Yearly Archives: 2019

Filling the Silence: Artist Profile of Joshua Nguyen

Perhaps, my writing comes from this hope that the stories I pass on will collide with the stories I create for myself and this will be enough of a legacy. A legacy that my family will be proud of. I am always trying to find parallels between me and the silence that plagues my family.

Oscar Wilde in Hanoi: Book Hunter’s Literary Community in Vietnam

I sympathize with Book Hunter and with the cause of cultural and artistic freedom that Hà Thủy Nguyên and Lê Duy Nam uphold. It seems that enhanced liberties in Vietnam should ultimately mesh well with current government policies for economic integration. After all, if a nation is open to business with other societies, it follows that everyone will also be exposed to different ways of thinking about the humanities, art, and literature.

Defining Ourselves: Artist Will Pham in Conversation with Natalie Tan

This is the argument I’m trying to make, that there’s a lot to be grateful for. There’s already that calmness, there’s already that life. What I did at that stage in my life, which was only a few months ago, I just tried to look closer to home, and thought, “this could be a lot worse.”

Textures of April 30th: The President’s Daily Brief

Beneath the shroud of morning, two mothers watch / their daughter die. One keeps her eyes closed, / the other, her hands clutching prayer, // a kaleidoscope pool collected at their naked feet / as a lotus ruptures upon the gasoline garden.

Book Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a book-length letter of a 28-year-old gay Vietnamese American man to his mother. It is a letter she cannot read, but it doesn’t make it less important. Through impressionistic scenes, Little Dog, the novel’s narrator, builds not only a picture of the life he has with his mother but a landscape of love, memory, and ultimately history.

Chiêm Ngắm Đồng Hiện

Trong What My Eyes Behold Is Simultaneous (tạm dịch: Chiêm Ngắm Đồng Hiện ), triển lãm cá nhân của Thùy-Hân Nguyễn-Chí, trò chơi bóng bàn là hình tượng của vòng lặp ảnh hưởng giữa người với người trong những quy mô lớn nhỏ, xuyên không-thời gian.

Missing Piece Project Profile, Part 2: A Collective Interview

The Missing Piece Project is so incredibly important because it demands a transformation of memory, a rethinking of how history has rendered the war in Vietnam.

In the Diaspora: August 2019

Socio-cultural, literary, and political news and events relating to Việt Nam and to the Vietnamese diaspora.■ News from the Diaspora ■MasterChef winner known as...

What My Eyes Behold: Artist Profile of Thùy-Hân Nguyễn-Chí

A sense of hauntedness pervades throughout the exhibition, as preternatural phenomena, as references to signs of former life, or as phantom flashes in multi-layered videos in Thùy-Hân Nguyễn-Chí's solo exhibition, In What My Eyes Behold Is Simultaneous.

Magic As A Possibility: Jennifer Nguyen in Conversation with Vi Khi Nao

Watching the film Spirited Away when I was in my first year of high-school changed how I viewed the world. It was the first time I realised that magic existed: it existed in stories, in people, in the very ordinary and the very extraordinary.