The Duc Pond

I watched this documentary on PBS called Daughter from Danang about this half-Vietnamese woman who goes back to Vietnam to meet her mother for the first time in 22 years. Things aren’t too bad at the outset, though she keeps whining about stuff. But near the end of her visit her family asks if it’s possible that she might send them a little money each month and she starts crying and freaking out. Maybe the translator made it seem worse than it really was (because the request seemed totally reasonable to me) or maybe she’s just a selfish bitch. I learned later that her mother and father earn something like $20 a month. So by skipping a few visits to fast food joints (the documentary shows her family with 4 boxes of pizzas) she could have doubled her mother’s income and reduced the size of her fat ass. I hate her now. And they kept mentioning that while this is normal in Vietnam, the request might seem out of line to an American. Maybe. But I still don’t think so.