The bảohouse is the digital abode of bảo.thiên.ngô, a Vietnamese American designer exploring aesthetics, community, communication, and sustainability in striving towards the dream of building a Vietnamese American community center.
21st
Women of color in science & medicine rock!
TED Talks: Quyen Nguyen on Color-coded surgery
Dr. Quyen Nguyen’s research (working with Roger Tsien, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) is focused on the development of fluorescently labeled probes for molecular navigation during surgery. Their first collaborative effort yielded a “smart” probe that makes tumors margins fluoresce, or “glow” and thus easier for surgeons to see and remove accurately during surgery. Their most recent joint effort resulted in another type of probe that can make nerves “glow” during surgery, thus helping surgeons repair injured nerves and avoid inadvertent injury.
She is a professor of surgery and director of the Facial Nerve Clinic at the University of California, San Diego.
This is a project by a Viet professor at HEC Montreal University, Canada to study Vietnamese business and entrepreneurial behavior. We are focusing on Viet American businesses for this survey.
By studying Vietnamese American business management style and entrepreneurial behavior, this study seeks…
Calling for all interested mental health & human services professionals interested in/ working with the API (esp. the Vietnamese-American) population to stay tune for the 1st National Conference on Vietnamese-American and API mental health services, treatment approaches and current issues. The…
I remember bumping into a Muslim woman, Vân-Anh Thanh, who spoke fluent Vietnamese, during the evening in downtown San Jose following a film festival many years ago. I thought she was Vietnamese. Turns out she’s actually Chăm. Chăm is an ethnic minority, and there’s a large community in Vietnam. Needless to say, I was utterly fascinated with her. You don’t meet too many Muslims who speak Vietnamese. But it was only later I found out that she was Chăm, which again, you don’t meet too many of. My best friend Huy only discovered his Chăm heritage only recently (one of his great grandparents is Chăm).
DiaCRITICS has a good article on the whole history on the Chăm people, “Bearing The Weight of History: A Young Chăm Woman’s Story.” Knowing the Vietnamese have long oppressed these people, as they once had their own kingdom, Champa, until the kingdom of Đại Việt (aka Vietnam) annexed them completely by the 18th century, I am particularly mindful to respect their right to self-determination, and to ask how they identify themselves. If they don’t want to be called Vietnamese, I wouldn’t be surprised, but I’d respect their identification regardless.
This YouTube video was a Chăm culture event in San Jose, evidence that there is an organized population of Chăm Americans in my hometown. The Wikipedia article on Chăm people says there is an estimated 3,000 Chăm living in the United States, although I suspect there are many who might have Chăm lineage but do not know or identify as such, perhaps identifying as being Vietnamese, Khmer, or Thai. Also, I’m not sure where they get the numbers from, as there is no source notation.
Yes, they do have their own language, and a great many are Muslims.
Simply Smile, a short film produced by NDTeam Productions and ChiliChopstickz Production. German language with English subtitles. Written and Directed by Chon-Dat Nguyen. Co-Directed by Khoi Chau. Featuring Thao Nguyen, Thien-Dang Nguyen, Khoi Chau, Nam Truong, Truong Thi Au, Phuong Linh. Music by Quang Thi Nguyen and Vincent Lee, ”This Boy” by Vincent Lee and Chad Grossman (Original by James Morrison).
The film is a heartwarming scene of a boy who comes to the rescue of a girl after seeing her ex-boyfriend bully her in front of the ex’s new girlfriend. I guess love speaks all languages. Yes, I’m planning on annoying my Vietnamese-German-American friends with this like a little kid who just found gifts under the Christmas tree. I find it fascinating to see assimilated Vietnamese in other countries; the whole Vietnamese-American identity duality isn’t unique to Americans.
Thuy My Pham, a Vietnamese German, performs “Careless” written by Thuy My Pham and Philipp Fritsche. The music video was directed by NDTeam Productions (Khoi Chau, Tien Ho, Philipp Horst, Simon Csengeri).
This looks like her first music video. I couldn’t find any other videos or songs except a cover she did, “My Love” by Justin Timberlake.
Here is my feeble attempt to put together a sample of Vietnamese American English Singer-Songwriters on YouTube. I know there are a few that I once found that I no longer remember their name, because they exist under band names, so it makes them hard to find.
When Jøna Nguyen asked me about artists I could recommend for the UNAVSA Conference he’s helping with, I braindumped all the names I could think of. UNAVSA is an umbrella organization of Vietnamese Student Associations.
Kym Pham is my muse. She founded the Vietnamese American Student Conference (VASCON) at Austin, Texas in 2005. It was her team that had the idea to bring together independent Vietnamese American singer-songwriters and next generation artists/performers that really raised the bar for conference entertainment programming for a Vietnamese American youth conference. UNAVSA actually followed VASCON’s lead on that, up until VASCON dissolved a few years ago, as the two organizations’ conferences overlapped so much as to be unnecessary duplicates.
Since 2005, when VASCON had its first conference, while UNAVSA was running for its second year, the number of discovered musicians seemed to feel slow. I mean, you could find performers to do covers. But you’d be hard-pressed to find singer-songwriters in English; in Vietnamese it’s not so bad since they get swept up by the major Vietnamese American record labels anyway. All the ones I knew from these conferences had already played at least once at Southern California’s Tet Festival. Half of them are probably already Kristine Sa’s friends, as she likes to feature them on her vlog.
20th
Didn’t realize this film, Bang Bang (2011), was about a Vietnamese American protagonist, and starring Thai Ngo, who is more well-known by his music name, Thai Viet G, one of the few Vietnamese American English rappers that I know.
Justin is a troubled teen looking for a way out of the gang life. His best friend Charlie is a rich Taiwanese kid who lives in the nice part of town. Justin runs away from home after a fight with his mom and takes refuge at Charlie’s house while Charlie’s parents are away on a prolonged business trip.
The murder of a fellow gang member avalanches into a full blown war with a rival gang. Caught in the midst of teenage angst, gang life, and alienation, the two friends find themselves heading down two different paths of life.
I Didn’t Know I Was Vietnamese
My cousin posted this on his Facebook the other day:
Being a senior this year makes me regret not ever maintaining a Vietnamese identity and keep a steady vocabulary of Vietnamese words or staying in Vietnamese school. I will have nothing of my cultural identity to pass onto and of my children if I ever had children. If I had kids, what would I tell them? That I was white-washed? People see me, they don’t know my name, they guess Chinese, Filipino, Cambodian.
No. I’m Vietnamese, and I’m not ashamed to be one.
A goal of mine is to sit down one day and listen to my parents tell me of my roots; where they came from and where my ancestors came from. I want to pass down their stories.
