân maintained that, "It was my role to serve your grandmother and aunts, and while I don't think they were ever really happy with me, it was still my role to fulfill."61
Vietnamese literature and culture were not the sole influences upon Vân's personal and political perspective. No one in Sài Gòn during the 1960s could avoid the presence of U.S. aid, advisers, soldiers, and lifestyle. During her school days, Vân collected pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy from magazines and newspapers, which she stuck in an enormous scrap book. For her Jacqueline Kennedy was, quite simply, perfect. She was a modern woman who had not discarded her traditional responsibilities and old-fashioned elegance. She was educated, popular, and worldly, but for all her public triumphs she remained demure and above all a devoted wife and mother. The first lady had such alluring eyes, full (but by no means pouty) lips, hair that on occasion flew with the wind and at other times maintained a rigid grace in the most stormy of political climates. She was striking in any gown, and it was as if tiaras were created and tested on the heads of princesses for her alone to wear. That era also saw the explosion of Hollywood films and happy endings and, even if she did not always consider them role models, the young Vân adored the elegant feistiness of characters like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind and Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
One of Vâns favorite modern novels (then and now) was Ho Bieu Chánh's famous adaptation of Les Misérables, which evoked a sense of the familiar in Vân while it asserted exciting messages of individuality and enlightenment.62 Ho Bieu Chánh masterfully integrated the old and new, tradition and modernity, East and West, providing a secure imaginary setting from which Vân could assess and sometimes adopt radical ideas. Through such stories Vân gained the impression that a person should not be judged by whether she or he is rich or poor, free or indentured, male or female; and she came to believe that in certain contexts, one persons virtue can be greater than the combined rules and regulations of an entrenched system. She reflected over the power and the righteousness of romantic love, the value of light over darkness, and acquired a sense that the answer to the question of whether things change or remain the same is at once and intractably, yes.
CONCLUSION: IN SEARCH OF A POLITICAL PEACE AND CULINARY CONCILIATION
So what does all this mean? What academic or political value is there in a son exploring his mother's reading habits? Without detracting from the everyday focus of this work, it represents an attempt to deconstruct (by destabilizing, inverting, and subverting) predominant political and epistemological dichotomies between low politics and high politics, modernity and tradition, subject and object, private and public, and female and male. This literature review has significant political clout, because it effectively decenters international relations to the personal level and persuasively asserts the existence of a variety of valid modernities. It is evident that Vân was by no means a passive rider in her journey into and through the later twentieth century. On the contrary, she often reinterpreted, revised, dissected, and fused ideas to suit her particular circumstances, so that at varying times she was a champion of both tradition and modernity. Vân's modernity narrative undulates, spirals, doubles back, and hopscotches through time and space; it does everything but run continuously along one straight path. Indeed, Vietnamese histories at both the macro and micro level suggest that those who have tried to force such unilinear coherence have been met with great resistance. This biographical essay, then, refutes those twentieth-century grand theories that in Viêt Nam and elsewhere have fallen so short of their rhetorical promises. How could the French civilizing mission, American liberal capitalism, or Vietnamese Marxism-Leninism ever provide for the optimal and ultimate liberation of an entire nation when they cannot even explain or cater to the everyday aspirations of one Vietnamese woman?
The prescriptive element of my mother's story promotes an understanding of modernity as created through fluctuating interrelationships, rather than one-way paths to progress and black-and-white historical conceptualizations. Mum's modern world was created not simply by the expansion of Western male ideas. On the contrary, it was forged out of complicated and shifting interactions of liberation, appropriation, and resistance. To view modernity with a focus on socioeconomic interpenetrating relationships rather than expansion from core to periphery is to discover that one cannot understand the Other, the East, or the feminine without looking reflexively at the self, the West, and the masculine. Accepting such a view does not mean wholly rejecting modernization and civilization in our personal-political and intellectual pursuits. Such missions remain both arduous and worthwhile; however, they become joint ventures delivering increased opportunities for mutual enlightenment and liberation.
