6/1 Le

            In the article “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice”, Nam Le discusses his life as an ethnic writer when his Ba came to visit. The reading demonstrated concepts of cross generation gaps, parental expectations, and ethnic stereotypes. The generation gap that Nam and his Ba experiences is in the form of merits; for example, Nam’s Ba was former soldier, whereas Nam is a scholar/lawyer/writer. This gap is important because Nam explains to his wife Linda that his interactions with his father were different, presumably in the form of merit, that led to his decision to not talk about Linda with Ba. This can also reflect what the Laotian girls, from “Laotian Daughters Working toward Community, Belonging, and Environmental Justice”, did with their parents in terms of telling them things; for instance, the Laotian girls were not entirely honest and disclosing in their behaviors outside of house, similar to how Nam wasn’t telling his father everything going on in his life. The parental expectations that were highlighted in this excerpt are in the form of his father expecting Nam to work first, then pay attention to him; this is very similar to the experiences of Asian American children who grew up having their parents expect them to put work in before everything else. Finally and ironically, Nam’s Ba actually embraced ethnic stereotypes of Asian spirituality with his desire to meditate. Although in this class, we are taught to not expect Asians to do that stuff, it is refreshing to know that people actually do participate in spiritual practices outside of Asian.