Nam Le

This short story and Andrew's lecture brought to my attention that there exists an expectation for Asian Americans and other marginalized groups to write about their traumas and 'inter-generational familial conflicts'. In the short story, a semi-fictionalized version of Nam is urged to write a novel about his father's experiences with the Vietnam War, a traumatic era which his father refuses to speak about. Still, Nam goes through with the narrative, despite his own admittance to not having a connection to his father's painful memories.

Andrew mentioned in his lecture that these narratives are often exploited for the reading pleasures of upper-middle class white people  (white feminists) to consume in order to appear more knowledgable of the world. They treat these novels as if they are anthropological and ethnographic studies instead of individual narratives.

For 2nd generation Asian Americans, who don't share the same narratives as their elders, it's very problematic to continually expect them to share stories about memories they can't talk about. This stifles their creativity and further boxes them into a stereotype. That is why there aren't a lot of novels and media that tackles different ideas made by Asian Americans.