When ‘The Foreigner’ Makes a Foreigner of You

“Are you also mad that there are no actual Vietnamese people in The Foreigner even though they used a Vietnamese name?” a friend of mine asked shortly after the trailer had dropped. To be truthful, in the flurry of excitement for another Jackie Chan movie, I hadn’t seen any mention of it and so immediately began researching. Sure enough, the name “Ngoc Minh Quan” stared back at me. As I continued pursuing the subject I found it had even been changed from the more obvious “Nguyen Ngoc Minh” in the original book in case I had any doubts about the intended origin of the main character. And suddenly, made aware that something precious had been snatched from both of our Vietnamese hands, I felt not mad, but frustrated and deeply hurt. Don’t get me wrong: I love Jackie Chan as much as the next person, especially as an Asian American hungry for anything that will highlight our stories enough to make us feel seen and human. But when you are Vietnamese and American, your inheritance looks like this: jokes about nail salons, mispronounced and nightmare “re-imaginings” of phở, and always, always The War. Not as we as a people and diaspora experienced and continue to experience the ramifications of it, of course, but as a gristly historical event that traumatized a country an ocean away (fun scavenger hunt activity: try to Google “Vietnam War Movie” and find a cover that doesn’t feature a white man front and center). So shouldn’t I be grateful that there’s an Asian actor at the center at…