To that end, this story also provides an (imperfect but helpful) example of how one might try to write ordinary women as philosophers, producers, survivors, and mothers into the highest order of study and practice in international relations. It inspires strategies for constructing more humane and productive relationships between East and West, female and male, and mother and son using the everyday virtues of humility, adaptability, and eclecticism. Indeed, Vân has offered the author a masterful metaphor to assist in these tasks. At the time, she was approaching the age of sixty and, for reasons of fitness and fancy, was running four kilometers every morning to feed a flock of ducks before returning home. When asked why she undertook this grueling pursuit, she responded by expressing a deep appreciation for those common feathered creatures:
When ducks paddle around in their ponds, they reveal a blissful calm on the surface that belies their frantic and tireless work beneath. They are not graceful like swans (which I also like) or as dashing as eagles, and they have failed to evolve specialized traits like wide spoon-shaped bills or extra-long legs that might give them an advantage over other birds. Nonetheless, their coats are resistant to the heaviest downpour. Ducks can float on the water, swim in the sea, walk on the land, and fly in the sky.63
Ducks are exemplary and (extra)ordinary adaptors, incapable of doing any one thing magnificently but able to manage just about everything and thereby to flourish.
Continued from page 6.
Accordingly, I no longer try to liberate my mother from the kitchen and will never again suggest that I could simply step into her role as the household's head chef and emulate or improve on her masterpieces. Instead, I sit and listen to her talk of cooking and other things. I watch her operate and, without getting in the way, chop vegetables or wash up so that she can have a little more free time and space. I have learned, on her terms, how to roll spring rolls and prepare stock for beef noodle soup. Mum and I still don't agree on who should start eating first and probably never will. We are, however, more accepting of and comfortable with our dinnertime differences if not with the growling of our stomachs.
NOTES
1. "Môt tram con gái không bang cái dái con trai." Recounted by Vân. All translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated.
2. An at once complementary and contrasting biographical essay about Thiet's modernity journey can be found in Kim Huynh, "Fathers, Flags and Modern-Day Fanaticism: A Short Story about Cold War Grand Theories and Ordinary Vietnamese-Australian People," Alternatives 28, no. 5 (December 2003): 517-44.
3. Vân Huynh, interview with the author, August 16, 2003.
4. Richard K. Ashley, "Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War" in International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, ed. James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro, 259-322 (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), 260.
5. Ashley, "Living on Border Lines," 261.
6. Pham Van Bích, The Vietnamese Family in Change: The Case of the Red River Delta (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999), 111-18.
7. A. Terry Rambo, "Black Flight Suits and White Aó Dàis: Borrowing and Adaptation of Symbols of Vietnamese Cultural Identity" in Borrowings and Adaptations in Vietnamese Culture, ed. Truong Buu Lâm, 155-223 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1987).
8. For a discussion of matriarchal pre-Neolithic Vietnamese society and its transition to more patriarchal social structures, see Mai Thi Tú and Lê Thi Nhâm Tuyet, Women in Vietnam (Hà Nôi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1978), 12-30. For more of the Hong Ðúc legal code, see pages 34-35 and 40-41.
9. While it is not suggested that matriarchies or patriarchies are based on physical stature alone, archaeologists have found prehistoric remains of women in North Viêt Nam who are over six feet tall, wearing bronze bracelets around their wrists. It is arguable that the sociopsychological legacy of this matriarchal society has contributed to the fact that, even after the millennium of Chinese rule over Viêt Nam from 111 B.C. to 939 A.D. and subsequent periods of strong patriarchal Confucian influences, Vietnamese woman have enjoyed more private and public power than their Chinese counterparts (there was never any foot-binding in Viêt Nam, for instance). Another factor would be the arduous nature of agricultural life in Viêt Nam, which made female subservience a socioeconomic liability. See Mai and Lê, Women in Vietnam, 12-30.
