This summer, I put together a short packet of background reading on Brandon Hoang’s The Crossbow of Destiny for K-12 educators, and I am sharing a slightly revised version of that material here. The young adult novel is about a mixed-race Vietnamese-American girl who returns to her village in Vietnam after years of absence, and […]
Wedding season is just around the corner in the US, and every wedding season makes me think of my own wedding years ago. I wanted my wedding to reflect Vietnamese tradition, but as a historian, I knew that there was no such thing as a single, timeless tradition and that practices change over time in
1. WHEN HISTORIANS GET MARRIED: WHAT IS TRADITION ANYWAYS? (PART 1) Read More »
I regularly teach a survey course on the history of Vietnam, and I’m often struck by the stark differences between my introduction to the subject compared to my students. I grew up in a Vietnamese-American household, and I first learned history from my mother, who always taught in Vietnamese. She based her lessons on her
PARTICULARITY AND UNIVERSALITY IN THE TEACHING OF PREMODERN VIETNAMESE HISTORY Read More »