On Being Haunted

The Refugee as Abolition: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon

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The Refugee as Abolition: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon -

Emily Udomtanapon

“To write stories concerning exclusions and invisibilities is to write ghost stories” (Gordon, 2008; pp.17).

I’m going to tell you a ghost story.  

I’m haunted not by a monster that lives in my closet nor a fanged creature that follows me down  the street hungry for blood. I’m haunted by a ghost who shares my face, who appears in the mirror, and  who always seems to arrive whenever I witness the various versions of myself I come across in my daily  life– the versions of myself that I could’ve been had I not lost it.  

Not everyone is estranged from their own culture, I often have to remind myself that. There are  some people who look like me who can switch back and forth from their native language and English  with lucidity. They are in contact with their ancestors, the spirits that protect them. They know the ins and  outs of their religious practices, their cultural fashion, their traditions, and their collective ways of  thinking. When I come across people like that, it’s beautiful. This is life and culture persevering in a  country where Whiteness reigns supreme.

But then when I look at my own face in the mirror, I see a Thai woman. I see the features of my  mother, father, grandparents, cousins, and ancestors echoed in mine. And yet... I lack the same sense of  amazement that I feel when I see other Asian Americans proudly display their connection to both  cultures. All I see are the fragments of my heritage I have kept and clutched onto over the years. Jumbled  phrases of broken Thai and shards of memories of my ancestral homeland that are as fragile as shale. I  can feel the creeping sensation of anger, resentment, embarrassment, and sadness emerge once again.  What’s wrong with me? How did I somehow fail to maintain both the culture I came from and the  American culture I was born into? And why am I so scared of attempting to reconnect with it once again?

In my reflection I’m not alone, she’s there too. My ghost always returns in moments like this, and she is nestling her chin on my shoulder, patiently waiting for me to acknowledge her existence. 

Only just recently could I define my feelings into a single term. It wasn’t just sadness. It wasn’t  just bitterness. It wasn’t just hopelessness. It was melancholia. It was a form of mourning with no end, in  which the subject knows whom they’ve lost but does not know what has been lost in them (Freud, 1917).  I had lost the ability to speak my first language, the main lifeline to my heritage, but for years I couldn’t  precisely articulate what had been lost in my identity, unconsciously, in that process. My melancholia did  not pertain to the loss of a person but the social implications that came from losing an object so closely  tied to my racial and ethnic heritage (Eng and Han, 2019: pp.1). Therefore, what I feel isn’t simply  melancholia but racialized melancholia. I know now that without the courage to absolve the issue or to even acknowledge it, my racial melancholia will not disappear; it will simply morph into something of a  ghostly figure. A figure which stands always in my peripheral vision, yet I’m often too scared to turn and  look. But it wasn’t going to leave until I unsheathed the cloth.  

By enrolling in a course specifically labeled as “Southeast Asian Trauma and Memory”, I was  giving myself the opportunity to finally learn parts of my ethnic and racial history despite my fears. There  I learned about the Vietnam War and the Secret War in Laos– not in the context of an American high  school textbook that is dripping in patriotism– but in the ways the war affected those who are rendered  invisible in the government's eyes. 

My dread in learning more of Southeast Asian history came from my understanding that Thailand  was unique in the sense that it wasn’t traditionally colonized by a European power, unlike other  Southeast Asian countries and cultures. As a second generation Thai American, I grew up with a mother  who was loyal to her nation’s government, who was proud of her country. Selfishly, I feared that by  learning about the grim reality of Thailand’s government, it would sever my connection to my culture and  to other Southeast Asians as well. I knew in the eyes of white America; I was a perpetual foreigner unable  to fully integrate (Eng and Han, 2019: pp. 36). I knew in the eyes of other East Asians; I did not resemble  or belong with them either. And now I was learning that Thailand not only wasn’t colonized, but it also assisted in the colonization and suffering of other Southeast Asian communities. What if I lose what little  community I have left? In my spiral, my ghost rested her forehead against mine. This fear of knowledge  cannot exist in allyship. I was going to look my ghost straight in the eye and we were going to learn  together. 

