Learn and Experience Different Cultures Through Your Mouth

Danny Nguyen

ENC 2135

Reflection Project 2

            Project 2 first began with a great amount of confusion. Choosing a topic to focus on was difficult due to the fact that it had to involve a community we were not apart of. It was difficult choosing a topic that sparked my interest and included genres and exigence. Whereas traditional research papers consist of a regurgitation of ideas acquired from various sources, this project asked that we actually investigate the community and find sources that support our research investigation. For my project, I ended up researching the community of Vietnamese food here in Tallahassee. More specifically, I looked at how an individual restaurant, Pho 7, was responsible for cultivating and spreading Vietnamese culture throughout a college town that lacked Asian culture and tradition. I conducted research on the history of Vietnamese food and the influences that were involved with shaping the food into what it is today. I learned that the two main contributors to Vietnamese cuisine were France and China. At first, the two genres I focused on were menus and Yelp reviews. These were two genres that I believed affected the restaurant community the most. After a conference with Mat, I soon learned that my research paper was a slightly off topic. He guided me toward a more interesting direction that included focusing the paper toward how the food made its way to the United States. This involved researching the Vietnam War and how that caused millions of Vietnamese to emigrate out of the country. I was then asked to focus my genre on the menu and remove the genre of Yelp. In doing so, my research paper became more interesting and more cohesive.