design \ \ \ Tsevis Mosaics

Composition by Charis Tsevis

You have to appreciate the inspiration that Obama gives to artists. Although, it can get a little bit repetitive, sometimes I like repetition. But only in mosaics like these.

vietnamese \ \ \ Vietnamese Youth Vision Progress Report

In March 2006, I wrote my vision of a Vietnamese youth network in Northern California. Let me see how I have done in the 2.5 years since then. The four objectives I have outlined is Infrastructure, Cultural Development, Community Development, Leadership Development.

Infrastructure

UVSA Northern California is now a formal organization, with elected officers and affiliates from 7 schools. We have survived our first elections and second summit, although I will feel more comfortable once we pass the 5-year mark. What it currently lacks is nonprofit status, which as of this writing is currently in the works. The staff application process is being hammered out for the first time since I've stepped down from being a Board Member and am reapplying to be on Staff. Many of the other regional VSA coalitions have died, collegiate and high school, and a new youth group one has started, VAYO. It is my duty to ensure that no more organizations die.

Although the organization is structured differently than I originally imagined, it is a starting point nevertheless. I am going to lead by example and implement the Commission structure by starting out the first branch: Arts Commission. We have picked up a lot of unaffiliated individuals, so this is the first step to absorbing them into Staff.

Cultural Development

Personally I have started a t-shirt business targeting the Vietlish Generation to start bridging the linguistic disconnect. My Brainstorm process helped UVSA produce its second Roadmap, which includes a revamp of both the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Black April Commemoration. These will be two very important projects to get done right in order to educate the younger students the importance of their Vietnamese identity, and were outlined as part of my original suggestion list. I actually want the youths to be able to organize all of the other suggestions, but that will take some time as we build leadership capacity.

Community Development

Serving the (external) community is a relatively neglected aspect of UVSA at the moment. Although we have educated ourselves on a host of issues confronting the community, everything from Deportation, to the Paracel/Spratley Territorial Conflict, there has yet to be regularity in addressing any of the issues. I suspect Standing Committees should be included into the Infrastructure to handle the numerous Areas of Concerns.

Internal community development is coming along nice and slowly. People like going Camping, and the Olympics was a huge success this past year. We will continue to capitalize on these events, but I am thinking the Commission structure will mirror a kind of Family System employed by many VSAs.

Leadership Development

Currently the President of UVSA, Tam Phan, is grooming his Executive Board to be better leaders. But we need some sort of program to train and mentor them, and I'd rather leverage existing programs if possible. Although I have a lot of notes and people liked the Summit workshops, I think leadership development covers these areas: understanding issues, creating a vision and strategy, arming yourself with skills, knowing your resources, creating a proposal, execution of the plan, and going through a feedback cycle. I may be the one who has to create this program in this fashion.

Conclusion

There is still a lot of foundation work to do. Oh so little time. But I'm moving in the right direction at least!

design & vietnamese \ \ \ My New T-Shirt Line: hết-xảy!

Our Website! → http://www.het-xay.com
Our Facebook page! → http://www.facebook.com/pages/Milpitas-CA/het-xay/32399317415

About a year ago I caught a disease called UVSA, and since then I’ve poured tons of energy and time into it cuz I love it so much. My business partner, Bao Thien Ngo, has been afflicted for many, many years now and continues to contribute to the org via his many talents. During our service, we’ve become great friends. One day while we were talking over lunch, somehow, a few funny t-shirt ideas came up. And we were like, “Why don’t we just make them ourselves?” Thus, hết-xảy! was born.

Since we’re so passionate about UVSA and the Vietnamese Youth (Generation 2.0 as Bao put it: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=31459958018 &id=2520736), we couldn’t help but bring some of those values over to hết-xảy! Cultural understanding and progression, giving back to the community, free self-expression, and being true to ourselves, are just a few things our shirts stand for.

We made them for you, as much as we made them for us. To strike up a conversation, maybe teach some Vietnamese to someone else, or just bring a smile to someone’s face. So check out our website, buy a shirt if you like them, and help spread the word—show them to your friends and family. We’ll love you forever. :D

Tam Phan, hết-xảy! visionary

• P.S. We got more designs on the way!
• P.S.S. Send either of us your ideas for a shirt if you want… it might just get made.
• P.S.S.S. If you live close by one of us and want to save on shipping by picking the shirts up, let me know. We’ll take that shipping fee off for you.

film \ \ \ Casting Call: La Petite Salon

La Petite Salon

Director: Caroline Le
Producer: bảo.thiên.ngô

Seeking 8 Female and 1 Male Role(s):

Quynh, early 20s

Lead role. Vietnamese American. College student. Artistic and apprehensive. Sexually closeted from everyone except her girlfriend, Sienna. Her reserved nature is seen as reverent to the patrons in her mother's salon.

