앤드류 람의 『실락조』와 『향몽』 연구—베트남 디아스포라의 과거, 현재, 그리고 가능성

Abstract

This paper examines Birds of Paradise Lost and Perfume Dreams by Andrew Lam, an active Vietnamese American writer and journalist. The two works offer the opportunity to look at the Vietnamese Diaspora from the perspective of its disastrous past, its multiple lifestyles related with the ‘American Dream,’ and its implications for the life of the Vietnamese of the Diaspora in the 21st globalized century. Above all, Lam shows us the face of the tragic Vietnamese war and its immediate aftermath leading to miserable lives under communism and desperate escape experiences on helicopters and risky boats, which are the sources of the trauma Vietnamese American people have suffered from. On the one hand, he thinks remembering and facing the past is essential, in order for the Vietnamese of the Diaspora to get over its trauma, to live lives in the present, and to proceed toward the future with hope. On the other hand, Lam’s works suggest that the American main stream should necessarily admit its shame in the Vietnam War and rectify its narcissistic cultural representations. Next, Lam describes a variety of ‘American Dream’ lifestyles, from exiles living in the past with no interest in adjusting themselves to American society through the ‘model minority’ assimilating themselves into American value systems to alienated Vietnamese with no ability to go up the ladder of the American social class system. This description of the multiple lives of the Vietnamese of the Diaspora is important in refuting the meme of the invisibility of the faceless Vietnamese created by American main stream discourse. Last, Lam suggests the possibility of Vietnamese Diaspora offering a base by default for a plural and hybrid self called ‘a transnational cosmopolitan.’ This is one who crosses national borders with freedom and accepts multiple cultures into oneself. This identity is fluid, recreative, and hybrid, at home everywhere, and always in the making process. The transnational cosmopolitan identity shows the irony of history transforming the tragic into an unexpected gate into free and successful citizenship of the world. Andrew Lam’s vision of the contemporary lives of the Vietnamese of the Diaspora offers insight and hope, in a courageous exploration of often ignored social issues.