On Tuesday, November 14, Diana Truong PO ’24 and Griffin Campion PO ’24, the 2023 recipients of the Yidan Experiential Learning Grant for the Study of Asia, presented their summer experiences at a lunch colloquium in the Oldenborg Center.
The grant, sponsored by the Oldenborg Center, provides financial support to Pomona College students interested in experiential learning opportunities such as intensive language study, community engagement, and master classes that focus on Asia and Asian cultures. Awards are given in varying amounts up to $4,500.
This summer, Truong participated in the Pitzer in Vietnam Summer 2023 program, a six-week study abroad experience focused on intensive immersion in Vietnamese language, culture, history and community.
As a first-generation, low-income student, the Yidan Scholarship provided Truong with the financial support she needed to visit Vietnam through Pitzer’s summer program and connect with her Vietnamese culture.
“I didn’t grow up learning the Vietnamese language because my family wanted me to assimilate in America and avoid the discrimination they experienced – so this was a really important way for me to connect with my heritage as a descendant of the Vietnamese diaspora,” Truong told TSL in an email.
At the talk, Truong spoke about the influence of her family’s displacement from Vietnam on her interest in Vietnamese culture and language.
“The main source of my connection to Vietnamese culture without the language growing up was the cultural traditions of respect for family, emphasis on education, art and food,” Truong said. “My aunts would make big bowls of pho and egg rolls for us to share. Instead of giving cupcakes in primary school, we gave egg rolls. So being involved with art and food was a really big source of connection for me growing up, as well as learning the history.”
While studying abroad, Truong struggled with her sense of identity as a Vietnamese American. She recalled a time when she was on a boat in the Mê Kông Delta, manned by an elderly Vietnamese woman, and questioned how she was benefiting from the woman’s labour.
“I felt really bad because I should be cheering for her,” Truong said. “What does it mean for my position as someone in the Vietnamese American diaspora to be served by an elder and the different kinds of labour that she has to do – and she makes less than we do in the [United States]?”
But after completing the programme, Truong felt proud to be a Vietnamese American.
“I learned that being separated from your ancestral language is not a failure, but a natural consequence of the violence of imperialism and displacement,” she said.
Truong expressed her excitement to continue learning Vietnamese in the spring through Pitzer’s Intermediate Vietnamese language course with professors Cô Tâm and Anh Công from Huế University. Eventually, she hopes to use her Vietnamese to help non-English speaking patients as a paramedic.
“I hope that my access to the Vietnamese language can be helpful to communities experiencing emergencies,” she said.
Campion, the other scholar, studied abroad in Osaka, Japan, to learn Japanese and conduct research for his thesis on the role of food in creating national identities.
He was inspired to study abroad in Japan because he was curious about the language after participating in an exchange programme when he was in high school.
“I was able to visit the school where the Japanese students came from and stay with a host family,” Campion said during the lecture. “But I didn’t speak Japanese at the time – it was all English – and I felt like there was a missing piece.”
This inspired him to study Japanese at Pomona for two years, after which he applied for a summer study abroad programme in Japan to further his learning. The Yidan Scholarship provided the financial support he needed to attend the programme.
While in Japan, Campion took intensive language classes, travelled to cities such as Kyoto and Hiroshima, and immersed himself in Japanese culture. One of the most important things he did was take a language pledge.
“The language pledge was that when we were on the university campus or in the residence with our Japanese housemates, we agreed to speak only Japanese,” says Campion. “The whole first week I was there, I did not speak a word of English. It was a very new experience.
Another thing Campion learned while studying abroad was how to enjoy being alone. His first foray into this was when he and a group of other people went to the world’s biggest shopping street. When everyone else decided to go home, he decided to stay and explore the area on his own.
“Figuring out how to be happier on my own and doing the things I want to do on my own – it’s never been something I’ve done a lot of,” says Campion. “I have a twin brother, we grew up being on each other’s toes 24/7, so this was pretty new to me, but it felt good.”
The biggest challenge Campion faced was creating a whole new community in Japan. The time difference made it difficult for him to keep in touch with friends and family back home.
“The community of people I built on the programme and in Japan had to be socially sustaining for me for those two months,” Campion said. “And although that was a huge challenge, it was something that I was really glad I was able to do because it made me more confident in my ability to make connections in a community.”
Another challenge Campion faced was accepting that basic tasks would be different.
“Part of the culture shock was that suddenly everything was hard,” he said. “The basics of doing laundry, taking a shower and taking out the rubbish are so different. I had to learn to deal with the honeymoon phase of ‘this is cool and different’ to the more challenging phase of ‘why does everything have to be different’.”
Campion noted that participating in the study abroad programme would not have been possible without the help of the Yidan Scholarship.
“Because Pomona doesn’t have a summer study abroad program, people who want to study abroad in the summer have to figure out the process on their own, including funding,” he said. “Because of the financial support of the scholarship, I was able to have this experience, and I’m really grateful to have had it and learned so much from it.”
