Race, Gender, and Religion in the Vietnamese Diaspora

Abstract

The early modern period was witness to an incipient process of transculturation through exploration, mercantilism, colonization, and migration that set into motion a process of globalization that continues today. The purpose of this series is to bring together a cultural studies approachwhich freely and unapologetically crosses disciplinary, theoretical, and political boundaries-with early modern texts and artefacts that bear the traces of transculturalization and globalization in order to deepen our understanding of sites of exchange between and within early modern culture(s). This process can be studied on a large as well as on a small scale, and this new series is dedicated to both. Possible topics of interest include, but are not limited to: texts dealing with mercantilism,

Holy Mothers in the Vietnamese Diaspora: Refugees, Community, and Nation

“…In doing so, Tweed argues that they transpose the conditions of displacement into survival and aspirations, reinterpreting their experiences of exile as hope and envisioning a future when they would return to Cuba. Other studies of Catholic immigrants in the US have found similar patterns of ethnic orthodoxy at local and global levels (Castañeda-Liles 2018;Ninh 2017;Horsfall 2000;Duricy 2008).…”

“…Meanwhile, the US has not fully integrated Vietnamese Catholics and Caodaists as citizens. Even though religious diversity and freedom is a fundamental right in American society, religion has become the proxy through which Vietnamese refugees are marginalized to the fringes of society as ethnic racial minorities (Ninh 2017). As Catholics, they have been racialized in American society as ethnically unrepresentative of Catholicism or not being "truly Catholic" because they are Asians practicing a "Western" religion.…”

“…For nearly than a century, this statue of a Western-looking Virgin Mary was associated with Our Lady of Lavang. However, in 1998, upon the commemoration of two hundred years after the first apparition of Our Lady of Lavang was reported, Vietnamese Catholics replaced this Western image with a Vietnamese version created by Vietnamese American sculptor, Nhan Van, who also made the first Vietnamese image of the Virgin Mary outside of Vietnam (Ninh 2017). Portrayed as a Vietnamese woman, Our Lady of Lavang is dressed in a white traditional costume (áo dài) under a blue decorative cloak, adorned by a Vietnamese golden headdress, and holding a statue of baby Jesus on her left arm.…”

GeoSiteSearch: A Tool to Map Vietnamese Diaspora by Deducing Geographical Information of Web Pages about Our Lady of LaVang

“…The reinterpreted statues have become common diplomatic gifts exchanged between Vietnamese Catholic communities in different countries. In 2002, six of them were blessed by Pope John Paul II and distributed to Vietnamese Catholic communities on six different continents, and by 2010 Our Lady of LaVang has become a de facto symbol of the global Vietnamese Catholic diaspora (Ninh 2017).…”

The Phenomenon of Presenting and Worshipping Buddha(s) at the Mother Goddess Worship’s Điện thờ Tư gia in Contemporary Vietnam

“…Although the practice of Ðạo Mẫu was officially recognized as the world's intangible cultural heritage by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2016, many aspects of this Vietnamese religion are largely neglected, for instance, one of its major worshipping places called Ðiện thờ Mẫu tư gia (MGW private shrine/private temple). Some scholars mention Ðiện thờ Mẫu tư gia in their work as a way of acknowledging this unique worshipping place of Ðạo Mẫu; however, they do not provide any details on it (Fjelstad Nguyen 2006, 2011; Thien-Huong T. Ninh 2017). Even in the latest published articles and monographs, scholars do not include private shrines while naming the various places of worship of Ðạo Mẫu (Vũ and Phạm 2018;Phúc Hữu Nguyễn 2022) 2 .…”