Here’s the link to check out my analysis of Vietnamerica as a bildungsroman!

I finished my Vietnamerica essay! Check it out here.

In his biography, Vietnamerica author G.B Tran addresses the themes of family history, loss of cultural identity and personal growth. Vietnamerica follows the coming of age journey of G.B Tran, from an ignorant young Vietnamese American unaware and uninterested of his family’s past to a young adult who seeks to learn of his Vietnamese culture and family history. In an interview done in 2012, G.B Tran discusses the impact that writing Vietnamerica had on him as a first generation Vietnamese American. “When I started writing Vietnamerica part of the reason it was interesting to me was because I had no sense of connection to my Vietnamese heritage, my Vietnamese roots. When I finished it I realized I did feel a greater connection to my Vietnamese’s roots. It started with a curiosity, a desire to learn, a desire to experience and basically a child reaching a point were they want to really know who they are, and realizing that in order to do that, they needed to have an understanding of who their parents are.” [1] This quote is noteworthy because it was through writing Vietnamerica that G.B Tran was able to piece back together his families past and in doing so find himself. I think that the overall message Tran wants to emphasize and urge his readers to learn is that we must all value and search to understand our past, before it becomes too late and then from our past we find ourselves.

The graphic novel Vietnamerica- A Family’s Journey written by GB Tran is a wonderfully creative, informative and emotional piece of work that, true to its title, describes one extended family’s extraordinary experiences in the duration of and after the Vietnam War. This memoir, containing stories scattered across countries, across seas and across generations, is best described as a longitudinal representation of Vietnamese life before the war and long after it was over. The study of ethnography involves researching and depicting the culture of a group or society, Vietnamerica would be best described as a longitudinal ethnographic novel.

Did GB Tran solely intend to give us a convoluted history about his family’s past, or was there something more behind the purpose of this novel? Why isn’t this novel more like a bildungsroman? Stepping back for a second, the reader should observe the intentional confusion Tran creates in the order and plotline of the novel. The progression of the story skips entire decades, then flashes back entire decades. Each scene is set in a different time, at a different place, and involves different characters every time. Tran does a fantastic job of displaying scene transition through graphic elements such as color change (black and white to extremely vibrant colors to dark maroon and black) and framework (the frames separated by lighter smoke on page 56, the separation of panels with a scrabble board on page 111 or the different frames falling into the storage box on page 207), Some characters have nicknames that are used interchangeably with their full names, while certain relatives’ stories are cut apart and placed at different points in the book, leaving the reader up to piece together full length passages. As discussed in class, identifying the present-day “frame” for these stories being told about the past is inherently difficult for the reader to accomplish.

GB Tran made Vietnamerica quite a confusing and haphazard novel, but why? Tran uses this tool of chaotic organization of different plots and numerous characters as a metaphor for the confusing, chaotic lives of most Vietnamese being displaced from their homes, separated from family with limited or no communication abilities, being forced to relocate just to keep future generations out of harm’s way, and begin to restart their lives again. Tran purposefully gives anecdotes about everyone in his extended family’s life in order for the reader to realize the degree to which the war traumatized different families in different locations at different points in time. Instead of focusing on and elaborating upon the experiences of himself and his immediate family, Tran chose to incorporate numerous stories that can better represent the scale of the impact of the war on the collective lives of a group of people, rather than an individual narrative. He is making an example of his family as one of the many families in the same exact same situation as his: “[o]ur family wasn’t alone, we weren’t a special case. Everyone suffered. Everyone had to do whatever they needed to survive” (90).

Vietnamerica is not a bildungsroman for the reason that the purpose of the novel and what the reader takes away from the novel is not so much a story about a boy who has a personal journey, but rather a story about one of the millions of families that went through the same conflicts over warfare, murder, separation, and loss of cultural identity. Truthfully, GB does not display much personal growth or character development throughout the novel. He was always reluctant to meet extended family and he seemed disinterested in hearing stories about the war, strife, and the unimaginably harsh conditions that caused Vietnamese families to constantly live in fear. After being asked to go to Vietnam with his parents to visit extended family he had never met before, GB exclaims that he has too much studying to do. His mother asks, “Don’t you think it’s time to see where we’re from?” and he replies “Uhh…No thanks. That doesn’t look like a fun trip to me” (182). One major symbol in the novel is the tree introduced on page seven accompanied by the Confucious quote “A man without history is a tree without roots” (6). As GB’s father tells the history and legend of that tree—its Buddhist enlightening capabilities and the reverence that the locals have for its power—GB sarcastically mutters “Riveting, Dad” (7). Later in the novel, that same tree was cited again when GB is on the phone with his mother while packing for a trip to Vietnam. After a long pause, she says, “I had that dream again last night.” This dream was about that same tree that was famous to the local Vietnamese, and it is a recurring dream that Dzung had multiple times in the past months. GB replies sarcastically, “Huh…riveting” (49). Twice now, GB has shown complete disregard for the most powerful symbol in this novel, the tree. And it is no coincidence that the one family tree fully displayed in this novel is a visual of an actual tree, its roots being the generations of families below the trunk representing Thi Mot. The only true change in GB’s reluctant attitude toward his family and their history is found on the final two pages of the novel, when GB pulls out the same note from the first page of the novel from his father containing the Confucius quote. After again rejecting his mother’s offer to visit Vietnam and meet extended family, he reads the note, shows a clear change in disposition, calls her back and says “I was just wondering…can I still go to Vietnam with you?” (279). This sole scene represents GB’s first and only change of heart from indifference to involvement and connection with his family’s roots.

Because the majority of the novel is spent telling story after story about Vietnamese life and hardships rather than developing GB’s character, Vietnamerica is much more of a ‘longitudinal’ ethnologic representation of Vietnamese life during and after the Vietnam War rather than a bildungsroman of the growth and development of GB Tran.

Tran, G. B. Vietnamerica: A Family’s Journey. New York: Villard, 2010. Print.

Is Vietnamerica a Bildungsroman

A bildungsroman is a coming of age story. In Vietnamerica, GB writes about his parents, and their history. Since they escaped Vietnam, his parents have traveled back and forth between the two countries. On one of the trips back over, they take GB and he learns about his roots. He meets his family in Vietnam for the first time and experiences a difference side of life. His New York life is nothing to the busy style of life Saigon. Throughout the text, I do not see character growth in GB. Most of the changes in character in the story are seen in his parents, who adapted to the living style of the time. In this way, Vietnamerica can be called a bildungsroman by the way that his parents grow up in the story. His mom flourishes with beauty in her teen years, and has many men interested in her, which triggers her consciousness about what is actually going on, and how its meaning changed at this point in her life. This is one example of how Vietnamerica can be considered a bildungsroman.

I believe that it is a bildungsroman to a certain extent. We can see the progression of various characters throughout the book, as they are changed by both events and time. Through GB’s trip to Vietnam and by writing this book, he has become more aware of what his past generations had gone through, and what preceded his existence. With time we can also see how Tran, GB’s father, grew to resent his father for leaving him and his mother when he was young.

Another viewpoint would be to say that the amount of time that their family spent outside of Vietnam had made them increasingly distant from their own Vietnamese culture. This applies to both GB, who was never aware of much of what his parents went through, and to GB’s parents, who had distanced themselves from their past lives.