10. Vân Huynh, interview with the author, May 2, 2002.
11. Alexander B. Woodside, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), ix.
12. Vân Huynh, interview with the author, May 2, 2002.
13. Vân Huynh, interview with the author, May 2002. Edited and translated by the author.
14. For a bilingual edition (Vietnamese and English), see Nguyen Du The Tale of Kieu, trans. Huynh Sanh Thong (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). For a more elaborate English translation, see Nguyen Du Kieu, trans. Michael Counsell (Hà Nôi: Nhà Xuat Ban The Giói, 1994).
15. The radicalism of portraying a prostitute as a heroine at that time cannot be overstated. It is thought that the story is an allegorical justification of Nguyen Dus turbulent journey through political life. Nguyen Du lived to see the Lê dynasty be overthrown by the Tây So'n rebellion and then the coming to power of Gia Long. He served as an official for both the Lê and Gia Long, contravening the traditional expectation of court officials to show complete loyalty to one dynasty. In Kieu he suggests that necessity, and indeed a higher virtue, might demand in certain circumstances that strict mores be broken.
16. Nguyen Du, Kieu, 616-24.
17. David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920 -1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 155.
18. Ðang Tran Côn, Chinh Phu Ngâm Khúc (Biên Hòa: Nhà Xuat Ban Ðong Nai, 2001). Wives who were commonly left to take care of a family while their husbands were at war have been lauded as "Ministers for the Interior." Mai and Lê, Women in Vietnam, 69.
19. Thieu Phu Nam Xuong as recounted by Vân. Also known as The Wife of Mr Truong [Vo Chàng Truong].
20. McHale argues that it is not clear when or even if any distinct or monolithic notion of Confucianism was adopted by the Vietnamese. Nevertheless, he maintains that "Vietnamese deeply understood a few key Confucian notions such as the tù dúc (Four Virtues) and tarn tòng (Three Submissions) and spoke frequently about filial piety and loyalty." Shawn McHale, "Mapping a Vietnamese Confucian Past and Its Transition to Modernity" in Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, ed. Benjamin A. Elman, John B. Duncan, and Herman Ooms, 397-430 (Los Angeles: University of California, 2002), 401.
21. "Taigia tòng phu /Xuat gía tòng phu /Phu tu tòng tu." Recounted by Vân with reference to Phan Ke Binh, Viêt Nam Phong Tuc [Vietnamese Customs] (TPHCM: NXB Tong Hop Ðong Tháp, 1990), 63-64, and Trinh T. Minh-hà, Framer Framed (New York: Routledge, 1992), 83.
22. "Phân gái tò dú ven toàn, /Công, dung, ngôn, hanh, giu gìn chang sai." Recounted by Vân with reference to Phan Ke Binh, Viêt Nam Phong Tuc, 64, and Trinh, Framer Framed, 83. Translated by the author with the assistance of Uyên Loewald. The four virtues were espoused in the fifteenth century by Nguyên Trâi. "Công là du' mùi xôi, thù'c banh, / Nhiêm-nhât thay du'ong chi mui kim. / Dung là net mât ngoc trangnghiêm, /Không tha-thiêt, không chiêu là-tà. / Ngôn là day trinh thu'a vâng da, / Hanh là du'à'ng ngay-thào kinh tin. Xu'a nay mây kê dâu hiên, /Dung, công, ngôn, hanh là tien phàm-trân." Nguyên Trâi, Gia Huân Ca [Family Education Ode] (Sài Gôn: NXB Tan Viêt, 1953), 26-27.
23. "Che la ehe lay, con gai bày nghê: / Ngôi le là mot, du-a côt là liai, theo trai là ba, / an quà là bon, trôn viêc là näm, hay näm là sau, lào tao là bay." Recounted by Van and translated by the author with the assistance of Uyên Loewald. Another version can be found in Trinh, Framer Framed, 82.
24. My theorizing of everyday resistance has been influenced by Michel de Certeau's work on "subverting from within" and "tactical" behavior as the "art of the weak." see Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: Univer |
