With a series of detective novels set in 17th century Dai-Viet that showcase the traditions, beliefs and customs of an exotic culture, in which the food and food habits of the Vietnamese people play a prominent role, Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut, an engineer-turned-novelist of Vietnamese origins, has carved a niche for herself in the popular crime fiction market in France. This paper focuses on the novel Les Travers du Docteur Porc, in which Doctor Porc, forensic investigator and gourmand extraordinaire, adopts the mantle of chief detective from Tran-Nhut’s usual protagonist, the loyal mandarin Tan. In this movement, we argue, the author has shaped two different but complementary approaches to her birth-country’s turbulent past that coalesce in the gargantuan figure of the (politically unencumbered) doctor and connoisseur of Vietnamese cuisine. Whereas the process of ‘solving the crime’ can be read as an attempt to seek answers and restore order in the wake of senseless bloodshed, it is food, we contend, that emerges, not only as a source of pleasure, succour and stability, but as a cultural heritage that war and upheaval failed to destroy.

This essay focuses on the work of the New Caledonian-born writer Jean Vanmai. His first two novels, Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang, describe the working conditions and exilic existence of the little known Chan Dang, the voluntary workers from Tonkin (North Vietnam) who moved to New Caledonia many decades ago. Descended himself from a Chan Dang family, Vanmai wishes to preserve the memory of the Chan DangDang’s past. In writing the story of the Chan Dang, Vanmai sees himself as the guardian of the Chan Dang’s collective memory, a keeper and defender of their common past. The paper argues that Vanmai's depictions of the Chan Dang have two important effects. First, by sharing with other Vietnamese migrants/refugees the life and experiences of the Tonkinese voluntary workers in New Caledonia, Vanmai breaks the silence surrounding colonial exile and exploitation and provides a full account of the Chan Dang’s exile that can be integrated into the contemporary history of Vietnamese migration. Second, by using different narrative resolutions for each of his protagonists, Vanmai stresses the need to fulfil one’s filial duty among the young Vietnamese generations. With this symbolic filial act, Vanmai pays homage to his Vietnamese ancestors and earns himself a honourable title, that of a true dutiful "son of Chan Dang".

This article addresses representations of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City in four films made since d -ô i mo i, the opening up of Vietnam to western influences, initiated in 1986. The Lover/L'Amant (1992) is a Franco-British heritage film which reconstructs the city from a Eurocentric neocolonial perspective, while Cyclo/Xích lô (1995), a French-funded film made by a France-based Vietnamese filmmaker, is a contemporary poetic thriller which treats the city expressively as the site of present-day corruption and violence. The nostalgia evident in these two 'outsider' films is contrasted with the more complex views of the city in two state-funded low-budget 'insider' films by local Vietnamese filmmakers, Collective Flat/Chung cu (1999) and Bargirls/Gái nhay (2003); the first, an intellectual fable set in the decade or so following reunification/Independence in 1975 which recalls an attempt at collective living, the second, a hugely popular treatment of contemporary urban realities, both corrupt and progressive. Examining how the mise-en-scène and narratives of the city differ from film to film, the essay takes the representation of the city through changing historical, political, social and economic times, from colonial-orientalist Saigon to corrupt, capitalist Ho Chi Minh City via the slow degeneration of the postwar socialist/collectivist experiment. In so doing, it confirms the importance of the films' moments and contexts of production in the construction of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City as a cinematic 'city-text'.

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In this article we argue that a cohort of French, Canadian, and Australian authors of Vietnamese descent are adapting postmemory narratives to fit the purposes of the 1.5 generation. Linda Lê, Kim Thúy, and Nam Le each displace the Vietnam War to reimagine in its stead, for the first time in Vietnamese diasporic writing, the trauma of the refugee boat journey. Breaking the silence of parents wont to forget, in short fiction they narrativize shared accounts of flight by sea that have until this time remained the domain of autobiography and memoir. Through a process of spectral recuperation, these children of survivors employ the figure of the child to tell the event of their own refugee becoming. Former child refugees recently come of writerly age across a multilingual global diaspora are thus reappropriating an in-between generation’s collective postmemory to form what we call the sub-genre of “the boat narrative.”