So my parents are in town this weekend, and I took them to see Victor Vu's First Morning / Buoi Sang Dau Nam, which finally premiered in San Jose here this month. It's a movie about a dysfunctional Vietnamese family broken apart by war, psychological trauma and Vietnamese father-is-always-right-and-it's-okay-to-beat-wife-and-children-chauvinism. Granted, this movie is not very well edited, doesn't have good acting, and the script is not very convincing, but the story itself is very touching and probably hits home to a lot of Vietnamese people.
In the past months, even before Phu Heo's death, I've been “playing” therapist for a lot of my Vietnamese friends. I don't know why they approach me, but even Phu Heo told me before his death that I should consider being a therapist, because I listen well. At any rate, it seems as if I am surrounded by dysfunctional families all the time in the Vietnamese community. It seems to me that a Vietnamese family that is NOT dysfunctional is out of the norm. The problem is that the Vietnamese family doesn't admit to it and certainly does not want to go to family therapists. For one, Vietnamese families are too ashamed of admitting that they have a problem. Secondly, they don't believe in family or couple therapy as that's not "hard science". I hope that this will change with the new 2.0 generation. I hope that the young Vietnamese American generation doesn’t shy away from approaching therapists, as I believe that they can be very helpful.
With all the dysfunctional families around me, I feel very lucky to have a very functional family. All of us are extremely involved in the Vietnamese community and we all have a passion for it (you think I am active in the Vietnamese community? Wait until you guys meet my mom!). Sure, we often don't see each other because of our busy community-work schedule, but I would say that we have a very happy family. We joke at the dinner table, go on vacation together, have our own yahoo groups to chit-chat, share stories and pictures, and so on.
