Among my recent interlibrary loan items is a hefty volume about the Diocese of Thái Bình in northern Vietnam. There isn’t a scale in my house, but I’d guess that it is four or five pounds like a college chemistry or ecology textbook. Published in conjunction with the eightieth anniversary of the creation of this diocese, this “yearbook” or “commemorative publication” (kỷ yếu) includes over 700 pages of glossy and thick papers and many photos of people and churches. It offers basic information on both past and present of the dioceses as well as individual parishes and missions. The information may be brief, but they add up to some fascinating insights.
Continue reading “The Catholic associational culture in North Vietnam”
Continue reading “Buổi nói chuyện về người Việt tị nạn với dân biểu Stephanie Murphy”
With under four million people, Connecticut ranks in the lower half of the list of population by state (at 29th). It is also the third smallest state in geography; only Delaware and Rhode Island are smaller. If measured, however, by the proportion of academic historians of Vietnam to the population or geographical size, it’d probably rank first among fifty US states and ten Canadian provinces. Continue reading “Interviewing historians: C. Michele Thompson on Vietnamese traditional medicine”
Continue reading “Reading about food & drink #3: sugar, tea, and Cockaigne”
Geographically speaking, there are two ways of viewing Vietnamese Americans in Lincoln, Nebraska. One is to group them among Vietnamese in the Midwest. It is a vast region that includes large communities such as Chicago and the Twin Cities, and smaller ones such as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Grand Rapids, MI. Continue reading “Interviewing historians: Kurt Kinbacher on Vietnamese in Lincoln, Nebraska”
The South Vietnamese military – the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) – has always figured in the voluminous historical scholarship about the Vietnam War. For a long time and for a host of reasons, however, there was little depth on the topic.
Continue reading “Interviewing historians: George Veith on his book Black April”
This summer has been one on Vietnamese history: some for research and some for the sheer pleasure of knowledge. Before turning to prepping for fall classes, I wish to have one more write-up about several articles read in the last two months. The focus is Vietnamese history but away from the Vietnam War. Below, I go over each article in chronological order of their topics.
Continue reading “Five recent articles on Vietnamese history”
