In 1998, on the 200th anniversary of her first apparition, the image of the Virgin Mary, which had appeared to a group of martyrs in La Vang, Vietnam (and was known as Our Lady of La Vang), was transformed from a European woman into a Vietnamese woman. The change was initiated by Vietnamese Catholics in southern California, who then exported the Vietnamized image to Catholic communities in Vietnam and other parts of the world. Today, the image of Our Lady of La Vang has become a global representation of the Virgin Mary as an Asian woman
AbstractThis article draws on positioning theory and uses Bamberg’s (2005) three-level analytic approach to analyze how identity construction and relational work implicate the other and are co-constitutive processes in local interactions. To that end, it examines a sequence of excerpts taken from an interview involving the author and a Vietnamese woman and analyzes the co-constructed positioning of self and other that developed over the course of the interview conversation. The article focuses on how (non)delicate topics are introduced, responded to, modified and developed as the interviewee reports on past experience and adopts evaluative stances toward topics initiated by the interviewer. The study further highlights how normative ideologies are indexed and reconstituted in such talk, and points to their role in making particular identities relevant and in mobilizing relational work in local interactions.
The beautiful girl is a character of high frequency in Vietnamese fairy tales. Folklores develop this character comprehensively, from the origin to appearance and spirit. Regarding the appearance, this character is fair-skinned and has pretty small feet. Spiritually, this character has typical personality traits of a traditional Vietnamese woman, such as diligence, loyalty, and filial piety. An examination of this character can help make an insight into Vietnamese perceptions of beauty.
This chapter centers on Oanh, who was born in the Mekong Delta, attended Lycée Marie Curie, and was considered the ninth Vietnamese woman of the Saigon sisters. It recounts the revolution of 1945, where Oanh's father was almost beheaded for being a landowner and collaborator but was spared at the last minute. It also emphasizes how Oanh took pride in being Vietnamese but did not have a strong political consciousness, only going along with student marches and other activities to “help make the crowd.” The chapter discusses her studies at Viterbo College in Wisconsin and life in the United States. It discloses her return to Saigon, where she applied her degree to help young women affected by the social upheaval of the Geneva Accords.
This chapter focuses on Lien An as the seventh Vietnamese woman in the Saigon sisters. It describes how Lien An grew up in a very rich francophone family where she was coddled at home and chauffeured around town before shaping her own voice and direction. It also points out that Lien An was one of the students awakened by Luu Huu Phuoc's music to seek independence. The chapter explains Lien An's resentment towards the expectation that girls stay home and have nothing to do with politics, as well as her appreciation for her mother that urged her to get a profession so she would not have to rely on a husband. It details how Lien An was greatly influenced by Minh for courageously rallying support for those fighting for independence.
The article discusses the indigenization of the French Notre-Dame des Victoires into Our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam in 1998. It argues that the La Vang project was a missionary strategy employed by the church to engage in mission through dialogue with Vietnamese culture and religions in a postcolonial period. The article also demonstrates that because Vietnamese Catholics and Buddhists share their common practices and experience spiritual transformation through devotion to Mary and Guan-yin (the Buddhist female Bodhisattva), interreligious dialogue between Vietnamese Buddhists and Catholics will become more fruitful, given the discovery of significant commonalities between the two traditions. In addition, the transformation of the French Notre-Dame des Victoires into the image of a Vietnamese woman helps the Church rediscover Vietnamese cultural roots through which a contextual theology for the Vietnamese needs to be constructed and developed.
Bisphosphonates for Osteoporosis Treatment: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Vietnamese Woman