![]() ![]() One of the first recollections Thi Bui has of him is hearing his frightening stories of perverted neighbors and women getting sexually assaulted by scissors. He was a stay-at-home dad who would smoke in front of his children and not care what they would do. Bố would later play a role in Má’s trauma, as he would abandon her multiple times during childbirth.īố is often portrayed as emotionally withdrawn and paranoid. This, along with her desire to be intellectually independent, influenced her views on marriage as a prison, but later on, she married Thi Bui’s father (Bố), due to an unexpected pregnancy. This correlates to how Má had grown up in a neglectful household where her mother would ignore her, which led to feelings of isolation. Thi Bui talks about her mother’s difficulties accepting her daughters’ partners as she fears they’ll be taken away. The relationship between Má and her daughters is surrounded by her trauma of isolation and abandonment from her childhood. Thi Bui describes her mother as a “heroic” “Vietnamese Princess” who sacrificed everything for the sake of her children. Thi Bui views Má as a role model due to her role as the sole provider, her mother acted as the foundation that held the family together. Throughout this story, Thi Bui is seen comparing her struggles with her mother’s as she feels insecurities about being a good mother like Má. Much of this is reflected in how she reacts to Thi Bui’s pregnancy, as she begins recollecting the pain of physically birthing a child and losing her children to unfortunate circumstances out of her control. The image of childbearing is prevalent throughout Má’s story, as a lot of her trauma is rooted in her first child dying of disease and her fourth being a stillbirth. The closing scene shows Thi Bui hugging her mother as she questions how she was able to do it “six times”. Amidst this, Thi Bui emphasizes to the doctor that she had no desire to be put on drugs as she felt that she would not be able to measure up to her idealized image of a mother (based upon Má) and would once again be forced to become the child (making others take care of her). The story begins with Thi Bui in the hospital, as her mother (Má) awaits outside the room, unable to stomach the sight of her daughter giving birth. ![]() “Family is now something I created and not just something I was born into.” pg.21 Thi Bui’s graphic novel, The Best We Could Do, discusses intergenerational trauma and how we come to understand our parents’ deep-rooted wounds as children of Vietnamese immigrants in America. What I didn’t realize then was that her traumatic experiences painted me in the mirror image of herself. Growing up I was often told that I was exactly like my mother. Findings will be publicly disseminated to continue building community dialogue and awareness on this topic and could serve as a framework for developing similar interventions for other contemporary refugee communities.*Content Warning: subjects discussed include sexual violence, trauma with childbirth, abuse, mental health and neglect* A combination of first-person methods (i.e., focus groups, individual interviews, evaluation forms) and third-person methods (i.e., a witness form) will be used to gather data on the intervention’s impact on individual well-being, community awareness on intergenerational trauma, and perceptions on the suitability of mindfulness for healing intergenerational trauma. The intervention, which will include components of psychoeducation, storytelling, genograms, community dialogue, and mindfulness practices, will be delivered to a multigenerational, bilingual adult Vietnamese-American sample of up to 40 participants. This project aims to support a community-led development, implementation, and evaluation of a mindfulness-based intervention for healing intergenerational trauma among Vietnamese-Americans. Ample evidence supports that intergenerational trauma is an embodied experience that could be healed through mindfulness practices focused on cultivating interoception. Despite its prevalence among Vietnamese Americans, no research has been done to explore interventions which could promote healing from intergenerational trauma and building resilience in this community. Intergenerational trauma occurs when the traumas that occurred to one generation have an impact on the health and wellbeing of future descendants.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |