“Seadrift” traces the incendiary tensions that which have taken the seaside Texas town of the same name by storm. Delicately treading between racial divides, filmmaker Tim Tsai offers a strikingly nuanced account of both the Vietnamese refugees and their reluctant hosts. Instead of pointing fingers, Tsai synthesizes the dueling accounts to paint a vivid picture of the refugee experience from both perspectives, which offers interesting insights into various facets of the Asian Diaspora experience including oppression and solidarity.

Our exhibit will look forward by taking a step back; retracing the journeys of the Seadrift residents, as well as the immigrants who came before and after, to develop a deeper understanding of how members of Asian Diaspora have succeeded and struggled to integrate themselves into American Society. We will first examine the manifold consequences of displacement and the detrimental effects on Southeast Asian refugees from the racialization of the Vietnam War. Afterwards, we will examine the forms of “othering" that Asian migrants experienced throughout history in the form of propaganda, and the harmful impacts it had through the hate crimes they incited. We will conclude with an examination of the Asian Diaspora’s contemporary status quo of by exploring their social and cultural exchanges with other ethnic groups through a culinary lens.