In this essay I argue that due to Heidi being raised in a country with a different lifestyle, values and traditions compared to her original birthplace, Heidi cannot be judged for not understanding the experiences her biological family went through. However, I still believe that it was fair for Heidi’s birth mother and siblings to ask for financial help since they were struggling.
When Heidi went to Vietnam to visit, there was a culture shock for her like when people cooked on the streets and bathed outside of the house with a bucket of water. But not only did she lived a different lifestyle than her family in Vietnam, she was raised differently by a white American mother. Heidi never had to take responsibility others except her children because everyone in America were wealthy enough to be independent and self-sufficient like when her adopted mother when she disowned Heidi. In contrast, her family in Vietnam was co-dependent because
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First, Heidi’s insensitivity and incomprehension could have been a result of how the United States portrayed the war. History of the Vietnam War is shown in the American’s perspective in the United States. As Rick Berry and Jon Carlos Rowe state in Jodi Kim’s “The War-Surplus of Our New Imperialism” that although Vietnam, “is the war-surplus of our new imperialism, [sic] it should hardly surprise us that it has virtually nothing to tell us of Vietnamese history, culture and politics”. Everything about the war is told in one perspective. Kim also states that this is “the reversal of the salvation narrative” but in this case, the adopted child is a ‘freely given gift’”. Mai gives a better life for Heidi and in return expects Heidi to pay her back. Having the role of a parent and child reversed is uncommon in the United States. Having an adopted child be salvation is even rarer, which then brings up the question “What are the responsibilities of a Vietnamese-American