Embedded Files
From: Daniel C. Tsang
Date: 2009/2/27
For a decade, Song That Radio has waged war against homophobia
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_11781380?nclick_check=1
By Jessie Mangaliman
Mercury News
Posted: 02/25/2009 07:04:00 AM PST
As a young college student studying Oriental philosophy in Saigon during the early part of the Vietnam War, Vuong Nguyen was hired by the American military to be a radio news writer and reader.
"My job was to communicate to Communist Hanoi," she said, "to tell them to disarm and come to the South."
Nguyen, now 66, is communicating to a different kind of audience in America today but using the same quiet, but determined, tactic against an unseen enemy: homophobia.
Known as "Chi Vuong," or "Older Sister
Vuong," Nguyen is founder of Song That — Vietnamese for "live
truthfully" — the country's first Vietnamese gay and lesbian radio
program, which she started 10 years ago in March. Broadcast every
Sunday night on San Jose's KSJX-AM (1500) and streamed online at www.songthat.com,
the hourlong program seeks to battle ignorance about homosexuality in
the Vietnamese community. There is no Vietnamese word for
homosexuality, and gays and lesbians are unflatteringly referred to as
half-man, half-woman, or worse, as having "sick lives."
.......[clipped]
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From: Daniel C. Tsang <dtsang@uci.edu>
Date: Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 12:11 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Apologies for the formatting display problems. Here attached is the article on lesbian and gay Viet Kieu in Cali, including our colleague Gina from Cal State University Northridge. Alex was the first to marry another (also a Viet Kieu man), back in the 1990s.
dan --
Daniel C. Tsang
Social Science Data Librarian
Bibliographer for Asian American Studies, Economics, Political Science & Business (acting)
468 Langson Library
University of California, Irvine
PO Box 19557
Irvine CA 92623-9557
USA
1 949 824 4978 (Telephone)
1 949 824 0605 (Fax)
dtsang@uci.edu
Subject Guides: http://libguides.lib.uci.edu (new URL)
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From: Nguyen-Vo, Thu-Huong <nguyenvo@humnet.ucla.edu>
Date: Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 1:12 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Dan,
Most Vietnamese Americans prefer not to be called 'Viet Kieu.' Most of
us have to put up with it in Vietnam because the Vietnamese government
called us that and then the term gained accepted usage by Vietnamese
there. But in the context of the US, or until we can subvert and
reclaim the term in the way 'queer' has been, it makes me uncomfortable
that we must call ourselves and think of ourselves by the category name
devised by this or another government, with its tactics subjectification
and power positioning, racial or otherwise.
Thank you for the link. It's very useful, and Gina is great in the
segment.
nvt huong
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