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Desire and Design: Technological Display in the Vietnamese American Café and Karaoke Bar

For Vietnamese Americans the karaoke bar/cafe is a site and cultural practice that powerfully articulates ethnic identity, gender, class and (hetero)sexuality. My essay is an ethnography of such sites located in San Jose, California. The setting of San Jose as the "power center of Vietnamese communities in the U.S." is key because of the relationship of labor that Vietnamese Americans have with the microchip industry. As one newspaper article put it, "the growth of the Vietnamese American community in San Jose parallels the growth of Silicon Valley's high technology industry." The historic parallel between the growth of the Vietnamese American community and expansion of the high tech industry in San Jose provides the context for the different uses of technology that take place in the karaoke bar/cafe. In this space there is a critical re-use of technology—in respect to the karaoke machine, karaoke videos, video games, and televisions— which serves to recreate a sense of home and community amongst men. Cen...