Monkey Dance and Laotian Daughters

Danielle Marie Herrera
Prof. Maira
ASA 4
25 April 2017

The film Monkey Dance documents the lives of Cambodian youth in a refugee community in Lowell, Massachusetts. The film highlights the role of these youth in their household Cambodian culture as well as their adaptation to U.S. culture. Similar to the cultural resistance-themed articles by Scott and Kelley from last class, the youth in the video engage in everyday forms of cultural resistance. For example, the break-dancing incorporated into a cultural Cambodian dance is a form of resistance against the norms of the dance. However, the dance itself in the context of the U.S. acts as a form of resistance against the norms of the U.S. By engaging in these traditional dances, Cambodian refugees are better able to preserve their heritage while hybridizing it with U.S. culture, by way of break-dancing. This prevalence and respect for dance caused me to reflect on my own experiences as a participant of UC Davis' Pilipino Culture Night, which showcases various indigenous dances from the Philippines. I think this practice is important in the U.S. as it reveals the importance of diversity to this society.

In Bindi V. Shah's "The Politics of Race: Political Identity and the Struggle for Social Rights," a group of Laotian teenage girls are advocating for three political causes: the institution of a multilingual emergency broadcast system, improvement of student counseling services, and repeal of Proposition 227,  which enforces English-only education. The political activism of these teenage girls not only demonstrates a resistance against Laotian hierarchies - namely, "gender and generational" as Laotian women are expected to be quiet and docile and youth are expected to be obedient and compliant with authority (80). Their activism also demonstrates a resistance against American norms of political weakness in women and youth. The girls in this article intersectionally challenge these norms and reflect a disturbance of the Asian model minority myth. As someone who grew up in Contra Costa County, I was able to observe the lack of bilingualism in school over time. I remember being placed in English Language Development classes because I marked that I was bilingual, but due to my last name, I would always be given paperwork in Spanish instead of my real second language Tagalog. Over time, I also became hesitant to mark that I was bilingual because it always resulted in an assumption that I was struggling in English, when in reality, I was fluent in both Tagalog and English. These wrongful assumptions seemed to represent a dismissal of multiculturalism and a lack of real desire to address student needs. I hope that in schools now, there is a better method in assessing the fluency of students in the English language as well as a greater network of resources for those who do not speak English. As a student in the article stated, it is necessary for students who are fluent in another language over English to have access to classes that employ their native language: "I don't think it should be all English and I don't think it should be all Spanish. Because, if it's either, then they'll never learn" (66).