ABSTRACT

As the first generation of Vietnamese Americans who grew up in the United States come of age, visual artists like Toi Hoang, a Vietnamese American painter and the 1994 Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award recipient, offer a new range of perspectives on the war, relocation, and Vietnamese American culture. Exposure to these newly recognized artistic contributions to American history will give both my generation—too young to remember the war, knowing it only through obsolete textbooks and Oliver Stone movies—and older American generations who witnessed the atrocities more directly, the opportunity to enrich our understanding of Vietnamese and Vietnamese American experiences. For Vietnamese Americans, Hoang brings a bit of Vietnam’s tortured landscape with him to this new country. His artwork is a remembrance and a renewal.