In a nondescript office on a university campus in Taipei, Trịnh Hữu Long maintains one of the world’s most extensive collections of Vietnamese banned books.
Claudia Krich’s Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary is an invaluable primary source for those studying regime change, documenting firsthand the disintegration of the South Vietnamese government and the coalescence of a byzantine military administration in its wake.
A look into the lives of Vietnamese workers in Myanmar’s scam centres.
A conversation with Saigon Soul Revival, a band “on a mission to bring back the raw, live sound of 1960s and 1970s Vietnamese rock and soul music”.
Andrew Lam had never set out to be the preeminent chronicler of the global Vietnamese diaspora, but realised that “when I spoke up for those that couldn’t, I found my tongue”.
“Apart from illustrating how invested the authorities still are in shaping the official story of Vietnam’s wars of liberation, my experience at Thế Giới also revealed an almost religious faith in the power of the written word.”
A poem by Leigh Doughty
The adoption of chữ Quốc ngữ, the Vietnamese alphabet that has officially been in use for over a century now, was a notable part of Vietnam’s effort to pull itself out of China’s orbit.
With little transparency, top-down literary censorship in Vietnam is complex, capricious and contingent upon those implementing the ‘rules’.
Not many Vietnamese books keep track of the experience of living under suffocating communism in the North or keeping up with the get-rich-quick sentiment dominant in the South. Thuận’s Elevator in Sài Gòn captures this with nuance and peculiarity.
A short story by Lý Văn Sâm, translated from Vietnamese by Ryan Nelson and Khanh Hoa Le.
Susann Pham’s Vietnam’s Dissidents is a bold piece of empirical work and a welcome and timely addition to the literature on contemporary Vietnam.
One does not need to understand communist ideology to become a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam. “All you need to do is to pass their test,” said one state employee.
It had been four years since I last returned to Hanoi. I told myself that I’d never loved this city I had wanted to escape. But time may have helped heal old wounds.
A short story by Ngan Nguyen
It’s hard to pin down exactly how to describe Đinh Nhung and what she does. Her work has spanned art installations, photography, curation and the compilation of lexicons of queerness in Vietnam.
Scot Marciel spent most of his time in service focused on one region. In Imperfect Partners, he brings readers through the evolution of US involvement and interest in Southeast Asia from Reagan through Trump.
Through his maternal grandfather’s life and his own experiences, Will Nguyen reflects on how personal stories are documented in Vietnam, and the relationship between the diaspora and mainland Vietnamese.
The ‘white saviour’ narrative is a common trope in transnational adoptions. In Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family, Erika Hayasaki tells the story of three Vietnamese adoptees, and unpacks dominant assumptions about power, privilege and the meaning of family.
The women of the Vietnamese national weightlifting team overcoming cultural norms
A slice of Hanoi life comes to an end
From stopping wars to fighting climate change
A European liberal went to Vietnam
Vale Linda Lê
The Vietnam War through the lens
A short story by Calvin Godfrey
An irresistible encounter
A criminal obsession
Falling in love with football in Vietnam
Life goes on in post-lockdown Ho Chi Minh City
A development project is threatening the ‘lungs’ of Ho Chi Minh City
Reconsidering the literature of South Vietnam
The deciding end of French colonial rule in Indochina
How the Vietnamese plight defied the pretence of humanitarian neutrality
What Graham Greene ate in Vietnam
A tale of two Covid experiences in Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh, a city that never sleeps, has fallen silent
The lockdown order Da Nang has been dreading
Race and beauty in Vietnam
The forgotten stories from Vietnam’s south