Chi Truc, mid-30s

Supporting role. Vietnamese woman. Unemployed for several months, her workaholic behavior is overcome by uneasiness of insecurities to support her family. Fluent in Vietnamese.

Mai Ly, late 40s

Lead role. Older, contemporary Vietnamese woman, mother of Quynh, and owner of the salon. Non-judgmental and sensible. She facilitates the conversations in the salon. Fluent in Vietnamese.

Thomas, late 20s

Lead role. Well-groomed Vietnamese man. Laidback, attentive, and charismatic. Vietnamese limited to conversations.

Linda, mid-20s

Supporting role. Trendy Vietnamese woman. Confident and brandish. Aspires to be the next Miss Global Vietnam.

Ba Xuan, early 60s

Supporting role. Vietnamese woman. Loud, opinionated, and traditional. She is conservative, but has youthful reservations. Fluent in Vietnamese.

Ba Vien, early 60s

Supporting role. Vietnamese woman. Best friends since childhood with Ba Xuan. Traditional and soft-spoken. Fluent in Vietnamese.

Co Hien, late 20s

Supporting role. Plain and simple Vietnamese woman. Complete opposite of Linda, she is reserved and avoids conflict with others. A sense of sadness about her. Fluent in Vietnamese.

Sienna, early 20s

Lead role. Latin woman. Sincere, presumptuous, and sensitive. She empathizes with her girlfriend, Quynh, about the struggles of coming out.

Auditions will be November 22 and December 6, location TBD in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Shoot dates TBD in mid-January 2009, San Francisco Bay Area.

vietnamese \ \ \ Vietnamese American Generation 2.0

Recently the buzzword of "Web 2.0" has surfaced, demarcating a new era of internet functionality. Whereas the first-generation internet was often static webpages that read more like a book, the Web 2.0 is characterized, in my opinion, by interactive websites content generated by internet users, such as blogs, wikis, social networks, and that sort of thing. I thought the "2.0" moniker would be an interesting way to describe my peers, something that captures the essence of my thoughts on the future of the Vietnamese American community. Technically, I am part of the 2.5 Generation, although it just doesn't have quite the same ring to it!

After April 30, 1975, when the Republic of Vietnam (aka South Vietnam) surrendered to Vietcong forces—thereby ending the Vietnam War—the political hostility towards people closely affiliated with the South Vietnamese government and their American allies prompted the beginning of the Exodus of Vietnamese people, with the First Wave of about 125,000 refugees in the spring that year. My mother's family was part of that First Wave. They arrived in Guam on a Navy ship and then flew to Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, one of the four processing centers for the influx of refugees, before being sponsored by Earlham College for resettlement in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My mother was 15 years old when she came over, just barely making the definition of being a member of the 1.5 Generation.

The First Wave First Generation had to face tremendous difficulties in adapting to living in the United States. There was the fact that you took a family from Southern Vietnam who was accustomed to weather akin to Florida, but have them experience their first winter snow in Indiana, and you have a pretty miserable Vietnamese family. The different Vietnamese families were scattered throughout the United States because the government was concerned with the formation of ethnic enclaves (thereby slowing down assimilation). Then there was the language barriers that made integration a bit slow. For this reason, my grandfather's first job was being a school janitor. I've heard stories of other First Generation individuals who were fairly isolated from other Americans. "I went through college not having a friend," I recall hearing from an older Vietnamese American I spoke to awhile ago, "I think I was the only Vietnamese there." Still others faced ignorant Americans who did not fully understand the war or why there were Vietnamese in America; or those who could not distinguish a Vietnamese from every other yellow-skinned ethnic minority—what I call ethnic illiteracy—or worse yet anti-immigrant or racist hostilities. It would not be until a few years later that the US would see the rise of ethnic enclaves as Vietnamese families began to coalesce and support each other. Whereas the First Generation focused on economic survival and faced social isolation, the 1.5 Generation had different issues.

My mother and her many siblings went to school and immediately enrolled into remedial English. There was a drive to be able to communicate with other youths, not just through broken English or gestures. Some were able to break the language barriers and learn English, while regulating usage of the Vietnamese language to the private sphere. Others found comfort in speaking Vietnamese with one another and preserved their native tongue. All had to face their unique circumstance of growing up bicultural and (possibly) bilingual, and trying to navigate this dual identity. Many have a special connection to Vietnam because of being born there.

