Do Dinh Tuan collection of Vietnamese periodicals, 1975-1990

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Summary

Creators:

Đõ, Đình Tuân

Abstract:

Extent:

1.2 Linear Feet (2 boxes)

Language:

Vietnamese .

Preferred citation:

Do Dinh Tuan collection of Vietnamese periodicals. MS-SEA029. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Date accessed.

For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information about sources consulted in this collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder descriptions, and box/folder locations.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection comprises periodicals collected by Do Dinh Tuan and published outside of Vietnam in the Vietnamese language. Do collected a broad spectrum of titles that document the concerns and interests of the Vietnamese emigrant community following the collapse of South Vietnam in 1976. As a whole, the periodicals reflect the challenges refugees faced as they built new lives for themselves outside of Vietnam and their lingering concerns for the land and people they left behind. The periodicals address diverse topics such as resettlement, human rights activities, religion, politics, cultural issues, and current events. The periodicals were primarily published in California, but also include titles from the greater United States and Canada, and a few titles from Australia and France.

Issues from earlier years focus on topics such as learning English, adjusting to a new host country, and political opinions regarding the situation in Vietnam, while later years include specialized periodicals devoted entirely to poetry, science, fitness, sports, women's issues, and Christianity. Although the text of the majority of the periodicals is exclusively in Vietnamese, bilingual advertisements appear throughout the periodicals and trace the changing economy and lifestyles of the community. For example, early issues contain ads for items that fulfill basics needs, such as Asian food markets and medical services, while later years contain ads for real estate, music lessons, jewelry, and cosmetic surgery.

Do often collected special issues of the periodicals, including those published for the New Year (Tet) and those that commemorate the anniversaries of the publications. Although Do generally collected one representative issue of a title for a given year, he occasionally kept more than one issue of the same title from the same year.

Biographical / historical:

Since 1982, Do Dinh Tuan has owned and managed Van Khoa Books, a Vietnamese language bookstore located in the Asian Gardens Mall in Westminster, California. The store sells books on topics of interest to the Vietnamese American community, such as English as a Second Language (ESL) books, English and Vietnamese dictionaries, books about the Vietnam War, and translated novels.

Do came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 and subsequently worked in refugee services and education. He founded and served as chairman of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County, Inc., and has taught ESL classes at several community colleges throughout Orange County. Prior to 1975, Do studied Vietnamese culture and linguistics at the University of Saigon. He attended graduate school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he received Masters of Arts degrees in linguistics and in English language and literature. Do also did postgraduate work in English phonetics at London University from 1970 to 1971. He has also worked as a simultaneous translator for international conferences and seminars.

Acquisition information:

Gift of Do Dinh Tuan, 2004.

Processing information:

Processed by Julia Stringfellow, 2005. Translation services provided by Nguyen Dat, 2005. Processing was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant. Finding aid updated and encoded by Cyndi Shein, 2007. While the printed finding aid contains Vietnamese language characters, the diacritics have been omitted from the characters in the electronic version to facilitate online display and searching.

Arrangement:

This collection is arranged chronologically, then alphabetically by title.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:: Vietnamese -- Periodicals.
Vietnamese Americans -- Archives
Vietnamese Americans -- Periodicals.
Refugees -- Vietnam -- Periodicals.
Refugees -- United States -- Periodicals.
Periodicals -- 20th century.

Access and use

Restrictions:: The collection is open for research.
Terms of access:: Property rights reside with the University of California. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permissions to reproduce or to publish, please contact the Southeast Asian Archive Librarian.