On April 30, 1975, the war that pitted North versus South Vietnam ended with the fall of Saigon, what was then the capital of South Vietnam, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. North and South Vietnam reunified under communist rule.
In the immediate aftermath, tens of thousands of refugees fled the region, many of whom resettled in Oregon and Washington, which were among the first states in the U.S. to welcome them. Now, 50 years later, the Portland region continues to be home to a considerable Vietnamese community. That has had a significant impact on the city. Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in the state.
One of the goals of Vietnamese Portland: Memory, History, Community, an archive housed as a special collection at L&C’s Watzek Library, is to make that impact visible. The multiyear oral history project, now in its eighth year, seeks “to document the history and experiences of Vietnamese Portlanders.” While it includes documents, photographs, and other archival materials, it is mostly made up of oral histories of Vietnamese Portlanders, telling their stories in their own words. There are now more than 130 interviews that make up the archive.
While many students have worked on the project over the years, the two current student archive assistants, Nhân Hàn BA ’27 and Thoan Nguyễn BA ’27, have had a special assignment: to curate a 15-panel traveling exhibit featuring oral histories highlighting Vietnamese contributions to Portland. The bilingual (English and Vietnamese) exhibit, called This Is Vietnamese Portland, was initially created to tour Multnomah County libraries. It now has expanded to include Washington County libraries and will be featured at specific events, like a three-part series hosted by the Vietnamese Cultural Arts Alliance.
Working on the exhibit has been a transformative experience for both Hàn and Nguyễn.
“It’s not just about the history, but it’s also about representation of all the voices and communities that have been left out of the stories,” says Hàn, who came to Lewis & Clark in 2023 from Ho Chi Minh City. He is studying economics and entrepreneurship.
This past year, Hàn and Nguyễn have worked to identify the stories that exemplify three main themes that have emerged in the oral histories over the years: entrepreneurship, creativity, and community leadership. The Oregon Historical Society is hosting a showing of the bilingual (English and Vietnamese) exhibit in its Patricia Reser and William Westphal Pavilion, from April 28 through April 30. It will be available for all to see without museum admission. The Oregon Historical Society is also hosting an event on April 30 at 6 p.m. at their office. The focus is a presentation highlighting the art of Lê Quang Vinh called “50 Years of Vietnamese Contributions to Oregon,” which features community leaders Paul Vu and Oregon Representative Thuy Tran, as well as Zoë Maughan BA ’19, who works in special collections at Watzek and is the project manager of Vietnamese Portland.
The eight-panel English-only version will be on display in the Watzek Atrium from April 28 to May 9.
“I was born in Vietnam,” says Nguyễn, who is studying mathematics, economics, and computer science. “But I came here and got to know the Vietnamese Portland project, and I felt like ‘Oh, the history that I learned in Vietnam is just one perspective.’ Hearing people’s stories broadened my perspective.”
“All of their stories are super inspiring,” says Hàn. “They started from nothing to becoming something big, like with a big job or contributing a lot to the Portland community in general. There is one story of a woman named Thuy Pham. After going to beauty school, she was a hairstylist for a while. Then her business struggled during COVID, so she had to close it and start her vegan food business, Mama Dút, to support herself and her 8-year-old daughter. She faced a lot of challenges, but in the end she made it.”
Nguyễn was also impressed by the perseverance demonstrated by the interviewees’ stories.
“There was one person who didn’t know how to speak English,” says Nguyễn. “He talked about how he knew nothing when he first got here, how he was willing to work the lowest paid job. I am impressed by the way he took initiative. He failed sometimes, but survived. I think that that’s a common thing that was shared between a lot of Vietnamese people coming from the war. It’s like they had to survive a lot of things. They just followed different paths. In the end, I just admire the determination.”
The Vietnamese Portland project grew out of a desire by Watzek collections staff to broaden the stories of people told both within the library’s collections and in Oregon more generally, says Maughan who is the archive’s project manager.
“We had the resources and knowledge at our disposal to get the grant funding that kicked off the project,” says Maughan. “We recognized that there was a major need for Portland’s greater history to reflect the impact of the Vietnamese population.”
Maughan and her colleagues are sensitive to the fact that the history belongs to the Vietnamese community. They always work in close collaboration with community partners, such as Vietnamese Community of Oregon, Asian and Pacific American Network of Oregon, Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, Vietnamese Senior Association of Oregon, Hội Phụ Huynh, and Vietnamese Cultural Arts Alliance, to ensure that the Vietnamese community of Portland is benefiting from the archive and that the archive is a collaborative project with the community.
As for Hàn, his work on the project and the exhibit continues to be an important part of his educational experience.
“I was born and raised in Vietnam, so all the stories I heard from my parents and my grandparents were just like, ‘Oh, there are a lot of immigrants from Vietnam in the U.S. They escaped after the war.’ And that’s all I knew. I didn’t actually hear their stories … like what they’ve been through, or what their experiences look like. So, it’s just very meaningful for me to work on the project.”
Special Collections and Archives
