A Transformative Educational Paradigm That Addresses Vietnamese American Youths' Translanguaging and Trans-Trauma Needs

• In Event: Cultivating Authentic Language Practices: Learning From Community Translanguaging Practices Outside of Schools

Abstract

Objectives
The purpose of my research is to document, remember and reflect on the experiences of Vietnamese Americans. To create a space in which Vietnamese American youth can co-labor (García, 2020) and co-produce knowledge to disrupt the silence surrounding their lived experience in the U.S., I draw across methodological traditions for this collaborative project. In doing so, I seek to answer the following questions:
How do Vietnamese American youth view/narrate their lives and relationships to the past and the present in the U.S. and Vietnam?
What do youths’ narratives communicate about their transtrauma?

Theoretical Framework
This collaborative project draws from translanguaging and transtrauma theories. For this project, translanguaging refers to “not just the deployment of multilingual communicative repertoires,” (Callaghan, Moore, & Simpson, 2018 p.30), but also how people use their semiotic resources in ways that go beyond written and oral forms to make meaning. Transtrauma extends beyond baseline understandings of trauma or intergenerational trauma; instead, it provides a new framework for theorizing lived experiences in relation to structural conditions. It goes beyond the individual to consider the role nation-states play in inflicting trauma on marginalized communities. This lens allows for accurate description of the complexities so many Vietnamese Americans experience.

Methods & Data Sources
This research project, conducted collaboratively with Vietnamese American youth in Philadelphia, is multidisciplinary, anchored in arts-based research, participatory-action research and emancipatory approaches. Such an approach, which I refer to as transmethodology, extends beyond one single methodology, discipline or imposed boundaries that the academy typically deems legitimate.
Guided by the research questions, the youth and I collaborated on eight workshops:
Session 1 and Session 2 - Introductions. Getting to know the youth
Session 3 – The Vietnam War and Coming to the U.S.
Session 4 -What does it mean to be Vietnamese American?
Session 5 – Perceptions of their own racialization and that of others
Session 6 -Language/Bilingualism
Session 7- Construction of gender/sexuality
Session 8-- Schooling
Each workshop generated the following data sources: digital recordings, transcripts, and workshop activity artifacts. Narrative and dialectical analysis was conducted collaboratively.

Findings
Participating youth collectively explored their lived experiences as Vietnamese Americans, learned about their own history, and discussed trauma not taught in schools. Findings indicate that (1) Vietnamese American youth are often unaware of their own family histories in relation to their parents’/grandparents’ escaping the war and relocating to the U.S. (2) with guided reflection, participants were able to reflect on personal experiences with racism and shift their understanding of those experiences from interpersonal to institutional racism, and (3) the development of multimodal artifacts allowed youth to identify the intergenerational trauma they inherited and the role of the U.S. in that trauma.

Scholarly Significance
There is limited research focused on the lived experiences of Vietnamese American youth, particularly research guided by translanguaging and transtrauma lenses. This research addresses this gap.

Author

• Khánh Lê, Queens College - CUNY