The American Dream in Vietnamese

Nhi Lieu

In her research on popular culture of the Vietnamese diaspora, Nhi Lieu explores how people displaced by war reconstruct cultural identity in the aftermath of migration. Displaced from Viet Nam by war and politics and arriving as refugees to communities in Texas and California, Vietnamese artists and entrepreneurs built forms of popular culture that affirmed connections to a Viet Nam that was and to a cosmopolitan culture that would incorporate Vietnamese subjects as equal participants. In The American Dream in Vietnamese, she claims that no-where are these fantasies played out more vividly than in the Vietnamese American entertainment industry.