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Keywords: Vietnam

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Commemorate or forget: Do we care enough about D-Day?

    • Geraldine Doogue
    • 18 June 2024

    I wonder how many Australians were captivated, as was I, by the 80th anniversary D-Day celebrations? They seemed epochal to me: a reminder of something remarkable and a pointer to something possible, namely new resolve to maintain peace in Europe. Not too many Australians, as it turned out, were similarly mesmerised. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Nam Le's 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem

    • Peter Craven
    • 05 April 2024
    1 Comment

    Nam Le is one of the strangest writers in the history of Australian literature and is also one of the most incandescently brilliant — which is very weird if you bear in mind that his primary claim to legendary status is a book of short fiction published in 2008. With 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, Le returns with a new work that encapsulates the brilliance and complexity that fans and critics have come to expect.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Ellsberg's whistleblowing legacy

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 August 2023
    1 Comment

    Before WikiLeaks, Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers exposed U.S. deceptions in the Vietnam War. His journey from defence analyst to whistleblower leaves a legacy that resonates today. In an era where transparency is often overshadowed by retaliation, Ellsberg's story stands as a sobering reminder of the cost of truth.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Our moral duty towards Afghan refugees

    • Vincent Long Van Nguyen
    • 30 August 2021
    9 Comments

    I was one of the boat people who escaped from South Vietnam. The escape happened after South Vietnam had fallen to the Vietnamese communist forces in 1975, and my world descended into total chaos with an international embargo, wars against China and Cambodia, forced collectivisation and the insidious spread of what were termed “re-education camps” - but were really communist gulags. My siblings and I grew up in a world of poverty, isolation, oppression and constant fear of what might happen to us or our loved ones.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Interrogating the past

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 May 2021
    27 Comments

    A wry satisfaction to be enjoyed in reading histories of events of your youth is that it uncovers your prejudices at that time. It reassures you that you have grown wiser but also makes you wonder whether your present attitudes will need revisiting. Save Our Sons, Carolyn Collins’ detailed and even-handed study of women’s campaign against conscription during the Vietnam War, offered such pleasures.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Jesuit Refugee Service: '40 years of accompaniment'

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 26 November 2020
    7 Comments

    Stories of volunteers who went to help in foreign crises used to focus on the impact on the people helped. Today they explore how both parties are changed through the experience. That was also true in Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) whose 40th anniversary occurred last week.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The lasting legacy of the Vietnam Moratorium

    • Andra Jackson
    • 08 May 2020
    11 Comments

    The Vietnam Moratorium in Melbourne was one of the most momentous events to occur in Australia in the post world war two era. It led to a seismic shift not only in Australia politics but also within society. The moratorium, held fifty years ago today, was a historic achievement in how it united diverse groups behind the goal of ending Australia’s role in the Vietnam war.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Birthday ballot

    • David Atkinson
    • 01 October 2018

    I am transported to the sappers. In a pitch-dark deluge like this, gun turrets and slush banish daydreams of beaches and cobalt rockpools. Recollections of the birthday ballot, tremble of black and white TV in the corner. My fingers drag a crested envelope from the letterbox, the breeze brings ironic coo of peaceful doves.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Faith through a different lens

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 15 August 2018
    1 Comment

    Julianne Nguyen turns a smartphone, webcam and head-mounted go-pro to the purposes of self-examination. A child of Vietnamese parents but born in Australia, she practises Christianity and Buddhism, and is trying to parse these various elements. 'I'm Australian. I feel Vietnamese,' she says, then chants: 'West. East. No, West. No, East.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A love letter to libraries

    • Sheila Ngoc Pham
    • 10 August 2018
    12 Comments

    We had some books at home so I wasn't wholly deprived but I did have to discover reading without any real parental guidance; English wasn't even our home language. But when I started working at my local public library, it became clear that while I might have been the child of refugees, for many, libraries themselves were a refuge.

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  • EDUCATION

    Voluntourism hinders community development

    • Beth Doherty
    • 01 June 2018
    13 Comments

    More and more, school leavers are being invited to participate in 'life-changing' experiences where they build houses in Cambodia, or volunteer for a week in a Vietnamese orphanage. When presented with such opportunities we should exercise caution and informed discernment.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Locked out of our mother tongues

    • Sheila Ngoc Pham
    • 27 March 2018
    7 Comments

    On my first day of primary school, I understood very little English and spoke even less. My parents seemed to feel little anxiety and assumed I'd just figure it out at school. Turns out they weren't wrong. However, what they didn't anticipate is what would happen to my Vietnamese.

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