Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN)

The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN)s primary mission is to promote voices and stories of the Vietnamese diaspora through nurturing writers, poets and artists, and connecting their work to readers, audience, and diasporic communities all over the globe. DVAN began in 2007 due to the recognition that Vietnamese Americans, compared to other Asian Americans, were underrepresented in both academia and popular culture. At the time we originated, less than 50 books and short story collections by and about Vietnamese Americans had been published by nationally recognized publishers. Today that number is higher, but there is still a need for a much broader, more diverse range of stories by and about Vietnamese diasporic writers and artists to be circulating. Vietnamese diasporic filmmakers and visual artists are similarly underrepresented. Such selective publishing, film and art world practices prevent the society at large from understanding the complex experiences, history and ...