Between Two Worlds The Next Generation Sparknotes

Between Two Worlds and Between Two Worlds: The Next Generation is a two-part PBS documentary series that details the experiences of Vietnamese migrants seeking refuge in America and how they successfully carved themselves and their families a place in the United States. The first section of the documentary is dedicated to the refugee’s perspective, primarily detailing the existing memories during the Vietnam War, their efforts to flee the nation, as well as stories of the hardworking efforts made to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the second portion focuses on the lives of the children of said refugees and how they dealt with aspects of assimilation, balancing two cultures at once, and their prospects for the future as they foster families of their

Another notable aspect of the documentary was their tactful portrayal of the fluctuating nature of cultural memory in Vietnamese American communities. Setting the scene, the documentary prefaces with a quote that successfully encapsulates the concept in mind; discussing their refuge in America, one of the narrators states, “[w]e come to a new land– a land of change, And as we started to live again, we wondered, what would be gained and what would be lost” The concept of cultural memory fixates on the notions of generational endowments; as each generation passes, the elders pass on numerous cultural memorabilia to the youth, such as language, traditions, and history. The entirety of this portion of the documentary encapsulates this concept through the lives of the children of refugees, as they too are responsible for learning their heritage while balancing the expectation to assimilate, albeit with the caveat that these legacies are particular to the community in which they are

While I understand the sentiment and that these are the personal opinions of the interviewed families, I feel as though such sent a problematic message across– as if trauma inherently makes people stronger when that is not the case. I also felt that the documentary lacked depth when articulating the historical scene. As expected with refugees from Vietnam, I did not necessarily expect there to be any focus on the suffering of the communist regime at the hands of the United States. However, there were many savior-esque scenes in the second portion. I felt the most notable instance of this was when one of the sons of the immigrants began to cry when articulating his hurt towards the fact that children in Vietnam continue to lose limbs due to various bombs dropped during the war. While a crucial aspect of the war’s history, I felt the documentary did a disservice to such an emotional scene by not articulating the truth, minimizing Vietnam as a suffering nation without acknowledging the part that the United States played in