Happy New Year! Chúc mừng năm mới! One of the holiday songs I remember my family listening to at Tết when I was a teenager was Phạm Đình Chương’s “Springtime in Exile” (“Xuân tha hương,” 1956). Tết, or the lunar new year, is the most important holiday of the year for most ethnic Vietnamese, regardless […]
The music of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam) was the soundtrack of my childhood. My parents came of age in the RVN and came to the US with my sibling and me in tow in the early 1980s. Listening to period recordings reminded them of being young in Saigon before the difficulties
MEMORABLE MUSIC: AN INTRODUCTION Read More »
Nhã Ca’s At Night I Hear the Cannons (Đêm nghe tiếng đại bác, 1966) poignantly captures the moment when the Vietnam War began encroaching on civilian life in Saigon. Set in the mid-1960s, the novel centers on a northern Vietnamese family of modest means who emigrated to Saigon when the country was divided a decade
“Vietnamese people love Christmas!” That’s what I usually say when someone asks me whether I celebrate the holiday, and I try to explain why I am both a lifelong Buddhist and a Christmas enthusiast. But the real answer is a little more complicated. I was a baby when my family came to the US as
WHAT DOES CHRISTMAS MEAN TO A VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST REFUGEE? Read More »
Bình Nguyên Lộc’s Thoroughfare (Đò dọc, 1959) is a charming novel about migration and dislocation in southern Vietnam in the mid-1950s. Nam Thành and his wife are originally from a village in Bạc Liêu province in the Mekong delta, but they flee with their daughters to Saigon during the early years of the Resistance War
FUN READS: MIGRATION AND DISLOCATION IN BÌNH NGUYÊN LỘC’S THOROUGHFARE (ĐÒ DỌC) Read More »
When was the last time I read a Vietnamese book for fun? I’m sad to say I can’t remember. Probably years ago. I’ve written elsewhere about the challenges of teaching and learning Vietnamese as a heritage language in the diaspora. I grew up in the US in the 80s and 90s and learned Vietnamese from
FUN READS: AN INTRODUCTION Read More »