Two days after Saigon fell to the communists, Hoa Minh Truong walked along the path leading to the Tan Xuyen village council. He had been there many times during his army service but this time he was filled with fear. The extra-tight security included a young Viet Cong trooper who clutched a Russian-made AK-47 automatic rifle in his small hands. The gun was just one of many multi-death tools supplied in the name of revolution by the major communist powers to Vietnam's communists. The trooper could not have been more than fifteen years old. In the yard next to the building Hoa noticed a huge heap of uniforms, helmets, boots, belts and ammunition. All of these items had been dumped there when the South Vietnam government surrendered and ordered its forces to disarm. Hoa was on the losing side of the war for reasons that, to him, remained unclear and unacceptable. Now, he and many thousands of others were being forced into so-called re-education camps. Held there without trial, these prisoners faced terrible conditions and cruel punishments. Many did not survive, but Hoa did. In this remarkable book, he offers his story to the world. Author Hoa Minh Truong is a well-published author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry in the Vietnamese language. He now lives in Perth, Australia with his wife and daughter.
The term “ladies first” is simply a verbal courtesy in Western culture. In reality, women receive unfair treatment in earning power and on nearly every level where it counts in society. The worst situations exist in Asian and African regions, including the Middle East. This book recounts a humble Vietnamese woman’s life. Indeed, the common circumstance of a female’s lower position and gender discrimination is influenced by history, including the religious beliefs espoused by Confucius. This woman’s family lived in central Vietnam, but had to flee their village because of the invading terrorist Vietcong. Her family had become dissidents in their own homeland. Moving to Saigon, they worked hard to rebuild a new life, but everything was taken from them after the Vietcong won the war. After living a year in a refugee camp, she ultimately resettled into a new life in Australia. This brave woman lived, worked, and suffered through the county’s colonial French period, through the democratic government of South Vietnam, and later survived the ruthless regime of the Communist takeover. Her dramatic true story blends the history, culture, and religious concerns that have affected millions of Vietnamese women, while also reflecting the panorama of the Vietnamese people
From Laborer to Author: The Flowers in Heaven Are Rooted in Hell is the biography of an astonishing - and stubborn - man. Hoa Minh Truong changed his life around because of the English he learned in a re-education camp after Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. English was strictly banned when the Vietcong launched a counter-revolution culture campaign by collecting English books in a public place and burning them. Learning English was dangerous in re-education camps, but Hoa risked his life and promised to write his true story if he survived. His mother revealed a pocket dictionary was still hidden under the bed. She tore off dictionary pages and then stuck them with rice glue to appear like newspapers. This paper wrapped his food supply, and as he ate, he quietly learned word by word. If another inmate or Vietcong discovered his secret, the penalty was death or torture. In 1981, after five years of studying the dictionary, he was released from the camp because of illness. In 1982, he escaped and came to a Malaysia refugee camp, resettling a year later in Australia. It took twenty-five years, but Hoa wrote his first book, The Dark Journey, in 2010.He wrote Good Evening Vietnam a year later, and now he submits From Laborer to Author. Hoa Minh Truong volunteered for the South Vietnamese army and was among the 500,000 defeated troops sent to re-education camps. He resettled in Western Australia, where he became a journalist. He has never returned to his homeland. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/HoaMinhTruon
Two days after Saigon fell to the communists, Hoa Minh Truong walked along the path leading to the Tan Xuyen village council. He had been there many times during his army service but this time he was filled with fear. The extra-tight security included a young Viet Cong trooper who clutched a Russian-made AK-47 automatic rifle in his small hands. The gun was just one of many multi-death tools supplied in the name of revolution by the major communist powers to Vietnam's communists. The trooper could not have been more than fifteen years old. In the yard next to the building Hoa noticed a huge heap of uniforms, helmets, boots, belts and ammunition. All of these items had been dumped there when the South Vietnam government surrendered and ordered its forces to disarm. Hoa was on the losing side of the war for reasons that, to him, remained unclear and unacceptable. Now, he and many thousands of others were being forced into so-called re-education camps. Held there without trial, these prisoners faced terrible conditions and cruel punishments. Many did not survive, but Hoa did. In this remarkable book, he offers his story to the world. Author Hoa Minh Truong is a well-published author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry in the Vietnamese language. He now lives in Perth, Australia with his wife and daughter.
