"Laotian Daughters" & "Monkey Dance"

One of the main talking points in Shah Bindi's "Laotian Daughters," is the importance of community in the pursuit of change. The Chevron explosion was the beginning of the campaign for Laotian members of the community to seek equal opportunities in safety, as the emergency health system did not have any Lao in it to communicate to the Lao members of the community, especially those who did not understand any English. Through this first campaign, the Lao youth began to see their power in changing the political systems in their community, prompting them to continue to campaign more in order to preserve their culture and language. The idea of the youth campaign being able to change anything is very special to me, because as a member of the youth, often times, I see older adults not taking the political stances and changes that we make as serious, belittling us, who have the same rights and opportunities. This essay goes to show that despite being seen as the youth with little to no experience in the "real world," the youth does have the ability to make changes and influence people in the political system. 

When the talk of Proposition 227 popped up, I had no idea what it was until I read further into this essay. The idea that people in California, a progressive state, do not want people to have bi-literacy in the United States, is something that leaves me aghast because something like this should not have even been in the running as a proposition for the people to vote in. To see the present state of bi-literacy being heavily embraced by the education system in the United States is a huge contrast compared to the negative attention that bi-literacy had 20 years ago. Just the idea of the youth changing the opinions of other youth and adults is just astonishing and shows how it does not matter how old or young one person has to be in order to make changes in their community. 

The Monkey Dance film shed light on the lives of Southeast Asian immigrants in the United States. Watching the film, I remembered how one of my friend's parents also went through the refugee struggle after escaping from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In the film, the children of the refugees/immigrants showed some sort of resistance to the typical immigrant stereotype of dropping out of school or getting involved in the bad things outside of school. Despite their integration into the American culture, most of them still showed a connection to their mother country through expressions of language and art. The importance of culture and language is definitely strong because it not only connects you to your family origins, but it also presents to others the diverse background that you have instead of being labeled as an Asian American without any other description to accompany it.