Exploring Vietnamese American Identity and Political Affiliation: An Auto-Ethography on Experiences of Loss and Belonging

In this work, I, a second generation Vietnamese American, conduct an auto-ethnography of myself, my mother, and my grandfather on their political beliefs to gather qualitative data on shifting Vietnamese American political attitudes between generations. Through a series of interviews, I aim to determine to what extent Vietnamese American ethnic background has on individual political beliefs, if at all. Ultimately, I have found that it is not ethnic and racial identity that uniformly influence political affiliation; rather, it is the range of experiences in immigration and assimilation that affect said beliefs. I divide my findings into three core themes: the refugee experience, the Americanization experience, and the racial consciousness experience.