Phan or Fiction
Semi-book review of Aimee Phan’s We Should Never Meet. The limitations of cultural expectations.
I would have loved to have told Aimee Phan (author of We Should Never Meet) the story about my own release from the homeland, Vietnam, which was handed down to me.
It goes something like this: "On December 5, 1973, I was born Nguyen Duc Minh, just outside of Saigon, to a Vietnamese woman. My father was an American. Somehow, my mother was killed and then my maternal grandmother took me in. Unfortunately, since my grandmother’s husband and sons were killed earlier in the war and since she was destitute and alone, she gave me up to an orphanage called Regina Pacis. I was flown out of the country in August 1974 because an American family wanted to adopt me."
However, if you were to ask some of those who were adopted by American families during or after the war, they would say that they are perturbed that Ms. Phan chose not to consult any of them, or their contemporaries, in order to receive a more accurate account of the very people she portrays in her book, We Should Never Meet. These same people might even accuse Ms. Phan of appropriating and exploiting their histories for her own personal profit, that her book naively mischaracterizes adult adoptees as hopelessly angry and embittered, forever searching for that missing link that will complete their fractured lives. Lastly, many would conclude that only adoptees have the right to tell their stories and no one else.
All too often adoptees’ lives have been turned into a piece of fiction to be consumed, digested and planted into the minds of the audience who may unwittingly take these stories of unavoidable identity crises to be the Bible truth and apply it to all adopted persons. Only rarely do Vietnamese adoptee’ viewpoints share the national stage with those of Vietnam vets, ex-presidents and generals, and adoptive parents. When the chance does come along, those iconic black-and-white images of young children sitting on the floor of an orphanage or of sickly babies set two-by-two in cardboard boxes in a cavernous hull of an airplane are automatically dusted off and held aloft for everyone to see. Yet again, we adult adoptees get the sympathetic treatment and are branded with that tired, guilt-tripping maxim of "being glad for what you have been given, otherwise you would have been dead."
That said, however, there really is no guarantee that the stories any adoptee chooses to write wouldn’t be as dramatic or cloying as Phan’s or anyone else’s for that matter. Certainly, each person’s writing style would be as unique as each individual is and would represent an invaluable first-person perspective. However, this endeavor may also include narratives and attitudes that serve to perpetuate the stereotype of the victimized/embittered/angry adoptee/orphan, whether consciously or unconsciously. I think it’s safe to say that any story about adoption, especially written by a person who had been adopted, would undoubtedly deal with the issue of loss, both actual and metaphorical. Of course, the methods used to engage this perceived void would be varied and conflicting.
Another major reservation that some adoptees have about Aimee Phan’s book, which I mentioned before, is the claim that she has no right to write about their lives. There are diverse reasons for holding this opinion, but I would take an educated guess and say the main reason is that Phan is not one of them and would have no idea what it’s like to be adopted. Well, let’s put that sentiment to the test:
I once wrote a short fictional story about a boy and his mother who immigrated to the US from Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge based on the first paragraph of a chapter in a book about the phenomenon of Southeast Asian gangs in California. These two struggled to make a living in the U.S. and eventually the boy had enough of feeling like an outcast and decided to join a gang made up of young men who had similar backgrounds. This boy, later, was himself tried for murder of a video store clerk who had also been a Cambodian immigrant. I thought about the tragic irony of this young man’s life. He was a child taken away from a murderous regime only to commit murder in the new country against a fellow countryman.
The history and the circumstances were so overwhelming that I just had to write a story from my own imagination and out of a sense of duty to not allow these people’s lives to fall onto the heap of historical amnesia. I felt compelled to put a spotlight on them and, using the vehicle of my own prose, carry them further into the public’s conscience. Now, since I was not that boy and I was not born in Cambodia to a Cambodian family and I had never joined a gang, does that mean I had no right to write that story?
This argument, in my opinion, is too simplistic. At worst, it seeks to dissuade any writer from using one’s imagination and inspiration to write about the world and to expand people’s knowledge of and empathy toward other people outside of their safe communities. Yes, there are ethics that one should keep in mind when using real people and real events in one’s stories. Any writer of historical fiction who wishes to stay in good repute would not claim to be speaking definitively for any person or sector of the community. When I set out to write about the immigrant from Cambodia, I avoided resorting to cheap thrills or stock emotions so as to appear to stand firmly upon some moral certitude. I don’t believe for a second that my story trivialized his life or that I was speaking for him.
Aimee Phan’s freshman effort seeks to continue this tradition of historical fiction and has coincidentally chosen a history very personal to me, and hundreds of others, as her topic. The mission of fiction is to tell a good story, period. No doubt, Phan probably heard stories about Operation Babylift and, according to her website, her mother used to be a social worker who worked with foster children in Little Saigon. Her story focuses on three people who were placed in foster care after they arrived in the US and one person who was adopted by a Caucasian family. Scenes and characters from the past are put alongside the present in order to lay down the foundation for what is to come. No one plays the hero and no one plays the victim. Her book is an easy read because Phan’s prose is basic and to the point. She does a good job of switching back and forth from the past to the present without losing the reader. The settings, the characters and their interaction with one another provoke insight into what it means to lose a loved one, or a homeland, and how it still hurts when one decides it is necessary to move on.