My Vietnamese vocabulary has slowly been shrinking, moreso than before since I’ve spent the last few months away from home. It’s partly because I have virtually no Vietnamese friends. In a generation that’s been raised to focus on themselves (that’s including me), it’s hard to find people who are genuinely interested in getting together and finding creative ways of getting back in touch with their roots.
I’ll also admit to being fairly ignorant of my heritage–mostly on purpose as to not burden myself with the knowledge of how bad things were back then (and how bad they are now). My relatives have communicated some of that with me in the past, but it’s always felt like they were trying to guilt trip me for having things handed to me that they’ve had to work their whole lives for. Of course, that’s not to say that I don’t respect them for getting as far as they have.
So that’s the scoop on that. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to tackle it, but I guess the first step is addressing this problem exists in the first place.