Monthly Archives: September, 2021

In the Diaspora: September 2021

The latest news from the diaspora and Vietnam.

Book Review: Happy Endings

An erotically charged, sex-positive book, starring a Vietnamese American woman trying to open a sex shop? Sign me up!

Writing Across: Diasporic Workshops & Talks

DVAN is excited to host Writing Across: Diasporic Workshops & Craft Talks to further support writers and creative members of our community to learn, work, and create alongside established diasporic Vietnamese artists in a collaborative setting.

To Sculpt a Ghost ~ a poem by Tam Nguyen

A voice-like cadence running through the family, whose members are children of many gods, telling them they are accustomed to certain kinds of death. Starvation. Salvation: too many burning desires, enough to bring down a house with it.

Fiery Souls: Poets Trần Dạ Từ and Nhã Ca in Exile

For Vietnamese people living through the wartime, or even younger generations growing up in peace, many of them have loved and learned by heart powerful poems by Trần Dạ Từ and Nhã Ca. They are literary luminaries of their generation whose poems have mesmerized, tormented, wounded, and inspired anyone reading them.

ÁCCENTED: “Writers in Diaspora”

Join us in conversation with Violet Kupersmith, Ly Ky Tran, and Pulitzer-prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen on the depths and processes of becoming a writer in diaspora.

On Abolition

Interestingly, bỏ can also be combined with quên, as in forget. Mẹ bỏ quên bóp ở nhà nữa rồi. Mom forgot her purse at home again. (unspoken: Mom is more and more forgetful lately).

THIS IS FOR MẸ: A love letter to the working class

A love letter to all my mẹ, dì, cô, bác, chị, em.

Jackfruit: Keeping my grandmother in memory & shaping my own (hi)story

What needed to be preserved was not the memory of war, but the memory of resilience.

Art Making and Motherhood in the Pandemic Diaspora

One night I picked up Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do and noticed that Bui begins her illustrated memoir of refugee migration with the birth of her child. Is this allowed?