“Dô” — My dad, My Uncles, and Odd Beer Out
By: Xiem Vuong
Tags: Beer, Culture, Minnesota, Vietnamese American, Asian American

In Vietnam, there is this activity called “đi nhậu”. It refers to a very specific activity that is, generally, only for men. Here is the basic premise:

My dad calls all his siblings over. His siblings bring their respective spouses and kids over. Mom sets up a metal foldout table and places stools around it along with any other chairs we might have in the house.

Dad, his brothers, brothers-in-law, and any male child who has hit puberty, sit in those chairs and talk over the TV. My aunts bring out the Heineken that their husbands bought earlier in the day with a plate of cut-up limes, and then begin bringing out the dishes that have been cooking back in the kitchen.

Every now and again, we hear everyone shout: “Dô!”, which is literally translated to “go in”. Contextually, it’s an expletive that feels like a combination of “cheers” and “chug”.

The food is eaten, so then some more is made. The Heineken is gone, so my mom runs out to get some Corona instead. Then some more food, some more beer, and my dad goes out on the deck and pretends he isn’t smoking.

This entire process may go late into the night, with the steps of food, beer, and smoking repeating. This is a nightly occurrence for family men in Vietnam. Daughters, moms, and aunts spend each evening facilitating the nonstop good times.

I was one of those daughters watching this whole thing play out every weekend in our Minneapolis suburban home. Honestly, I hated it. I usually went to bed before all the men of the family were done with “nhậu”, annoyed for some reason that I couldn’t pin down as a 12 year old.

My parents had this familial culture that was so abstracted from me, because I was growing up in the U.S. culture of individualism. In many ways I wanted to be able to enjoy sitting around the kitchen counter, listening to family gossip and trying to make my baby cousins eat dinner. I wanted to feel like I belonged there and have the comfort of knowing my family would always, always welcome me.

But I couldn’t.

I felt isolated. Everyone else fit into their cast roles better than me and they knew I wasn’t even trying to fit in. It’s painful when your culture, which is a part of yourself, hurts you.

I wanted to turn that into something that could heal me, and other immigrant children like myself, in the future. Of course, it’s not all my own work — The team I have with me, working at and on Odd Beer Out is spectacular and have been so supportive of my ideas of otherness.

I wanted being other’d to be a good thing at our brewery. Beer is so important to so many cultures, especially the Vietnamese immigrant populations of Minnesota, and I wanted to not just bring that nonstop-good-times experience of “nhậu” to my home town, but make it accessible and equitable to, well, everyone who isn’t a man.

Being of drinking age now, I recognize clearly the social stratification that occurred during those nights in my home. I felt a huge, invisible wall between me and the table where my dad sat. At Odd Beer Out, those walls will never exist in the first place so that my whole family (blood or not) can be sitting around a table, shouting, “Dô!” and squeezing limes into our beer.