The term “ladies first” is simply a verbal courtesy in Western culture. In reality, women receive unfair treatment in earning power and on nearly every level where it counts in society. The worst situations exist in Asian and African regions, including the Middle East. This book recounts a humble Vietnamese woman’s life. Indeed, the common circumstance of a female’s lower position and gender discrimination is influenced by history, including the religious beliefs espoused by Confucius. This woman’s family lived in central Vietnam, but had to flee their village because of the invading terrorist Vietcong. Her family had become dissidents in their own homeland. Moving to Saigon, they worked hard to rebuild a new life, but everything was taken from them after the Vietcong won the war. After living a year in a refugee camp, she ultimately resettled into a new life in Australia. This brave woman lived, worked, and suffered through the county’s colonial French period, through the democratic government of South Vietnam, and later survived the ruthless regime of the Communist takeover. Her dramatic true story blends the history, culture, and religious concerns that have affected millions of Vietnamese women, while also reflecting the panorama of the Vietnamese people
The dramatic novel Good Evening, Vietnam is a love story interrupted by war. During his tour of duty in Vietnam, a young U.S. chopper co-pilot falls in love with a Vietnamese girl. After his chopper is shot down, he is taken prisoner by the Vietcong. Under a POW exchange in 1973, he returns to America, leaving behind his pregnant girlfriend. After the Vietcong take over Saigon, they imprison hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese who worked with the Americans, force others into the jungles, and denounce the children of U.S. soldiers. Most of these abandoned children were left homeless, some became gangsters, and others joined bandit gangs. Many years later, when the American pilot's mental health finally recovers from his ordeals, he travels back to Vietnam for closure. There he is robbed by a gang leader, who later looks at the wallet of the man he robbed, and finds a surprising photo. Good Evening, Vietnam is the stunning story of a reunion that was too long in coming. About the Author: Hoa Minh Truong grew up in a small village of Camau Province in South Vietnam. Now retired, he lives in Belmont, Western Australia. "I am a boat person, never to return to my homeland." After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Truong was captured by the Vietcong. "I promised myself, if I stayed alive, I have to write the horror story inside the re-education camps." He is working on his next two books. Publisher's website: http: //SBPRA.com/HoaMinhTruong
This intermediate textbook continues to develop students’ skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing Vietnamese at the second-year language learning level. The book is presented as a linguistic and cultural journey of a family through twelve selected cities in Vietnam. Each chapter is organized into sections on dialogue, grammar, reading, practice exercises, and vocabulary.
For poet Tran Nhuan Minh, it is not the conflicts which are the center of poetry, but the way through and the way out of those conflicts... In this sense, Tran Nhuan Minh’s poetry is a warning and awakening messages... it challenges the boundaries between left and right, right and wrong, orthodox and unorthodox, south and north, past and future... Anyday, there are still unhappy people in this world, who need to share their faith and unhappiness… they will still search to read Tran Nhuan Minh’s poems. NGUYEN DUC TUNG (Poet and literary critic in Canada)
Xa hoi ngay nay qua de cao cuoc song vat chat khien cho nguoi tre bi lac vao dong chay cua the gioi ao ma ho lam tuong la that. Ho bi nhan chim trong vong xoay cua tieu thu va canh tranh, tiep xuc qua de dang voi cac phuong tien khien tan hoai than tam, dam me duc lac, dinh mac vao nhung hanh phuc tra hinh, ton tho chu nghia ca nhan. Lieu nguoi tre co tim thay duoc hanh phuc dich thuc trong mot the gioi ao nhu vay? Nguoi chien binh khong phai ai xa la ma chinh la nguoi tre khong danh mat minh vao ma luc cua the gioi ao bang cach nhan biet dau la thuc va dau la ao de lua chon cho minh loi song dung dan la chi tiep xuc va su dung cac phuong tien lanh manh trong doi song hang ngay. Nguoi tre co the tro thanh nguoi chien binh vi dai khi biet thuc tap tam an lac de chien thang nhung cam do, nhung duc vong hay nhung dam me nho nhen ngay trong chinh ban than minh. Va day cung chinh la muc tieu dang de vuon toi trong cuoc song thuc cua nguoi tre.
