What happened in August 2015: socio-cultural, literary, and political news and events relating to Vietnam and to the Vietnamese diaspora. [Note: Comments (in brackets “[ ]”) are the opinion of the poster and does not reflect the view of diaCRITICS]
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Viet Kieu in the news
• Kathy Nguyen announces on her Youtube channel that “LILCDAWG is BACK?!”
• Vietnamese Americans in Louisiana: “We did it together.”
• Marian Days 2015 Reflection: “They don’t want to lose their identity or their value that they have in Vietnam.”
• Seattle police delays responding to minority-owned businesses.
• Inspired by their parents, five siblings chose “a lifetime of helping others.” [In contrast, Jennifer Pan wanted her parents dead.]
• Vu Tran on his first novel, Dragonfish: “I thought . . . that a noir or crime framework allowed me to say a lot of other things.”
• Exhibit in Santa Ana tells the story of the Vietnamese community’s 40-year history in Orange County. [OCW: more photos]
• Ex-Vietnamese refugees and former sponsors reunite after 40 years.
News about Viet Nam
• A Vietnamese man was injured in the Thailand bomb explosion.
• Officials estimate 10 per cent of the population suffer from mental illness and mental disorders.
• A Chinese oil rig will continue bullying strategy in the South China Sea by drilling close to Vietnam’s coast.
• In a pre-emptive move to make the dong more competitive, Vietnam’s central bank has said it will not devalue the dong for the rest of the year.
• Truong Duy Nhat, a recently-released rights campaigner and blogger, has re-launched his website, which scrutinizes Vietnam’s one-party communist government.
• Singapore has turned away 2,000 Vietnamese nationals during a 7-month period at cost to Vietnamese airlines. [Simplest solution is don’t go to a country that doesn’t welcome us.]
• Nguyen Quoc Cuong, an 18-year-old, uses his cobbling skills to help customers from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Britain’s prime minister visits Vietnam to discuss doing business.
Other News
• In 1966, some U.S. officials had considered using nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
Special thanks to Viet Thanh Nguyen for providing many of the news items.
RP
I think the comment [Simplest solution is don’t go to a country that doesn’t welcome us] is too simplistic and represents a knee-jerk “victim” mentality.
To put it in perspective, 2000 Vietnamese are being turned away from Singapore out of a total of 400,000 Vietnamese visitors. The article didn’t say so but most of these visitors are sex workers and women coming to be put on display at mail order bride agencies. If Vietnam had more job opportunities for their young women, these women wouldn’t have to take the cheap Friday afternoon flight to Singapore to do what they have to do and the Singapore immigration authorities wouldn’t have to turn them back.