Chinatown Life in a Novel by French-Vietnamese Writer Thuận

Abstract Keywords: Vietnam, China, Chinatown, emigration The rationale for the study lies, first, in the absence of a Russian translation of the novel; second, in the lack of Russian, Western, Chinese and Vietnamese studies on Thuan's novel "Chinatown" that examine the historical, cultural and social dynamics between the Chinese community and Vietnamese society, as well as the Asian population and the French of the late 70s through the prism of people's experiences of multiple identities. The aim is to identify the social, historical and cultural aspects in the portrayal of Chinatown and its inhabitants, based on the artistic analysis of the text of the novel "Chinatown" by the French-Vietnamese writer Thuan. The main source of the study is the French text of the novel. The text poses the problem of identity erasure, prevalent outside the Asian community and within the group. However, assimilation, while erasing the differences between members of different groups, is able to bring them closer together because, as exemplified in the text of the novel, when Chinese and Vietnamese find themselves in a European environment, they are first and foremost a minority. The theme of multiple citizenship and multinationality is brought up. People who possess two or three nationalities at once and being "emigrants" from birth are not constrained by stereotypes, problems of historical memory and national resentment, absorb hostile cultures, unite them in themselves and reconcile them (son of the main character). The rights of ethnic Chinese in Vietnam 1970-1980 were violated everywhere, they lived in an atmosphere of complete isolation and neglect, when the attitude to a person is determined not by his actions, but by the line in his passport. At the same time, the two-thousand-year common past and historical memory linking the peoples are critical for both Chinese and Vietnamese, while outside their countries they may not even be distinguished. The conflict takes on the character of a localized tragedy. The heroine Thuan, being a representative of the intelligentsia, becomes an "extra person" who is alien to her homeland Vietnam, the 13th arrondissement, and Paris itself. She has lost her identity, but she still has her son, who links her to Vietnam and China. A son, of three nationalities, who, unlike the sad fate of his parents, "will never run the risk of losing his roots."