In Aimee Phan’s novel The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, the titular character is a Vietnamese-American child of an immigrant family who moved to America from Vietnam after the Vietnam War, and Cherry’s experiences returning to the homeland that she never knew. In this book, and throughout her experiences, Cherry not only experiences significant differences between American and Vietnamese culture, but in how each culture treats their women. Regardless of the society she lives in, Cherry (and women in general) are given a much harder life than men. Gender plays an incredibly important role in the life of Cherry Truong in Reeducation; over the course of the novel, she learns about the experiences previous generations of women in her family went through suffering in the patriarchal society of Vietnam, as well as the suffering she endures herself.
Many of the issues with gender that Cherry experiences relate to the culture shock of the Vietnam diaspora – being a recipient of American acculturation upon her parents moving to the States after the Vietnam War, Cherry herself was victim to a lot of fascinating cultural conflicts, first between herself and her parents and between her American culture and the Vietnam of her parents. This brings up significant conflicts related to the diaspora, which have everything to do with a kind of colonialism that America perpetrated on the Vietnamese who moved there (Bun and Dorais 286). The United States welcoming these Vietnamese into their country was not a completely magnanimous gesture, but “part of a powerful national revisionist effort in America to forget and forgive itself in order to justify the occupation of other countries through military, economic, and cultural means” (21). In essence, there is a kind of Stockholm Syndrome that goes on with Cherry at the beginning, envisioning Vietnam as having a place of little cultural value for her because of her fealty to America. Cherry’s identity as both a Vietnamese and American citizen is known as hybridity, which is linked to the ways in which the Cold War informed “experiences and identities shaped by colonialism, war, immigration, and racism” (Pelaud 49). The American perception of Vietnamese is negative, and Cherry picked up on that before going to Vietnam, which heavily informed how she interacted with others there.
Phan’s novel uses letters from relatives and family to help the reader get a glimpse of the perspectives of other Vietnamese; it is in these that we get the clearest perspective on how women and men relate to each other. In the patriarchal society of the Truong, women are seen as a henpecking, disruptive presence, especially in the lives of men – in Cuc Bui’s letter from Paris in 1984, he complains about his son spending too much time alone with his mother: “His mother is so frustrating, so stupidshe coddled the boy, and the other women condoned this. Too much female influence” (Phan 141). There is a strong emphasis on manhood as important in male development, as Cuc Bui is concerned that his son has to be able to take a fearing the consequences of him not turning out like traditional notions of what a man should be (141). In essence, the aforementioned hybridity has brought about a fear of the emasculation of the patriarchal mindset attributable to the Vietnamese, as cultures blend and women are granted more agency (and cannot be simply shut up by domestic violence or rape). Cherry and her family experience the tensions and problems that come with this hybridity, including culture clashes and changes in the expectations that come with gender norms – Cherry’s fully-Americanized outlook is directly opposed to her family’s varying shades of traditionalism.
Some of the most fascinating exploration of gender roles in Vietnam come with the character of Kim-Ly, Cherry’s grandmother. Despite the oppressiveness of Vietnam’s male-dominated culture, Kim-Ly is strong and resilient, and even prideful – at least at first. According to their family history, Kim-Ly was a woman who strongly raised her children during the escalation of the war with no help. However, as Cherry continues to learn the truth, we see Kim-Ly’s arrogance and pigheadedness; she is the one responsible for Cherry’s brother, Lum, being sent back to Vietnam. In having what was such a strong female role model effectively stripped from her, Cherry must begin to reexamine what it means to be a Vietnamese woman. The familial relationships with the women in Cherry’s family are incredibly complex, with deep-seated grudges and festering wounds that are exacerbated by the expectations of women in Vietnamese society.
The most dramatic gender culture shock for Cherry is when she actually goes to Vietnam to try to bring her brother back. There, she learns of the horrors of the reeducation camps, in which the Communist powers in charge in Vietnam use violence and rape to convince the Vietnamese that any negative press about Vietnam is just filthy Western propaganda. Even in these horrible circumstances, women have no agency; there is no recourse to being violated, as even same-sex pedophilia provides more visibility and cause for retaliation: “A woman crying rape, the camp officers would have blamed her – certainly she had seduced them – and said that she deserved it. But the guards couldn’t claim the same about a small boy” (Phan 158).
The scarring that gender-based violence and oppression leaves on women is made literal in Cherry’s own scarring; in the beginning, we learn of her scars without being told what caused them. Eventually, however, we learn she has spent some time in the Vietnamese reeducation camps – her “reeducation” about Western life and culture. At the same time, however, she seems to appreciate them, as they provide a great deal of clarity about her perspective on Vietnamese culture and how it treats women (Phan 17). In essence, Phan demonstrates the need to recognize the hardships of women in either culture, but especially for those having to straddle the line between one’s home culture and the new culture one lives in. As one character opines, “It’s hard enough to be a woman. I can’t wish that kind of life on her, not here. It would be too much” (Phan 164).
Much of the gender conflict Cherry experiences is the clash between expectations of behavior and attitude from Vietnamese women and the more modern sensibilities of American culture. Unlike the extremely traditional Kim-Ly, her mother and aunts started to slowly integrate into American culture – at one point, her mother Tuyet changes her name to Tanya in order to better fit in (Phan 222). They also take up jobs at a hair and nail salon, adjusting quickly to modern American life, but at the same time starting to lose who they are as Vietnamese. Cherry, meanwhile, is able to benefit from her family’s sacrifices, studying to become a doctor – something all of her family takes tremendous pride in. While they may be somewhat resentful for Cherry’s successes due to her Americanization, this is just further evidence of the hybridization that occurs when Vietnamese populations integrate into American culture; as women are granted comparatively more agency there, they are given the tools to succeed at an earlier age. That Cherry can take advantage of them is evidence of both her privilege to live in America and her relative disconnect from the tensions and conflicts of Vietnamese patriarchal values – something which changes upon her visit to Vietnam.
In conclusion, Phan’s novel is a harrowing book about the intersection of race, culture and gender in the face of the Vietnamese diaspora. Cherry, as a woman, is able to benefit greatly from the fact that she grew up in America – a place with slightly more relaxed gender norms compared to the harsh patriarchy and violence of Vietnam. There, women had to be strong-willed and even amoral to survive, as evidenced by Kim-Ly’s vindictiveness, and the clash of cultures that first-generation immigrants had to experience left women torn between American permissiveness and Vietnamese traditions. This hybridization comes somewhat out of American guilt over colonialism, and this affects immigrants through the blurry lines between host and native cultures. Cherry is able to look at these gender and cultural conflicts with a slightly more objective eye, looking through these letters and experiences to discern the ways women were treated and expected to act between Vietnamese and American cultures. However, as Cherry learns, the scars of her family’s history are still not yet fully healed, and her quest to retrieve her brother allows her to see the dangers women faced in Vietnam.
Works Cited
Bun, Chan Kwok, and Louis-Jacques Dorais. "Family, identity, and the Vietnamese
diaspora: the Quebec experience." Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (1998): 285-308.
Pelaud, Isabelle. This is All I Choose To Tell. Temple University Press, 2010. Print.
Phan, Aimee. The Reeducation of Cherry Truong. St. Martin’s Press, 2012. Print.
