5/18 Kelly Loves Tony Video Response

5/18 Angel Truong Kelly Loves Tony Video Response

            The documentary illustrates the struggles of Laotian American girls where they are forced to collide two different cultures to please themselves and others. Shah’s article explains the lives of these girls where they are view to preserve their Laotian traditions yet the girls themselves confesses their desires to achieve the American Dream. This desire to obtain personal goals requires them to break away from traditional roles. Just like the girls in the article, the video introduces Kelly, a Laotian teen mother, who wants to go to college. However, because of her pregnancy, she is forced by her family to fulfill her domestic role as a mother and daughter-in law. When Kelly expresses her desire to go to school, her fiancé Tony and her family do not understand why she wants to. This polar response ties to the cultural difference between assimilated second generations and first generations where many second generations want to achieve the American Dream and break away from traditional roles, yet first generations still want them to maintain their culture. This conflict also has intersectionality between race and gender where Asian girls are expected to maintain cultural roles but they are exposed to individualistic ideas in America which influence them to abandoned their culture that is deemed to hinder them from achieving that dream. Therefore, the video reflects upon the article because they both display the intergenerational conflicts that appears in Asian American families where second generation boys and girls are expected to maintain traditional roles which hinders them to achieve personal goals that are provoked in America. 

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