Embedded Files
Agnew, a pet rabbit owned by my father's family circa 1970, named for Spiro Agnew, a Republican vice president who resigned following accusations of corruption in office.
My great-grandfather's family in Havana; date unknown.
Relatives of my grandmother in Santiago de Cuba; date unknown.
Above: My father in the late 1960s in New Orleans, likely at his parents' Madrid Street residence in the Gentilly neighborhood.
Upper right and bottom right: Family portraits of my father, uncle, and grandmother taken in the late 1960s.
My father, uncle, grandmother, and grandfather in New Orleans in the 1970s.
My father with horses on a finca, ca. late 1970s in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
The images below contrast the first set on this page; while the Cuban-New Orleanian phenomenon is largely absent from the digital archives of the state, the Vietnamese-New Orleanian presence is closely documented in news broadcasts and published photo essays. To supplant the absence of Cuban materials in New Orleans, I included personal family photos and documents. I would like the viewer to consider what the private photographs are able to impart as portraits of New Orleans residents who felt that they belonged, in comparison to the public and open-access portraits recorded of Vietnamese residents in the 1970s and 1980s by news publications. While Vietnamese-New Orleanians were made others for their decision to construct community in the recently-developed New Orleans East, Cuban-New Orleanians materially documented themselves as part of the local landscape.
A 1998 article and photo essay developed by a student staff member in The Maroon detailing Village de l'Est in New Orleans East. Courtesy of Louisiana Digital Library.
THE NEW IMMIGRANT ‐ Made with Clipchamp (1).mp4Above: Lousiana Public Broadcasting, Louisiana: The State We're In (1979). A reporter introduces the difficulties of newly-arrived Vietnamese refugees, and a Vietnamese-New Orleanian pastor notes the lack of New Orleanians' effort to understand the emerging refugee community.
The Louisianian narrative of Vietnamese communities I discovered in the state archives tends to ostracize and exoticize Vietnamese-New Orleanians (as seen in the frequent references to Village de L'Est as a fragment of the "Near East"), and situate their existence in dimensions of labor. Bad politics, on the part of the state.
New Orleans East, 1998.
New Orleans East, 1998.
Original 1998 photoessay title and commentary in The Maroon.
Note that many of these portraits, both in the case of New Orleanian-Vietnamese interviewees and in the case of my family, are taken not by themselves but by journalists and the photography services at local department stores.
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