Which brings me to the First Wave Second Generation, born in America (or mid-flight to America), sons and daughters of their immigrant parents. What is their struggle? The strong cultural influences of the parents either acculturated their children to the Vietnamese ways while growing up American. Or some have hidden their roots out of embarrassment at being intolerably different from others, as one poet, Jennii Le, describes in her work, "I Am Not Vietnamese". Either way, the Second Generation is bicultural (though individual results will vary). But one of the concerns that confront this generation more so than the 1.5 Generation is, "Am I still considered Vietnamese? What constitutes a Vietnamese person? What is the difference between being Người Việt and Người Mỹ gốc Việt?" Over the years, I have talked to many in the Second Generation, and I think I can say that they see themselves as American citizens first with Vietnam as being their ancestral lands. While they might have a relationship with Vietnam and do things that are characteristic of the Vietnamese culture, they have grown up American, singing American songs (no doubt popularized due to renditions by Vietnamese American singers), having a different notion of civic duty, or having different aesthetic tastes. You put a Vietnamese American in Vietnam, and the people there know that the Vietnamese American is different in some way. We always talk about the relatively distinctive cultures of the three regions of Vietnam: Bắc, Trung, and Nam (North, Central, and South respectively). But who is this odd person who speaks Vietnamese (albeit with a strange accent), eats Vietnamese food, but is neither Bắc, Trung, or Nam? From the Vietnamese American's vantage point though, she or he might ask similarly: Who are these people, living in Vietnam, who behave and believe in things so differently from my parents? They do not believe in arranged marriages. They are more likely to wear a suit and Western bridal dress for their wedding than an áo dài. And they listen to techno music? Are they still Vietnamese?

Am I still Vietnamese? This is the pressing topic for my generation, the First Wave 2.5 Generation. If I have very few connections with the country and people of Vietnam, and my livelihood is largely dependent on my role in my local community (both mainstream and Vietnamese American), what reason do I have to retain my ethnic identity? Why not simply treat my condition as a general experience of all Americans? Perhaps we still share a connection with this identity because of our parents and grandparents. Perhaps it is because I have a lot of peers my age who are Second Wave Second Generation or even Third Wave 1.5 Generation. So long as I have relations with them, there is a need to have a common identity and culture of some sort in order to communicate with one another. I'd say you really feel part of the community when you can joke with each other and "get it". But what form should this common culture look like? Should it be a mirror of Vietnam? But why should they have exclusive rights over how Vietnamese should behave and believe? Can we define our own Vietnamese American identity? Yes, yes we can. The whole notion of electronica-influenced Vietnamese pop music came from the Vietnamese American community (although it is not really my kind of music). And hey, it's not doing too shabby in Vietnam now. Áo dài pageants in our community was a Vietnamese American invention as well; it never existed in Vietnam prior to 1975. We have that freedom to define ourselves, and to create a culture that can address our diverse values so that we can communicate with one another.

To answer the original question, "Why retain my identity?" If I may be so humble, it is to have a story, that can be traced back, and shared with others. The legitimacy of any culture is supported by both preservation and innovation, passed on through the generations. As a Californian, I pride myself in the fact that the fortune cookie was invented in San Francisco. The term "hella" was popularized in San Francisco. Beach volleyball was born in Santa Monica (okay, so volleyball was born in Massachusetts). These sort of things put California on the map. And similarly, as a Vietnamese American, there are things that put my Vietnamese American community on the map as well. Sriracha hot chili sauce is trademarked by a Vietnamese American. But now it's my turn, my generation's time to define their identity. What will we be known for? While many Vietnamese Americans have made strides in a number of fields and areas, it won't become engrained in our community's culture until it is passed on to another generation (even half a generation).

So as we choose what we want to preserve and pass on, the Vietnamese American culture will evolve. I thought I'd help it along by incorporating it into a group creative process, dare I say "intelligent design". If you throw something through this process once, say the Mid-Autumn Festival, it will change it a little. If you throw it through the process 10 times, it will start to look rather different from the original. What makes this intelligent design and not evolution is that the idea in question is being subjugated to the forces of people's wills, desires, hopes, and dreams, rather than by nature. And why should we bother changing an event like Mid-Autumn Festival? Because if we keep the event the same while our environment and era changes, it is like an animal that cannot adapt to its environment: it will be unable to survive for very long. And so we have to adapt. The older generation have already done this with their pageants, techno music, and Sriracha chili sauce. The next generation have already introduced Viet rap, popularized the rice rocket culture, and authored the USA Patriot Act.

Keep 'em rolling in!