What Happened in April: Some News and Events

What interesting events took place in April (besides getting rained on)? Contributor Julie Nguyễn offers a critical recap of April happenings in the general interest of a Vietnamese American. She most likely missed a few things, Vietnamese and not, so if you come across something you think should be shared with the readers, please send them to Julie via this email: ngujle [at] gmail [dot] com.

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The month of April/Tháng 4, 2011 brings us through a near government shut-down to raging wild fires in Texas and killer storms in the southeast. Civil unrest seems to plague the world at large and Japan searches for her dead.

And from this month, May 1st – as reported from the White House: Osama Bin Laden is dead.

April 30 marks the 36th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Diacritics has written more about it here.

Vietnamese refugees run for a rescue helicopter to evacuate them to safety. Photo from Smithsonian Magazine, Bettmann / Corbis

Trần Lệ Xuân was known by several titles. First Lady of South Vietnam. Dragon Lady with her scorching tongue. But she was perhaps most popularly known as Madame Nhu. Dies at 86 in Rome on Easter Sunday.

It’s been a year since the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. What’s changed? Nothing, according to some. How are the Vietnamese-American fishermen affected by the spill doing today? Read on.

News out of South Philly where there has been a string of violence against Asian students at South Philadelphia High: Asian student from S. Phila High wins Princeton award.

From St. Louis: elderly man, Hoang D. Nguyen, was beaten to death as part of some sick venture called “Knock-Out Game”.

Radio show apologizes again (a real apology from KDWB this time?) for their racist crap targeting the Hmong community.

It’s Film Fest Season!
The San Francisco Diasporic Vietnamese Film Festival took place on April 23rd and was covered here by Diacritics, as well as the Vietnamese International Film Festival in SoCal, previewed here.
(Oh yea, and win free passes to view Saigon Electric, and others at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival!)

More in the Arts-
Houston gets a ballet performance choreographed by award-winning choreographer, Thang Dao, about the dispersed Vietnamese peoples in Quiet Imprint.

Bob Dylan, whose songs of the 1960s were anthems to the anti-war movement, plays his first gig in Vietnam.

Ha-Vasko is a modern day Robin Hood, but not really.

And a follow up: Red Cross aid hasn’t reached Japan quake victims. A friendly reminder that texting your donations and not researching your charity is never a smart way to invest your money.

Thanks VTN, Greenlinh & HBN for bringing various bits of news to my attention! Greatly appreciated.

Julie Nguyễn likes toads a lot but only eats vegetables. She’s currently enjoying the rain without an umbrella on the streets of NYC.

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