Laotian Daughters & Monkey Dance

Laotian Daughters 
Bindi V. Shah’s Laotian Daughters analysis the politics of race, identity, struggle and environmental justice by talking about the political actions that involved with the second-generation Laotian in the United States. In the article, Bindi mentions that media and politicians often blame ethnic or poor immigrants for social problems such as poverty, drug and gang violence, etc. I think this is one of the reasons that make those young immigrants or second generation felt unequal and struggling. When sometime bad happened, we tend to blame on the powerless people or community. This is a bias that people usually ignore the immigrants and the second-generation’s voices and didn’t acknowledge those people have the right to equal citizenship and also belonging in the nation. Plus, Bindi also questions the environmental justice and struggle of immigrants by talking about the Chevron exposition accident happened in west Contra Costa, where living a lot of Laotian immigrants. When the emergency happened, most of the Laotian immigrants didn’t receive the message on time or some of them even can’t understand the English. I think these people didn’t get enough protection by the society and they have a lot of challenge from get into the community, the United States.



Monkey Dance
Monkey Dance is an interesting film, which provides several good examples that express the everyday forms of resistance. In this film, a second generation Cambodian American gymnastic try to add some Asian moves in his performance. This is a resistance of American stereotype that gymnastic are belong to white culture. Another example is that a Cambodian girl does the Cambodian dancing to make her parents happy, even though her family has been moved to the United States many years. I have this similar experience. My parents moved to the United States few years ago, and each time when I play Chinese traditional music to them, they feel very happy because this is a connection between them and their hometown. Those immigrants’ life is harder than others because they are facing struggle between different cultural backgrounds. They need to adopt and familiar with the new environment and new cultural but they still can’t get rid of the cultural behaviors from their home country. A lot of Asian immigrants, like the family showed in the film, hope their children to adopt the American life better, but the reality is, those second generation of Asian-American immigrants still have struggles with American and Asian culture, and therefore result in resistance .

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