Listening Differently, Crossing Boundaries: Thanhhà Lại’s Listen, Slowly

Thanhhà Lai’s Listen, Slowly (2015) is about Mai, a twelve-year-old Vietnamese-American girl who is born and raised in California. She undergoes a transformative change after she embarks on a journey to Vietnam with her grandmother. This chapter examines how Mai’s encounter with her own Vietnamese heritage disrupts her previous self-centered American sense of self and paves the way for a new ethical Vietnamese-American identity through the act of listening. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy and Lisbeth Lipari’s ideas on listening, this analysis shows how Mai’s experiences of pain, trauma, and disconcerting responsibility in Vietnam help her become an ethical listening self. By tracing the arduous interpersonal and intercultural communication processes Mai undergoes, this chapter explores the important role of listening plays in communication and how it enables meaningful relationships across cultures and borders.