Past Reflections, Future Considerations

After the success of the exhibition Waging Peace – U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed America’s War in Vietnam, which opened in March at the War Remnants Museum storied diplomat, Madam Ton Nu Thi Ninh, the current president of the Ho Chi Minh City Peace & Development Foundation (HPDF), sat down with Oi to discuss facets of her career, her work at … Read more

Letters in Love and War

It was an intimate event in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh district last weekend where celebrated writers Vu Tu Nam and Thanh Huong launched their new book, an English language publication entitled Letters in Love and War, translated and edited by Oi Vietnam’s writing bureau Metro Writers. The work is a translated collection of the love letters … Read more

Two Families Apart

The one that went and the one left behind Few words engender feelings of warmth, safety and belonging like “family.” Especially this time of the year, when Vietnamese families the world over gather for a few precious days of merrymaking, overeating and good-natured gossip. For some, it’s literally the only respite from an unforgiving work … Read more

The Story of My Life

Fascinating lives captured impeccably in print forever When my father passed away in 2010, he was about halfway through writing a memoir. I found the fragments on his old, failing PC hard drive, which miraculously survived just long enough for me to copy the files before it too blinked out of existence. Ironically, the documents … Read more

Mommy Dearest: A shoebox baby searches for a happy ending

It was April 1975, the final month of the American War, and US President Gerald Ford had a plan, codenamed Operation Babylift. Ahead of approaching North Vietnamese soldiers, displaced Vietnamese infants and children, in particular, mixed race children, were to be evacuated to adoptive families waiting in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. Eventually, more … Read more