Daughters from Danang

I found this documentary to be an interesting mix of emotion and frustration for me. Although it was easy to feel for Heidi and her inability to fit in her homeland, I felt incredibly frustrated by her lack of knowledge and understanding. She experienced a stereotypical case of culture shock upon her arrival causing her immediate anxiety and emotional distress. I just don’t understand what exactly she was expecting. Here was a family she had barely ever known back in a third world country ravaged by a gruesome and vicious war. And yet she is taken aback by the poverty they live in.

            What stuck me first about Heidi’s complete lack of knowledge was her dress code. This lady travels to a southeastern country nearly on the equator and walks around dressed in leggings and long sleeve shirts. When I visited Vietnam I wore gym shorts and a tank top and I was still hot. The other article of clothing that really stood out to me was the jewelry that she wore the whole time there. Gold rings, a watch and a necklace really made her not just stand out but show her actual family that she was well off.

            When Heidi finally does meet her real family, the happiness is short lived. The language and cultural barrier makes conversation and interaction awkward. Heidi feels suffocated due to her real mothers desire to spend ever waking hour together. The worst comes when Heidi is asked to bring her mother back to live with her in the United States. It is understandable that this is a request that Heidi does not want to make, but the request for Heidi to send some money back monthly I think is not. This becomes a clash of cultures. The family lives in less than ideal conditions so that when a family member does move away it is customary they send money back. But Heidi cannot move past her feelings of resentment and doesn’t grant either request choosing instead to leave early back to the life she knows.

            For Heidi to abandon her family giving nothing back I thought was selfish. If Heidi was able to send even $20 a month back to her real family, I know it would make a huge difference in their lives. But she chose to leave and forget wishing she had left the curiosity alone. Daughters of Danang displays stereotypic American cultural ignorance and selfishness at its finest. The fact that she wished she never went, never wrote back to the letters they sent her and never met and reconnected with her real family proves her self-centered personality. She visited a life that she should have been living only to forsake and wish to disremember instead of embracing and cherish.