So far, TBWCD is the most memorable work for me in this term. It not only introduced how civilians would deal with warfare in such impressive historical events we know but also it expressed the transgenerational trauma of Thi Bui’s family in the flow of time. We have learned imperalism in Human Geography class. It is the concrete fact that Vietnamese faced many dominant powers in the history. First of all, it’s Chinese traced way back to Han Dynasty. In 111 BCE, Han dynasty have conquered today’s Vietnam. It last until 939 AD when China splited up to several kingdoms and fells into chaos of war. Vietnam then separated from China and become an independent region. The kingdom lasts until French comes in this region in late 19th century. French have fought a war with Qing dynasty in 1884 and successfully become the dominant power in Vietnam. They turned Vietnam into colonies. The reason why French conquered this place is the need of resources, all colonizing powers need colonies to provide raw materials to the “home” nation. That revealed the reason of why European powers seize for colonies crazily. They almost divided everywhere in Africa and almost all of Southeast Asia. To have more influence in the colony, French people made French as the spoken language in school for mandatory. Also, there’s missionaries went to Vietnam to spread Catholic, therefore Catholic school’s establishment is on progress. All of these can be seen in describing Thi Bui’s parents’s time in school. In history, there’s a short period that Japan occupied Vietnam, but they didn’t change the school system. After WWII, all new ideologies have come in to Vietnam. Freedom and democracy, communism from Vietcong and most importantly imperialism which France want to take Vietnam back. There were tyranny shown by both Vietcong and France in Northern Vietnam when Thi Bui’s father witnessed all these things in his childhood. That’s the part where Americans join in. U.S first appeared as one of the negotiator which let French army withdraw from Vietnam from 1954’s Geneva Congress. Then U.S have settled some troops but didn’t erupt the conflict, the real conflict starts in 1961 and ends in April.30th, 1975. United State’s goal is try to stop the communism spread based upon the cold war background. Unfortunately, they have to withdraw left many soldiers and civilians died. A lot of families like Thi Bui fled to Malaysia because Vietcong is much more terrifying than Americans. Therefore, U.S is actually belong to one of the *Neo-Colonialism state. No matter through it’s history in late 19th century or how dominant they are right now on the world stage. That’s the most important thing I get between my Geography class and the comic memoir TBWCD.

*https://www.socialistalternative.org/imperialism-and-the-gulf-war-1990-91/imperialism-neo-colonialism-and-war/