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diaCRITICS is the blog for the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). See "About DVAN" for more info.
diaCRITICS are also those accent marks in Vietnamese that confuse foreigners learning the language. Ma is ghost. Má is mother. So don't call your mother a ghost, or a ghost your mother.
diaCRITICS are also the bloggers for this site. Get it? A blogger here is a diaCRITIC.
diaCRITICS write about anything and everything related to the arts and culture of the Vietnamese in their homeland or in the diaspora. Music, film, literature, fashion, food, visual arts, you name it. Oh yeah, maybe politics too. And history. And any good story that comes our way. Have we forgotten something? Let us know.
diaCRITICS also write about the ways that other people write about the Vietnamese. Watch out. We reserve the right to be angry. Something somebody wrote or said or filmed about the Vietnamese got you angry? Or maybe just amused? Let us know.
and what if a Vietnamese person somewhere in the world says or does something stupid? diaCRITICS don't like that, either. It happens. Let us know.
Anhvu Buchanan
Ashley Carruthers
Rebekah Linh Collins
Thuy Vo Dang
Nguyen Qui Duc
Dan Duffy
Jade Hidle
Khanh Ho
Kim-An Lieberman
Bao Nguyen
Catherine Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Erin O'Brien
Hai-Dang Phan
Dao Strom
Nora Taylor
Michelle Ton
Lien Truong
Julie Thi Underhill
Chuong-Dai Vo
Cam Vu
So diaCRITICS is the blog for the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. But what's a diaspora?
It comes from Jewish history. The Jews were cast out of their homeland and formed a Diaspora of people scattered over many countries.
Now there are many Diasporas, driven out for all kinds of reasons. The Vietnamese Diaspora is where it is mostly because Viet Nam was occupied by the French, then occupied by Americans, then divided in two, then reunified into one at great cost to the other. So now we have Vietnamese in the United States, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, Israel, England, Russia and many more countries.
Basically we have Vietnamese all over the world. For some, Viet Nam is always home. For some, the country where they're at is home. For some, they will never go home. For some, the whole world is home. For diaCRITICS, wherever there's Vietnamese people, there's a home.
We write in English, French, Vietnamese, and anything else handy.
You can write in any language you want when you comment, but no insults, obscenities, personal attacks, flame wars or other rude behavior will be tolerated. Such comments will be removed and more than a few such comments will get you banned from commenting.
The artist Richard Streitmatter-Tran is the first diacritic, with his great site diacritic.org, which is about "Art Culture Media Criticism" from "Southeast Asia and Beyond." Check it out!
Bao Nguyen
Catherine Nguyen
Julie Thi Underhill
diaCRITICS 