The Character of a Beautiful Girl in Vietnamese Fairy Tales

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.

Oanh

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.

Lien An

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.

“IF MY MOTHER WERE STILL ALIVE, I AND YOU WOULD DEFINITELY GET DIVORCED”: A CASE STUDY OF A VIETNAMESE WOMAN’S REFUSING IN INTERACTION

This paper presents the major findings from a recent study conducted to explore how a Vietnamese woman refuses a high-stakes advice or request in everyday conversations. Data used in this study are conversations excerpted from a TV series entitled Những công dân tập thể (lit. the citizens living in the same apartment building). The analytical tool is a combination of Conversation Analysis (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998, 2008; Sacks, 1992a, 1992b) and Multimodal Interactional Analysis (Norris, 2004, 2009). The results show that (1) Vietnamese refusing is often performed concurrently by different modes of communication and language is only one of them; (2) refusing a high-stakes advice or request often takes a long time to negotiate in a conversation and through a series of conversations; and (3) Vietnamese women’s responsibility to obey their parents, a Confucian teaching, still has its role in contemporary Vietnamese society.

ASSOCIATION OF C677T POLYMORPHISMS OF MTHFR GENE WITH RECURRENT PREGNANCY LOSS IN VIETNAMESE WOMAN

Background: Recurrent pregnancy loss is a major concern in gynecology. Recently, many papers have showed the role of genetic factors in etiology of recurrent pregnancy loss. Several published studied revealed that C677T polymorphism is a high risk of recurrent pregnancy loss. However, this finding is still controversy. Therefore, this study is aimed at investigating the association of C677T polymorphisms of MTHFR gene with recurrent pregnancy loss in Vietnamese woman. Methods: Study subjects comprised 100 healthy women (control group) and 52 women with recurrent pregnancy loss. C677T polymorphisms were identified by PCR-technique. Results: The frequency of 677CC, 677CT, and 677TT genotypes in Vietnamese women with recurrent pregnancy loss is 65.4%, 30.8%, 3.8%, respectively; while the distribution of those genotypes in the control-group is 86%, 12%, và 2% (χ2 = 8.83; p = 0.012). Statistic analysis revealed that MTHFR C677T polymorphismsare associated with recurrent pregnancy loss (for CT vs. CC: OR= 3.37, 95%CI: 1.44 – 7.87, p = 0.0049; for (677CT + 677TT) vs. CC: OR= 3.25, 95%CI: 1.46 – 7.26, p = 0.004; for T vs. C: OR= 2.74, 95%CI:1.55 – 5.55, p = 0.005). Key words: Recurrent pregnancy loss, C677T polymorphisms, MTHFR gene

Holy Mothers in the Vietnamese Diaspora: Refugees, Community, and Nation

Holy mothers, specifically the Vietnamese-looking Our Lady of Lavang and Caodai Mother Goddess, are the crucibles of faith for many Vietnamese Catholics and Caodaists. Based on ethnographic data collected in California, which has the largest overseas Vietnamese population, I argue that Vietnamese refugees and their US-reared descendants have been able to re-centralize their fragmented communities through the innovative adaptation of holy mother worship. In particular, Vietnamese Catholics in the US have transformed the European image of Our Lady of Lavang into a Vietnamese woman and exported it to the rest of the world. Meanwhile, Vietnamese American Caodaists have revived traditional religious rituals for the Caodai Mother Goddess which were repressed and prohibited for many years under communism in Vietnam. Through their shared devotion to holy mothers, these Vietnamese American faithful have also rebuilt relations with co-ethnic co-religionists living throughout the world. For both the Vietnamese Catholic and Caodai groups, holy mothers have emerged as emblems of their deterritorialized nation in the diaspora.