Yearly Archives: 2020

The protest is on 38th and Chicago, at the site where a white cop murdered a black man, George Floyd. I am very familiar with this intersection: I grew up not far away, in Phillips, and currently live even closer.

The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network stands in solidarity with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, as well as their grieving families and communities. It is important to recognize that the recent constellation of police brutality is by no means novel, but deeply rooted in the United States’ long genealogy of anti-Black violence and white supremacist logics.

Landscape Memory, a three-channel video installation by artist and organizer Boone Nguyen, explores the complexities of diasporic remembering as Nguyen returns to the rural village where his extended family lives in Vietnam. The video documents and juxtaposes varying ways of remembering and honoring the dead, such as cleaning burial sites and burning incense, with bomb crater-turned-lakes, reclaimed over time by nature, in addition to the act of the journey itself.

I      h u s h   the etymology of your fingers / By tasting the eternal night   around their  tips

Nailed It is an origin story of the rise of Vietnamese manicurists in what has grown to a multi-million dollar industry. We spoke with filmmaker Adele Pham about the process of making the film, how it's important to record the history of the women and men in an industry that's not often treated with respect, and the balance between making a documentary that "sparks joy" while still sticking to the facts.

The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer rejects the narrative of healing after the death of a loved one, of getting over grief. Instead, one learns how to “hold the grief//like an attic of heirlooms” or set it down “like a parent does an infant.”

Socio-cultural, literary, and political news and events relating to the Vietnamese diaspora and to Việt Nam.

From The Missing Piece Project's virtual dedication for April 30, 2020: "Imagine this: a queer future, a decolonial future."

You speak to me in Vietnamese and encourage me to stamp my feet and walk towards you. Are you scared? You ask me. Come on, it’s okay, Ma is here. Ma is here. Thank you for always being there.

It is memory that builds our understanding of the world, and within that larger understanding, it is memory that helps us construct an identity, to build a sense of self.