Intergenerational Trauma Theme Analysis

When Thi Bui first realizes that her parents are reluctant to talk about their past in Việt Nam, she already knows that her family’s “gray stillness” has something to do with “a darkness [her parents] did not understand but could always FEEL.” But as Má and Bố begin to recount their childhoods, Bui quickly sees that she is asking them to unwrap their “wounds beneath wounds.” Not only has trauma marked her parents forever, but it also shapes the next generation, deeply affecting the way Bui and her siblings navigate their relatively trauma-free lives in the United States. As she looks to the future and wonders whether her son will inherit her “Refugee Reflex,” Bui learns that her and her family’s trauma is like a form of bodily memory that leaves an intergenerational imprint on each individual’s identity and emotional life.

As her parents tell her about their pasts, Bui learns about the trauma they have experienced. Bố’s childhood is incredibly difficult. His parents and grandparents fight endlessly, he falls deathly ill, and a famine strikes. His father cheats on, badly abuses, and kicks out his mother, who leaves Việt Nam with an occupying Chinese soldier. Then his father joins the Việt Minh, leaving Bố with his grandfather, who takes him back to their native village—which is then massacred by the French, and then by the Việt Minh. Bố, age seven, hides underground the whole time. After listening to this story, Bui realizes that her father is still that “terrified boy” on the inside.

While Má’s childhood is comparatively comfortable, after her marriage to Bố her life is defined by constant fear and danger for 13 years. First, Má and Bố are devastated when their daughter Quyên dies as an infant. Then, war and inflation disrupt their brief “honeymoon period” in the Mekong Delta, and they return to Sài Gòn to find themselves living in a “police state” and subjected to constant suspicion. When South Việt Nam loses the war, this only gets worse: the Northern-led government fires Bố from his teaching position, labels him “ngụy” (or “deceitful”), and begins surveilling the entire family. Má’s brother Hải disappears, and Má and Bố realize they are in danger of being killed, arrested, or forced to do hard labor in New Economic Zones. When they escape Việt Nam, Má is eight months pregnant—she gives birth as a refugee in Malaysia.

Bui’s parents’ trauma marks them for life, no matter how much they try to move beyond it. Bố recognizes that, given his childhood, he “wouldn’t be […] normal” as an adult. Of course, he isn’t: he spends his days chain-smoking, drinking, obsessing about the supernatural, and stressing about invisible threats, like “that PERVERT across the street” whom he tells young Thi Bui is “watching” her. He is unable to relate to his children because he is so used to living in survival mode: when his life is no longer under threat, he has no idea what to do with himself.

Once the family reaches the United States, Má copes better: she starts working when Bố refuses and makes sure they both take classes. On top of all this, she cares for the children whenever she is home, which means she is occupied during every waking moment of her life. Dedicating all her energy to daily tasks allows her to put her trauma behind her both emotionally and concretely: work and home life distract her from the past and allow her to build a future for her family. For instance, when Thi Bui tries to interview her, Má repeatedly changes the subject to a more practical matter at hand: that night’s dinner menu. Bui realizes that there is some connection between her family’s past and Má’s tendency to avoid “I love yous”—Má avoids emotions because she was hurt so deeply in the past. Similarly, Má cannot bear to watch Bui give birth, because this means reliving her own past pain (not just the pain of childbirth, but also the pain of losing Quyên and Thảo).

Ultimately, in the Bui family, trauma is intergenerational: Má and Bố’s experiences forever shape their children’s lives. Of course, the children experience trauma of their own during their escape from Việt Nam, although only the elder girls—Lan and Bích—really remember it. But Thi Bui also sees her emotional distance from her parents as a symptom of this trauma: her parents’ inability to come to terms with the pain, fear, and danger they experienced in Việt Nam affects their parenting and their family’s ability to communicate honestly. Like Má, Lan and Bích invest all their energies in their studies and future, and they cope with the past by turning their backs on it.

But in one way or another, this past deeply affects everyone in Bui’s family, providing them with the motives and frameworks they use to pursue their futures. And Bui realizes how the past has left an imprint on her when there is an explosion in the apartment beneath the family’s. The rest hide, assuming someone is coming after them—just as they might have when the North Vietnamese government came looking for them in Sài Gòn. But Bui realizes that they need to get out of the house and leads the others to safety. She calls this instinct to flee her “Refugee Reflex,” and she argues that it is part of her “inheritance.” As Bui’s story and so many other migration stories demonstrate, then, the past—especially histories of violence, fear, and oppression—leaves its mark through trauma, and over time its lessons become embedded in future generations as instincts and reflexes. Bui’s “Refugee Reflex” shows how her body and identity, and those of others who have suffered or come from sufferers of violence, have become living archives of the colonialism, war, and repression Việt Nam suffered for so much of the 20th century.