This reference manual provides a list of approximately 300 technical terms and phrases common to environmental engineering which non-English speakers often find difficult to understand in English. The manual provides the terms and phrases in alphabetical order, followed by a concise English definition, then a translation of the term in Vietnamese and, finally, an interpretation or translation of the term or phrase in Vietnamese. Following the Vietnamese translations section, the columns are reversed and reordered alphabetically in Vietnamese with the English term and translation following the Vietnamese term or phrase. The objective is to provide a technical term reference manual for non-English speaking students and engineers who are familiar with Vietnamese, but uncomfortable with English, and to provide a similar reference for English speaking students and engineers working in an area of the world where the Vietnamese language predominates.
An image is powerful not necessarily because of anything specific it offers the viewer, but because of everything it apparently also takes away from the viewer." --Trinh T. Minh-ha Vietnamese filmmaker and feminist thinker Trinh T. Minh-ha is one of the most powerful and articulate voices in independent filmmaking. In her writings and interviews, as well as in her filmscripts, Trinh explores what she describes as the "infinite relation" of word to image. Cinema-Interval brings together her recent conversations on film and art, life and theory, with Homi Bhabha, Deb Verhoeven, Annamaria Morelli and other critics. Together these interviews offer the richest presentation of this extraordinary artist's ideas. Extensively illustrated in color and black and white, Cinema-Interval covers a wide range of issues, many of them concerning "the space between"--between viewer and film, image and text, interviewer and interviewee, lover and beloved. As an added bonus, the complete scripts of Trinh's films Surname Viet Given Name Nam and A Tale of Love are also included in the volume. Cinema-Interval will be an essential work for readers interested in contemporary film art, feminist thought, and postcolonial studies.
Chào Ban! is an interactive language program of introductory Vietnamese intended for use by non-native students, as well as students of Vietnamese heritage without a solid knowledge of the language. The entire program uses the communicative approach, which focuses on teaching the language for the ultimate purpose of using it in everyday settings. Chào Ban! consists of a textbook and workbook manual that adhere to the following practical objectives: to make the whole program straightforward in presentation, user-friendly, practical, interesting to students, and most importantly culture-based.
Since Vietnam introduced economic reforms in the mid-1980s, domestic service has become an established sector of the labour market, and domestic workers have become indispensable to urban life in the rapidly changing country. This book analyzes the ways in which the practices and discourses of domestic service serve to forge and contest emerging class identities in post-reform Vietnam. Drawing on a rich and diverse range of qualitative data, including ethnographies, interviews, and narratives, it shows that such practices and discourses are rooted in cultural notions of gender and rural-urban difference and enduring socialist structures of feeling, which, in turn, clash with the realities of growing differentiation. Domestic workers’ experiences reveal negotiations with class boundaries actively set by the urban middle class, who seek distinction through emerging notions and practices of domesticity. These boundaries are nevertheless riddled with gender and class anxiety on the side of the latter, partly because of the very struggles and contestations of the domestic workers. More broadly, Minh T. N. Nguyen links the often invisible intimate dynamics of class formation in the domestic sphere with wider political economic processes in a post-socialist country embarking on marketization while retaining the political control of a party-state. As a pioneering ethnographic study of domestic service in Vietnam today, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian culture & society, social anthropology, gender studies, human geography and development studies.
This first-year Vietnamese language textbook introduces college students to all aspects of the Vietnamese language and culture in twelve comprehensive chapters. Each chapter begins with a list of active vocabulary used for the selected topic, followed by dialogue and grammar utilized in everyday situations by native speakers. A Vietnamese proverb reflecting each chapter’s topic reveals a different cultural component of Vietnam. Students can practice what they’ve learned with exercises at the end of each chapter. The book is enhanced with an answer key to the exercises, grammar indices, and full vocabulary lists.
A country uncommonly rich in plants, animals, and natural habitats, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam shelters a significant portion of the world’s biological diversity, including rare and unique organisms and an unusual mixture of tropical and temperate species. This book is the first comprehensive account of Vietnam’s natural history in English. Illustrated with maps, photographs, and thirty-five original watercolor illustrations, the book offers a complete tour of the country’s plants and animals along with a full discussion of the factors shaping their evolution and distribution. Separate chapters focus on northern, central, and southern Vietnam, regions that encompass tropics, subtropics, mountains, lowlands, wetland and river regions, delta and coastal areas, and offshore islands. The authors provide detailed descriptions of key natural areas to visit, where a traveler might explore limestone caves or glimpse some of the country’s twenty-seven monkey and ape species and more than 850 bird species. The book also explores the long history of humans in the country, including the impact of the Vietnam-American War on plants and animals, and describes current efforts to conserve Vietnam’s complex, fragile, and widely threatened biodiversity.
Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội: Improvisations between Worlds examines the germination and growth of jazz under communist rule—perceived as the "music of the enemy" and "ideologically decadent"—in the Vietnamese capital of Hà Nội. After disappearing from the scene in 1954 following the end of the First Indochina War, jazz reemerged in the public sphere decades later at the end of the Cold War. Since then, Hà Nội has established itself as a vital and vibrant jazz center, complete with a full jazz program in the national conservatoire. Featuring interviews with principal players involved in cultivating the scene from past to present, this book presents the sociocultural encounters between musicians and the larger powers enmeshed in the broader political economy, detailing jazz’s journey to garner respect comparable to classical music as an art form possessing high artistic value. Ethnographical sketches explore how Vietnamese musicians learn and play jazz while sustaining and nurturing the scene, providing insight as to how jazz managed to grow in such an environment. Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội sheds light on those underlying caveats that allow Vietnamese jazz musicians to navigate the middle grounds between "worlds"—between music and politics—not as an act of resistance, but as realisation of artistic expression.
Shortlisted for the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2022 Quyền Văn Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the most preeminent jazz musicians in Vietnam. Considered a pioneer in the country, Minh is often publicly recognized as the “godfather of Vietnamese jazz.” Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam tells the story of the music as it intertwined with Minh’s own narrative. Stan BH Tan-Tangbau details Minh’s life story, telling how Minh pioneered jazz as an original genre even while navigating the trials and tribulations of a fervent socialist revolution, of the ideological battle that was the Cold War, of Vietnam’s war against the United States, and of the political changes during the Đổi Mới period between the mid-1980s and the 1990s. Minh worked tirelessly and delivered two breakthrough solo recitals in 1988 and 1989, marking the first time jazz was performed in the public sphere in the socialist state. To gain jazz acceptance as a mainstream musical art form, Minh founded Minh Jazz Club. With the release of his debut album of original compositions in 2000, Minh shaped the nascent genre of Vietnamese jazz. Minh’s endeavors kickstarted the momentum, from his performing jazz in public, teaching jazz both formally and informally, and contributing to the shaping of an original Vietnamese voice to stand out among the many styles in the jazz world. Most importantly, Minh generated a public space for musicians to play and for the Vietnamese to listen. His work eventually helped to gain jazz the credibility necessary at the national conservatoire to offer instruction in a professional music education program.
The poetry collection “We fight for our long-lasting Viet Nam” is selected by Associate Prof. Dr. Luong Minh Cu. The poetry collection’s name has hinted at a generation of soldiers battling and writing poems. When reading the collection, we will get to know talented generals like Senior Lieutenant General Tran Van Tra, and Senior Lieutenant General Hoang Cam, who used to compose poems while directly commanding the battlefield. War is a harsh challenge in life, but war also toughened a generation of soldiers to become generals and poets. Each artist is a secretary of an era, then the poets wearing military uniforms are the secretaries of blood and flower, they combine the souls of their generations in the poems, remembering a time with everyone sacrificed for the country and two words: Viet Nam. Their poems are full of feelings and the soul’s delicacy in the beauty of the country and its people.
The practice of sex-selective abortion is on the rise globally, stirring debates about gender inequality, medical ethics and reproductive autonomy. This book is the first ethnography to document practices of sex selection in Viet Nam. It shows how and why abortions are used to select the sex of children and how Vietnamese individuals and health professionals are implicated in this illicit and controversial practice. Telling the stories of women who have undergone sex-selective abortions, it traces their passage through sex determination and abortion decision-making phases, and investigates their experiences during and after their sex-selective abortions. It describes the turmoil experienced by individuals who undergo such abortions and explores their interactions with the spectrum of social actors and health institutions that facilitate practices of sex selection. As the first ethnographic study on sex-selective abortions in Viet Nam, this book delves into socially sensitive terrain and sheds light on personally fraught individual experiences of reproductive agency. It documents societal responses to sex-selective abortions in Viet Nam and identifies gaps in the state’s capacity to regulate reproductive desire in a marketised economy. A resource for researchers, it contributes to ongoing debates on sex selection and provides a framework for developing relevant social policies, interventions and support services. ‘This pioneering study offers a nuanced and sensitive account of sex-selective abortion as human experience. Through thought provoking case studies, the book provides rare ethnographic documentation of the complex quandaries that arise as selective reproductive technologies are routinised across the globe.’ — Tine M. Gammeltoft, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
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