Nam Le Love

Karen Nguyen

ASA 4

Prof. Maira

1 June 2017

Nam Le Love and Sacrifice

            Between reading “ethnic literature” and imploring my Vietnamese grandparents to again recount stories about fleeing communist Vietnam, I’ve realized that people are truly fascinated by story telling involving personal conflict and family. I cannot fully criticize “white people” for their partiality for ethnic novels that talk about personal ethnic stories because I feel that it is natural to be interested in another’s life/culture. However, it becomes tiring when stories such as Le’s are read in the form of a textbook rather than a well-written story, as something to extract knowledge about an “other” culture. This behavior catalyzes the notions of how Asian authors only sell novels about their ethnic sufferings and their heritage. In this way, Asian authors fall into a literary stereotype, one that Le acknowledges in the reading. Through his short story, Le adheres to the stereotype since his story is of course about his family. Yet Le also includes a sort of fun poke at the stereotype of Asian authors, because his story is about a clearly "white-washed" Asian author who attempts to write a book about his heritage (like Inception.)