Subscriber Drive! Win Prizes for New Readers

It’s time for our first subscriber drive. We’re looking for 100 new subscribers for diaCRITICS, and we’ll be giving away prizes to the 25th, 50th, 75th, and 100th new readers. If those new subscribers were referred by a current subscriber, we’ll give the current subscriber a prize too! So if you’ve been reading but not subscribing, now’s your chance to join and win some cool DVDs,  a book, a CD, and for one really lucky person, an iPod!

New subscribers can subscribe three ways:

1) via email (see the sidebar to the right).

2)  via Networked Blogs on facebook (see the sidebar to the right).

3) via wordpress.com (if you have a wordpress.com account)

BUT–if you subscribe via RSS (to the right), we won’t know and you won’t win. Sorry, but wordpress does not allow us to track RSS subscriptions.

The winners will get to choose from the following prizes on a first come, first serve basis, so subscribe early and get your first choice!

AND!!!!

Each of the winners will be entered in a raffle to win an 8GB iPod Nano!

So start encouraging your friends to subscribe to diaCRITICS!

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Buffalo Boy (DVD signed by director Minh-Nguyen Vo). Set in 1930s southern Vietnam, this powerful coming-of-age tale is a richly textured reflection on the rhythms of daily life. The flooded landscape serves as backdrop for the mythic story of a relationship between a father and son, the cycles of life, and the inescapable flow of all things. Vietnam’s official submission to the 2006 Academy Awards.

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Dao Strom‘s CD Send Me Home. Born in Saigon, Strom fled Vietnam with her mother; her father stayed behind and was later sent to reeducation camps. Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills with her mother and stepfather. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, and has won a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a James Michener fellowship and the Chicago Tribune/Nelson Algren Award. Her stories have appeared in the anthologies Still Wild, edited by Larry McMurtry, and Watermark: Contemporary Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose. She is the author of a novel, Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner, 2003) and a collection of stories, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press, 2006).

She is also a folk singer whose CD, “Send Me Home” earned praise by the Austin Chronicle: “Dao Strom sings a lonely song for the entire world to hear and her wanderlust makes for a beautiful album that endears you from the start… making you feel the pillow against her cheek, hear the freeway through her half-cracked windows. She’s a storyteller, and a damn good one.”

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The Oak Park Story (DVD and official poster both signed by directors Valerie Soe and Russell Jeung). The Oak Park Story (2010, 22 min.) is a documentary film that recounts the journeys of three families – from Cambodia, Mexico, and California – who band together at a run-down slum in Oakland CA and win a landmark settlement against their landlord.

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Bolinao 52 (DVD signed by director Duc Nguyen). Bolinao 52 is an Emmy-winning documentary. When Tung Trinh, a survivor of the Bolinao 52, stepped foot onto a crowded boat one night in May 1988, she did not know it was a trip that forever changed her life. After leaving Vietnam the Bolinao 52 engine died. They were ignored by passing ships. 19 days later, a US Navy ship stopped. But the captain refused to pick up the dying refugees. Facing death, they resorted to cannibalism. After 37 days at sea, 52 of 110 survived. Two decades later, this Bolinao 52 survivor returned to her past to close off the unresolved chapters.

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Powder Blue (DVD signed by director Timothy Linh Bui). Reuniting Timothy with Oscar-winning star Forest Whitaker and Patrick Swayze, plus other big names such as Jessica Biel and Ray Liotta. Timothy is, of course, the older of the Bui brothers that brought us Three Seasons and Green Dragon. It was on Green Dragon that Timothy first directed Whitaker and Swayze.

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Kim-An Lieberman’s book of poetry Breaking the Map is:  A journey through mythical Vietnam, contemporary America, and the enduring landscape of memory.

 

“Simply put, this is a wonderful first collection….This is a geography that demands attention.” – Samuel Green, Washington State Poet Laureate

“…whatever forty-year-old image we might still remember from Vietnam or America that is part real and part television, she makes whole, new, and vibrant. She makes us a witness more than reader.”
– Shawn Wong, Author of Homebase and American Knees

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Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam (DVD signed by director Tammy Lee Nguyen). Commemorating Operation Babylift, a U.S. relief effort that rescued more than 2,500 orphans out of Vietnam in 1975, this update is an informative and passionate look at the aftermath of war and the innocent children lostin the chaos of battle. Filmmaker Tammy Nguyen Lee combines archival black-and white film footage of bombings, evacuations, orphaned babies, and more with interviews with parents, volunteers, and rescued Vietnamese adoptees (now adults) who tell their stories with honesty and poignancy.

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The Rebel (DVD signed by director Charlie Nguyen). Set in 1920s Vietnam under colonial French rule, the film follows the journey of LE VAN CUONG, a French cultured undercover elite. Although branded with a perfect track record, Cuong’s inner conscience is troubled by the sea of Vietnamese blood he had spilled to uphold a washed out French ideal. Following an assassination of a high ranking Frenchman, Cuong is assigned to seek and kill the notorious leader of the resistance. Cuong encounters VO THANH THUY, a relentless revolutionary fighter and the daughter of the rebel leader. Cuong’s superior intends for him to use Thuy as a mean to get to her father but Cuong soon has feelings for her. Thuy’s patriotism ignites conflicts between Cuong’s consciousness and his cultured faith. Will Cuong discover his inner-self and find love or will he continue his mission? Outlandishly fun, The Rebel hits you in the gut with masterfully choreographed martial arts sequences that are raw and powerful.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Love what you guys are doing here with Vietnamese culture.
    Would love to receive your comments on my work-in-progress of 60 years of a conflicted Viet Life from 1948-2008.

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