A History of the Vietnamese Students Association at the University of California, Irvine, 1980-1990

• In Event: Spaces of Protests: Student Activism in the Post-World War II Era

Abstract

This is a history of Vietnamese Students Association (VSA) five years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 to the Communists. Of the histories that document postsecondary students, little discusses the experiences of Asian students, let alone Vietnamese. Much of the research on Vietnamese students during this era tend to cast them as "helpless refugees." This paper seeks to counter this primary narrative by using student poems, newsletters and articles to demonstrate Vietnamese students' strong political activity and advocacy for the safety and well-being of newly arrived immigrants through the VSA. The VSA also became a space in which they were able to cope with the loss of nation and the challenges of acculturating to a new country.

Author

• Thai-Huy P. Nguyen, University of Pennsylvania