“Family, Culture, Gender: Narratives of
Ethnic Reconstruction.” Bindi Shah
This article from Bindi Shah’s Laotian Daughters deals primarily with
the struggles faced by these young women. The first section begins with the
idea of how these Laotian youths identify with their Laotian culture and ethnicity.
They want to identify as Laotian, and not be mistaken as simply Asian or any
other specific Asian such as Chinese, Vietnamese, or Filipino. Furthermore,
Shah discusses how these young women being charged as the “bearers and
conveyors of culture” have more responsibilities than their male counterparts
as well as feel distanced from their parents as their struggles in the past are
not relatable to the pressures that they faced today. The interviewees
demonstrate how the patriarchal “culture” that their parents continue to try to
adhere to leave them with much more responsibilities and unfair treatment in
comparison to their brothers. Another topic that is mentioned is the fact that
many don’t want to marry a Mien person. Overall in through the article I can
kind of relate to the high expectations that Asian parents have on their
children and particularly their daughters. These common themes of women doing the
housework and these many different responsibilities that women are often
assigned, responsibilities, for the record, that aren’t normally imposed on me,
as an Asian male.
There
definitely are double-standards for women like those in the article on top of
the already lofty expectations that many parents have of their children in part
because of the notion that women have to bear and convey their “culture.”
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