"Southeast Asian American Experience" Class Projects
Professor Linda Võ's winter quarter class helped the Archive expand its collections, while at the same time the students gained experience in collecting, researching, displaying, and preserving histories. Each of the following projects is accompanied by a two-page essay.
Hòa Gia Huỳnh collected books, periodicals, photos, artifacts, and ephemera pertaining to the Phan Bội Châu Youth group, UVSA, the Buddhist Youth Association of California, and the Vietnamese Alliance Church. Sothai Kim documented poetry by Cambodian American youth. Tinh Tăng and Gloria Chan created a poster concerning Tinh's family stay in the Galang Refugee Camp in Indonesia, 1990-1994; Young Joo mapped out nail salons in the Little Saigon area. Steve Chen documented UCI's Laotian-Thai Cultural Club through a video and ephemera. Sylvia Ly researched Hmong traditional music and contributed photographs and a video. Elaine Dolalas contributed a chapbook and CD by the spoken word poet Thiên-bảo Thục Phi. Thu Phạm and Anthony Nguyễn videotaped family Buddhist and Catholic Tết celebrations and the Little Saigon Tết parade. Thu also contributed a 1924 book, Kinh Thi, a translation of court poetry from Hán characters to Nôm to modern Vietnamese, that belonged to his grandfather. Thu-Loan Đinh took photographs of daily life in Little Saigon and collected ephemera from the Tết Festival. Linh Nguyễn collected personal items such as wedding invitations, letters, an ao dai, maps, and postcards of Vietnam. Lisa Lý and Thuy Nguễen collected family recipes. Theresa Nguyễn and Helen Vong focused on the ao dai, contributing videos of a beauty pageant and a wedding, as well as a poster, booklet, doll and an ao dai. Nam Nguyễn researched traditional Vietnamese music and donated a video tape and display of miniature Vietnamese instruments. Fue Xiong and Jao Her documented Hmong American youth activities, and also Hmong political and religious life through CDs and ephemeral materials. Matthias Idemundia and Khanh Huỳnh videotaped a recently arrived Vietnamese teenager at high school and interviewed members of her family. Thanh Tran and Janice Baeg investigated Vietnamese-owned businesses in Irvine. Janice Baeg also researched and donated 10 Đông Hồ paintings presented to her by a student in an English class she taught in Vietnam last summer. Sophia Vũ and Isaac Chang investigated "clubbing" in Orange County. Nghị Nguyễn took photos of events sponsored by the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Society in America. Mami Kawachi photographed sights and shops in Little Saigon.
Sincere thanks to Professor Võ for her creative assignment and to her students for their valuable work in enhancing the resources of the Southeast Asian Archive. These projects will be kept together and processed as an archival collection.
