Chronicles of Community

This comic is a chronicling of a Vietnamese American experience specifically surrounding Vietnamese school. The artist uses warm hues throughout to invoke a dual sense of nostalgia and home. The illustrations show the children the narrator meets in Viet school growing up throughout the years. The story switches from adolescence to the narrator’s childhood to reveal how the scary teacher with a mole had actually been a close family friend, something that might’ve not been expected based on his first appearance in the comic. Throughout there is a pronounced sense of community that envelopes the illustrations and the narrator’s life. From carpooling with her best friend’s dad to the reliances she developed on the kids who also attended Viet school with her, we get a sense of a close-knit group of people looking out for each other. The comic’s ending message about the expanded social network Viet school provided has been qualified throughout by the positive impacts the people from Viet school had on the narrator. From first loves to friends from other schools and even her godfather, Viet school appears to have been a cultural and community hub in the narrator’s childhood. While I don’t attend Viet school myself, I am Vietnamese American and the sense of community this artwork imparted was something that was easy to resonate with. I think it speaks to a larger immigrant experience where you come to rely on each other to get through the same experiences.