In my research, I learned that Thailand, though accepting refugees before in their history,  treated the ethnic groups who were seeking asylum from the aftermath of the Vietnam War as less than  human. In Long’s book Ban Vinai: The Refugee Camp, she gives examples to Khmer refugees in 1979  who were told they were going to be taken by the Thai military to be resettled up north but instead were  marched into minefields to die (Long, 93: pp. 41). Other examples in Long’s book included the policy of  “humane deterrence” -- a policy enacted by the Thai government in 1981 that made the lives of refugees  inhospitable in hopes to deter immigration. This included creating detention centers where new refugees  would enter into camps with minimal services, food rations, and without hope of resettlement (Long, 93:  pp. 47-48) despite the refugee communities having nowhere else to go. As camps began to close and  consolidate in size during the 80s, Thailand continued to terrorize refugees by relocating them from camp  to camp, even in some cases, forcing the refugees to go into the forest and leave Thailand without  provisions (Long, 93: pp. 49).  

The perception I had of Thailand prior to this class was limited. I only knew of glittering temples,  the strong Buddhist values, and the smiling people. In addition, being an Asian American, I assumed that  all Southeast Asian countries had a familiar sense of camaraderie as we all face oppression from white America. But there is a stark difference in how the Vietnam War and the Secret War affected Thailand,  my ethnic background, versus other Southeast Asian countries. Had I not been haunted, had my ghost not  tapped my shoulder, and had I not acknowledged her, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn this. I  am now confronted with a reality that, although Thailand is a country that prides themselves as Buddhists,  Thailand is still more than capable of enacting self-serving, inhumane acts– acts that disregard the  humanity of others. Rather than ignoring and rejecting this point of my heritage's history, I am tasked  with recognizing the capabilities humans have in using and abusing power. Ngyuen expresses that  “without such recognition, we can make peace with old enemies only to continue wars with newer  enemies not recognized as friends or even human” (Ngyuen, 2016, pp. 72).  

Now comes the questioning of what it means to be proud of my heritage while also carrying the  burden of the atrocities its government committed. Is there such a thing? What does that look like? What  does it mean to be an ally to other Southeast Asian communities? Will I be haunted forever?  

I don’t have a clear answer. But maybe the response to this melancholia isn’t dismissal, isn’t  ignorance, or burying my head in the sand from shame. Maybe the key is confrontation. Gordon says in  Ghostly Matters that, “cajoling is the nature of the ghost, the very distinctions between there and not  there, past and presence, force and shape. From force to hand to her ghostly presence in the register of  history and back again, this particular kind of social alchemy that eludes us often as it makes us look for  it” (Gordon, 2008: pp. 6). My ghost doesn’t have an all encompassing magic answer either. She eludes and  transforms, she drifts back and forth. By trusting her intuition, I must follow, and in turn, she inspires a  curiosity that allows me to question and learn about my own history and the histories of others. My  haunting has led me to take a trauma and memory course regarding Southeast Asian history that has  supplied me with the vocabulary to describe my emotions. My haunting has led me to reveal the violence  that nation-states are capable of enacting. And finally, my haunting has led me to realize that though I possess racial melancholia, I am not permanently damaged. 

Therefore, a possible solution to my haunting isn't a solution at all. It isn’t an exorcism that I need  but a form of coexistence with my ghost where I will forever be looking, reading, learning, and adjusting  my frame of thought. I refuse to view my racial melancholia as a death sentence, it is not something that  needs to be cured “but an integral part of daily existence and survival. It is a mechanism that helps us  reconstruct identity” (Eng and Han, 2019: pp. 61). In my refusal to blindly ascribe to nationalist  propaganda from both the US and Thailand, while also being an ally to my fellow Southeast Asian  community members, I will be breaking from my family’s frame of mind and re-defining what it means to  be Thai-American by actively remembering others (Ngyuen, 2016: pp. 69).  

I know now that a haunting is something not to be feared. It is equal in bitterness as it is in sweetness. It is history and hope preserved in the psyche, asking to be noticed (Eng and Han, 2019: pp 63). It is a “social phenomenon of great import” and in its confrontation it creates a switch in how we  make sense of ourselves and the world around us (Gordon, 2008: pp. 7).  

I am haunted and I believe I always will be. But to me, it is an honor.

Works Cited

Eng, D. L., & Han, S. 2019. Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of  Asian Americans. Duke University Press, pp. 1–65. 

Freud, S. 1917. Mourning and Melancholia. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological  Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916), pp. 237–258.

Gordon, A. F. 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. 2nd ed., University of  Minnesota Press. 

Long, L. D. 1993. Ban Vinai: The Refugee Camp. Columbia University Press, pp. 1–73. Nguyen, V. T. 2016. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Harvard University Press.