On February 1st, 2012, five student assistants began scanning the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association/Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation Collection’s Orderly Departure Program Application files.

Quynh

Quynh

A business (MBA) major from Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon), Quynh enjoys surfing the internet, music, movies, news, going out with friends, and traveling. She has traveled to Oregon and will travel to California this summer. Quynh wants to go to Japan and Korea someday.

Maggie

Maggie

A Vietnamese American from Dallas majoring in nursing, Maggie enjoys working out, playing with her niece, and shopping.

Dai

Dai

A finance major from beautiful Da Lat, Vietnam’s California, Dai loves soccer, and plays intramural soccer at Tech, center and mid positions. He enjoys music, playing the guitar, and drinking coffee.

Trang

Trang

A finance major from Hue, Vietnam’s old imperial city, Trang enjoys music, movies, and traveling. She has studied in Singapore, has traveled to Florida, and hopes to go to Europe someday.

Frances

Frances

A history major, with a Women’s Studies minor, from Bulverde, Frances enjoys reading, writing, traveling, fencing, sailing, scuba diving, and water skiing. She will be studying in France this summer and looks forward to writing a Ph.D. dissertation on Khuc Minh Tho.

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), a nationally recognized time to celebrate the many achievements and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the United States’ history, culture, and society.  May was chosen as APAHM due to two important historical dates and events relating to the contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans to the U.S. taking place in May. First, May 7, 1843 is the date the first Japanese immigrants to the U.S. arrived. Second, May 10, 1869 is when the transcontinental railroad was completed; many Chinese immigrants labored laying the tracks.

To celebrate APAHM, we have updated our APAHM online exhibit to include new information and materials, including items from the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association collection Orderly Departure Program files that are currently being digitized.  These records, donated by the Vietnamese American Historical Foundation, document the history of many Vietnamese who immigrated to the US after the war and who eventually became US citizens.

To find out more about APAHM, view our APAHM online exhibit.

The 4th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Film Festival continues today with two films:

Indochine – 3:30pm

Thanh’s War – 7:30pm

And concludes tomorrow with:

The Scent of Green Papaya – 3:30pm

Sita Sings the Blues – 7:30pm

All showings will be in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information see www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2012filmfestival

The 4th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Film Festival begins today with two films:

Sita Sings the Blues – 3:30pm

The Scent of Green Papaya – 7:30pm

And continues tomorrow with:

Thanh’s War – 3:30pm

Indochine – 7:30pm

All showings will be in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information see www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2012filmfestival

On February 1st five student workers started digitizing the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) Application Files of the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association (FVPPA) Collection.  These files record this history of over 10,000 Vietnamese who applied to immigrate to the United States and other countries following the end of the Vietnam War.  Many of the applicants in this collection spent years in reeducation camps before immigrating.

The FVPPA collection was brought to the Vietnam Center and Archive in 2005 by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation.  This year the VNCA received a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for a three year, $144,000 project to digitize the files and make them available through the Virtual Vietnam Archive.  This is the second grant we have received for this collection from the NHPRC.  In 2008 we received funding to process the collection to make the physical materials available to researchers.  Since the start of the digitization project, work has been proceeding quickly and smoothly.  Currently over 1200 files have been digitized, totaling over 25,000 pages.  This pace of digitization has already put us ahead of schedule on the project.

The files can searched for through the Virtual Vietnam Archive search page (go to Advanced Search to limit your results to just this collection).  Those interested can also track the progress of the project on our ODP digitization page, which lists current digitization totals, news about the project, and files made available online in the past day.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vahp/digitization.php

The Vietnam Center and Archive is proud to announce the films for the 4th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) Film Festival, co-sponsored by the Texas Tech University Libraries:

The Scent of Green Papaya:
Monday, April 9^th – 7:30pm
Tuesday, April 17^th – 3:30pm
Set in Vietnam in the 1950s-60s, the film follows Mui as she leaves the rich household where she had served as a child to work in the home of a classical pianist. Mui finds beauty in the smallest things.

Sita Sings the Blues:
Monday, April 9^th – 3:30pm
Tuesday, April 17^th – 7:30pm
An animated retelling of the Hindu legend Ramayana, paralleled with events in the film’s creator’s real life in San Francisco, this film features a variety of animation techniques and musical styles.

Indochine:
Tuesday, April 10^th – 7:30pm
Monday, April 16^th – 3:30pm
Set in the turmoil of the French Indochina War in Vietnam, Indochine follows a French rubber plantation owner, an Annam Princess, and the French Naval Officer they are both in love with.

Thanh’s War:
Tuesday, April 10^th – 3:30pm
Monday, April 16^th – 7:30pm
At age 12, Pham Thanh was severely wounded by a US grenade that also killed his family.  Now an American citizen, Thanh tries to balance his Vietnamese and American identity and heritage.

