Gran Torino/Identity
09 Apr 2009 Leave a Comment
I finally watched Gran Torino about a month ago (it just took me a while to write this post). I was against watching it, because the idea of a White man saving a Hmong family from Hmong gangs did not sound that interesting to me. I’m rather sick of movies where people of color need to be saved by a White man. While the movie was not that great, I thought it raised a number of issues prevalent in the Hmong community. For example, it highlighted the issues of gangs and the educational gap between boys and girls. It also did a pretty good job of portraying the Hmong community and Hmong history. Although, I would have preferred a documentary because the issues raised in the movie are faced by people daily; I will give the film (and Clint Eastwood) credit for making a movie about a community most people just ignore. Lastly, I was pleased that the film actually had real Hmong and not just any other people who looked “Asian”.
Anyways, I’ve been talking about my ethnicity/culture a lot since I’ve been here. It has been quite interesting talking about it since I didn’t start talking about it until Junior/Senior year of college. I’m not sure if people are more aware of different ethnicities/cultures in the Peace Corps or that I’m more willing to talk about it. It could be both. Most PCVs seem generally interested so they ask me a lot of questions. It helps that some of the PCVs have some sort of knowledge of my ethnic group, because it doesn’t make me feel like I’m strange. Does that make sense? After years of feeling uncomfortable talking about my ethnicity, culture, etc. I’m finally comfortable talking about it.
