Diacritics recently published a review by H.M.A. Leow on Associate Professor Linh Thủy Nguyễn’s book, Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production. The review mentions how Displacing Kinship sets out to "displace kinship" by exposing how family is not a natural structure but is produced and represented "within the political economy of white supremacy and warfare." Nguyễn’s analysis is methodologically grounded in a consideration of how an intersubjective orientation towards the family emerges from feelings of “ambivalence, irritation, and dismissiveness.” Since refugee communities have been formed by the heteronormative logic of family reunification under immigration law, Nguyễn lays the groundwork by establishing that the idea of family has operated as a vehicle for racialised assimilation into the model minority.
H.M.A. Leow believes the book explores "other ways to orient ourselves toward our communities, kin, and politics that do not take memory or the experience of trauma as the central organizing principle,” as Nguyễn puts it. Amid the flourishing of second-generation Vietnamese American art, Displacing Kinship is a timely and relevant scholarly work.
Read the full review Refugee Critique: The Next Generation, in Linh Thủy Nguyễn’s Displacing Kinship - DVAN.