Knowing that I’d like to start this series with a song related to Saigon, I nonetheless had a hard time deciding from several choices. Travel turned out to be the decisive factor, and being in Houston this weekend prompted me to settle on Saigon, Farewell Forever My Love. Its authors were two refugees who settled in the Houston area: one not long after the Fall of Saigon; the other sometimes in the early 1980s. [Correction: Both came to Houston in 1975; see the note from Jason Gibbs among the comments below.]
Grading and other obligations kept me from watching this documentary when it was first shown on PBS last week. But I read the written narrative on the ProPublica website (which isn’t a transcript of the documentary but shares the same materials), and finally watched the documentary online last night. Here are some thoughts after watching it.
Continue reading “Initial thoughts on “Terror in Little Saigon””
Bài lời Việt theo sau bài tiếng Anh. Hai bài hao hao nội dung nhưng không giống hẳn. The Vietnamese portion follows the English. I cater each language to different readers and they aren’t entirely the same.
April 30 was of course the climax of the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of mass Vietnamese migration to the U.S. But there’s still a lot of the anniversary year left.
Tomorrow is the first day of classes at my institution, and I will continue to honor this anniversary by posting about Vietnamese music related to war and refugees throughout the fall semester and into the spring semester.
What did the first waves of Vietnamese refugees in America think about themselves? What was their mindset regarding their place in the world? Is it possible to write a coherent literary history of their experience?
The search for answers can take different directions and have different starting points. In my opinion, it isn’t a bad idea to begin with a collection of poetry, essays, memoirs, and fiction entitled Tuyển Tập Thơ Văn 90 Tác Giả Việt Nam Hải Ngoại 1975-1981: Selected Poetry and Prose from Ninety Vietnamese Writers Abroad, 1975-1981 (Missouri City, TX: Văn Hữu, 1982). KEEP READING!
Posted on FB on April 26, 2015 The Cornell Vietnam Speakers Series asked last week, “What is on your mind about the Vietnam War as we approach the 40th anniversary of its conclusion?” Here are the things that I jotted down between grading and seeing students as the semester wound down.
Continue reading “Thoughts on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War”
Posted on VSG on April 14, 2015
Conference report: “Vietnamese in America Since 1975: History, Identity, and Community,” Occidental College, April 11, 2015
On this day, a dozen of scholars in history, religion, and the social sciences gathered at Occidental College for meals and conversations. KEEP READING!
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