All films will be presented in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information see www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2012filmfestival

Douglas Pike Collection. Mid Autumn Festival Celebration "Moon Men" Enterprising Merchant in Saigon uses Display of Lunar Astronauts to call Attention to "Moon Cakes"

Monday, September 12th, 2011 marks the Mid Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon or Full Moon Festival. Traditionally celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when the moon appears larger than it does on any other night of the year, the Mid Autumn Moon Festival (Tet Trung Thu) is the second biggest holiday in Vietnam and is widely celebrated throughout Asia.

Vietnamese Mooncakes. Photo courtesy of morning_rumtea (Lê Hoàn Nhã) (the photographer) and http://www.flickr.com/photos/vietnamfriendly/ (morning_rumtea's Flickr page)

   It is a time for family and to celebrate life, prosperity, and the harvest. During the Mid Autumn festival, parents prepare their children’s favorite dishes and buy them new toys. Children hear the story of Chu Cuoi (the man in the moon) and other fairytales. Hanging and floating lanterns are set out to decorate and people dance the lion and dragon dances. Mooncakes (made from lotus seed, ground beans, and containing a bright salted egg yolk in the center) are given to family and friends. Pomelo fruit and watermelon seeds are a special treat. At night children parade through the streets to the beat of drums wearing Paper Mache masks and carrying lanterns in the shapes of stars, rabbit heads, fish (carpe), butterflies, or lanterns with a lit candle inside that makes shapes spin representing the seasonal spinning of the earth.

 

Pomelo. Photo courtesy of wikicommons.

Photo from FVPPA Collection's ODP Application Files

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), a nationally recognized time to celebrate the many achievements and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the United States’ history, culture, and society. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2005-09 American Community Survey there are 13,201,056 Americans of Asian descent and 447,591 Americans of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander descent residing in the U.S.

May was chosen as APAHM due to two important historical dates and events relating to the contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans to the U.S. taking place in May. First, May 7, 1843 is the date the first Japanese immigrants to the U.S. arrived. Second, May 10, 1869 is when the transcontinental railroad was completed; many Chinese immigrants labored laying the tracks.

To find out more view our APAHM online exhibit.

The Vietnam Center and Archive’s 3rd Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Film Festival starts this week with Green Dragon on Wednesday at 3:00pm and Rashomon at 7:00pm.  The festival continues on Thursday with Rashomon at 3:00pm, and The Toll of the Sea at 7:00pm.

Next week’s showings include Kim’s Story at 3:00pm on Tuesday, followed by Green Dragon at 7:00pm, and on Wednesday The Toll of the Sea at 3:00pm, and Kim’s Story at 7:00pm.  All showings will be in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, and admission is free and open to the public.

For more information about the festival and all of the films see http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2011filmfestival.

Kim Phuc, the subject of the film Kim’s Story, will be speaking as part of our Guest Lecture Series on Thursday, April 14th at 7:00pm in the Allen Theatre of the Texas Tech Student Union.

We hope to see you at one or more of these events!

The Vietnam Center and Archive and the Texas Tech University Libraries present the 3rd Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Film Festival from April 6th-13th.  This year’s festival features four films: Green Dragon; Rashomon; The Toll of the Sea; and Kim’s Story: The Road from Vietnam.  Each film will be shown twice at different dates and times, and all showings will be held in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

Green Dragon tells the story of a group of Vietnamese refugees in 1975 at Camp Pendleton, and the Marines assigned to protect them as they await sponsorship in the United States.   Wed. 4/6 3:15pm; Tues. 4/12 7:00pm.

Rashomon is a classic Japanese crime mystery that depicts the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband through the very different perspectives and accounts of four witnesses: the rape victim, the rape victim’s murdered husband speaking through a medium, the bandit/rapist, and the narrator. Wed. 4/6 7:00pm; Thurs. 4/7 3:15pm.

The Toll of the Sea is the tragic love story of a Hong Kong girl who saves a drowning American man and falls in love with him. Show Times: Thurs. 4/7 7:00pm; Wed. 4/13 3:15pm.

Kim’s Story: The Road from Vietnam is a documentary film based on the inspirational life story of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, “the girl in the photo” who was severely burned in a Napalm attack on her village of Trang Bang, South Vietnam in 1972.  Show Times: Tues. 4/12, 3:15pm; Wed. 4/13 7:00pm.

Kim Phuc, the subject of Kim’s Story, will be speaking as part of the VNCA’s 2011 Guest Lecture Series on Thursday, 14th of April at 7:00pm in the Allen Theatre of the TTU Student Union Building.

For more information on the film festival or each of the films, including a complete list of show times, see http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2011filmfestival.

See also: 2011 APAHM Film Festival Poster