A Shelter of Memory in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “Black-Eyed Women”
"The Refugees" is an anthology book by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a diasporan of Vietnamese origin. The Refugees comprises nine short stories each dealing with the hopes and expectations of people who migrate under life-changing situations. “The Black-Eyed Women” is the first story of the collection that is taken for analysis. The story is narrated by an unnamed woman living in the United States as a second generation diasporan. The story revolves around the author whose family is Vietnamese. In America, she conceals her identity and leads her life as a ghostwriter, she listens to other stories as part of her profession. Nonetheless, she does not do so with her mother who shares the story of the past. She hardly pays heed to her. One day the narrator’s boss Victor, who is also a forced Vietnamese immigrant in America tells the author about his story. After she listens to the pathetic story of Victor and his family’s loss, she realises the mistake of evading her mother’s stories as blabbering. She finds that her mother is greatly haunted by the memories of her dead brother, father and others who lived with her in Vietnam. Realising the importance of her mother’s reiterated memories she takes up the mission of recording her emotions.
Memory delineates the personality of a person based on the type of memory he or she has. Based on the range of memory, information imbued in a person can be classified into three types of memories. There are sensory, short-term and long-term memory. Sensory memory stores information from the world, thus enabling the storage and future use of such information. Short-term memory refers to information processed in a short period. Long-term memory allows us to store information for long periods, including information that can be retrieved consciously or unconsciously (The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins, n.d.) Besides these, ‘Flashbulb Memories’ are yet another type of memory that does not fit under any time or range. They acquire such a name as they appear suddenly like flash floods. Unlike the other memories, these occur as vivid and highly detailed snapshots that originate at times of shock or trauma (Bernita & Kala, 2019)
Memories play an important role in the life of diasporans. Diasporans are people who migrate to an alien land by interest in search of greener pastures or people who are transported by force or compulsion like slaves or expatriates. While the first category of people try to get accustomed to the hostland, the latter the slaves and expatriates live in eternal sadness and fear. The diasporic communities are also named after the places they have left like Asian Diaspora, Indian Diaspora, Canadian Diaspora, European Diaspora and others. The diasporans settle in the host country and face numerous hostile situations. Diasporans hardly can return to their native country, to keep their memories alive and to experience athomeness, they try to hold on to something of their motherland. They treasure some souvenirs of their ancestors in their minds or carry them in their suitcases. This essay tries to portray the different types of memories that steer the lives of the various generations of diasporans presented in the short story titled “The Black-Eyed Women” by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
The author’s mother is a first-generation immigrant who has a long-term memory of Vietnam. She is the one who recalls memories of her homeland more than the author. Her mother recalls the moment of happiness of their family before the war, she compared her life if her husband and son were still alive. She compares Vietnam and America. She even imagines what would her life be like if she had not experienced the misery of war.
“If we hadn’t had a war”, she said that night, her wistfulness drawing me closer, “We’d be like the Koreans now. Saigon would be Seoul, your father alive, you married with children, me a retired housewife, not a manicurist” (The Refugees 11, 12).
Memory is often described through pleasant, sweet, and warm words but for a diaspora who has escaped from a tense situation, memory is often described as leaving their homeland in a very painful, scary and traumatic situation. They are haunted by their dark memories. Even in the form of ghosts and phantoms. They carry this memory with them as they struggle with a new identity in a new environment, which often creates serious problems for their existence.
Victor, the owner of a publication company where the narrator works has lost his wife and children in Vietnam war, he is psychologically shattered and is unable to recover from the loss. Though he appears normal for others, he finds himself trapped in the web of memories. He lives in a haunted world with his dead family. He reveals this when the narrator asks him whether he has seen any ghosts.
“All the time. When I close my eyes, my wife and children appear just like when they were alive. With my eyes open I’ll see them in my peripheral vision. They move fast and disappear”. (The Refugees 17)
The sensory memory that operates via sensory organs is portrayed through Victor. In Victor, senses instigate and add more liveliness to their recalled memories. The smell of the ‘perfume’, ‘saline water’ and the touches like ‘hug’, and ‘pain of the bruise’ activate the memory boxes and speed up the mental motion picture. This is evident in Victor’s motion picture of his dead family.
“I smell them too, my wife’s perfume when she walks by, the shampoo in my daughter’s hair, the sweat in my son’s jerseys. And I can feel them, my son brushing his hand on mine, my wife breathing on my neck the way she used to do in bed, my daughter clinging to my knees.” (The Refugees 17, 18)
The flashbulb memories come to the unnamed narrator as a second generation immigrant when she discovers the origin of those pains, only after listening to Victor and her mother. She succumbs to the pressures of assignments and liabilities at her office that her past life and memories are erased. Previously she felt pain inside but didn't know where it came from. These memories take different forms and she imagines, sees and lives a motion picture with them. She too sees her dead brother like her mother.
“…I touched the bruises. “Does it hurt?” “Not anymore. Does it still hurt for you?” …”Yes”. I said at last” (The Refugees 15).
The narrator’s flashbulb memories make her live the moments again, giving her momentous relief and joy. The narrator’s mother portrays the first generation of diasporans whose life is full of confusion because of their traumas and their difficulty adapting to a new world meanwhile the second generation immigrants face lesser agony than the first generation immigrants. In modern life, they easily get acculturated to the host land and try to create an identity of their own. Ghostwriter is the author’s new identity as a diaspora community.
Diasporas live in a sea of memories, some regarding their homeland or events they experienced related to their family. The memories they carry are often unpleasant memories about the badness of war and the complexity of events. There are two generations of diaspora in the story of “Black-Eyed Women”, each generation brings and depicts their types of memories. Without memories, human beings would be incomplete. Memories serve as eternal springs of joy and strength giving the diasporans the immunity to fight the battle of identity crisis in the host land. From the analysis of this short story, it can be said that the memory boxes of the diasporans are not just gardens but the shelters that protect the species. Memory comes to rescue the lost hope and it is the choice of the diasporans to choose how they are going to put them to use.
Reference
Bernita, A., & Kala, S.. (2019). The Sanctuary of Memory in Viet Than Nguyen's "Black-eyed Women". 4(6), 2023. https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.46.62
Nguyen, Vieth Thanh. The Refugees. New York: Grove Press. 2017
The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins. (n.d.). The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins. Frontiers. Retrieved September 28, 2023, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2017.00438/full#:~:text=The%20ma in%20forms%20of%20memory,%2C%20and%20long-term%20memory.
Credit: Anisa Lestari
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