Squatting on the ground, a pudding vendor chastised me for carrying my baby nephew wrong, "You're going to make him bow legged!" In an alley, a stranger blurted, "What a cute baby! I've been married for ten years but I can't conceive. You don't know how much I suffer, brother." Instant familiarity is common here, and it's built into the language, for everyone is your older or younger brother, older or younger sister, greater or lesser uncle, or greater or lesser aunt, etc.
Although all languages were designed to establish degrees of kinship, some stress these bonds more than others, and Americans prefer, simply, the egalitarian "you" and "I."
A month ago, I hung out with a Vietnamese-American friend who's a professor at a California university. Though H. came to the US as a child, she never adopted an Anglo first name. Plus, H. speaks Vietnamese reasonably well, visits Vietnam often and has built her entire academic career on Vietnam. Despite all this, H. does not consider Vietnam to be her nation, "because this place is entirely owned by men," an oversimplistic assertion, I thought, and told her so. Tellingly, H. also doesn't consider the US to be her country. In her mid 50's, H. is divorced, so she's not only nationless, but without anyone to come home to. Living in Los Angeles, H. spends much time sitting in a car, staring at other people's tail ends. Though she would protest, H. is entirely shaped by America, and is quintessentially, anomically American. If H. was more Vietnamese, she would know that her fate is bound up with her family, community and nation.
(Article changed on November 5, 2018 at 15:15)
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