A Vietnamese Artist’s Call for Unity, Tolerance and Understanding

Brian Doan, 40, was born August 22nd 1968 towards the end of the Tet Offensive in the Central Vietnam city of Quang Ngai. The Tet Offensive was a turning point in Vietnamese history as it marked the end of the war and the beginning of what would be a new kind of struggle for an entire generation of war-weary South Vietnamese refugees. Doan and his family, however, remained in Vietnam while his father suffered through ten brutal years in a Communist reeducation camp. Their struggle was one of trying to cope with living under a regime that regarded them as second-class citizens.

Since 1963, his father was stationed in Quang Ngai during the war as a security officer with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). When the war ended in 1975, he and his family moved to Saigon while his father was serving time in the camp. Not more than a few years after they settled, they were forced to return to Central Vietnam into a “new economic zone.” Families that were of the former South Vietnam middle and upper class were sent there to work as farmers.

Not content with their situation, the Doan’s escaped towards the South again, migrating from city to city, town to town until they finally settled in Long Khanh—a small, developing community of Catholic Vietnamese about 100 kilometers outside of Saigon, known by then as Hồ Chí Minh City. This is how Brian remembers his childhood in Vietnam—always being on the move and never having a permanent home.

These days, Brian lives in an upscale Long Beach, California neighborhood with his wife and two children. Between being an associate professor at Long Beach Community College, he is an internationally exhibited photographer who has built a reputation as a controversial and provocative artist within the California Vietnamese community.

His photograph in the recent group exhibition F.O.B. II: Art Speaks at VALAA Center in Santa Ana sparked fierce protests from local anti-Communist Vietnamese and eventually lead to the city ordering the closure of the exhibition.

Thu Duc, Vietnam, the title of the photograph at the center of the controversy, depicts a Vietnamese woman wearing the yellow star of the Vietnamese communist flag. Next to her is a bronze statue of Hồ Chí Minh, founding leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and a despised figure within the Little Saigon community.

These two images have the potential to incite a fiery rage of protest in the local community as was demonstrated in the massive fifty-three days of protests against Truong Van Tran, then-owner of Hi Tek video rental. Tran defiantly displayed the Communist flag of Vietnam and posters of Hồ Chí Minh in his store saying that by doing this he was encouraging a freer Vietnam by showing the freedoms that existed in the United States.

Brian, on the other hand, did not share the same intention as Tran in making and exhibiting his controversial photograph. His was a personal observation and interpretation of the sentiment of young Vietnamese people living in a rapidly developing Communist country. In fact, he was more interested in exploring the similarities between people in this globalized world rather than exposing the differences.

Despite accusations of being a Communist sympathizer, Brian is not. At the same time, he isn’t on the side of the anti-Communists either. In his words he’s “…just an artist.”

With that said, what defines the work of an artist is usually their life experience and what they draw from that experience. This crucial aspect is the one thing that was missing from the opposing disputes playing out in the media. Telling his story might have helped to avoid this whole fiasco and brought about much needed understanding.

[The following is a Question & Answer session led by Wayne Huang]

Question: What was growing up in Vietnam like on a day-to-day basis?

Brian Doan: It was pretty hard. I mostly remember that we didn’t have anything to eat. When we arrived in Long Khanh around the mid 80’s, it was kind of a jungle area. It was remote and away from any civilized condition. When we arrived, we were still young and afraid of many things. It rained a lot, we were surrounded by trees, and kids didn’t have clothes, but we were able to live peacefully for a couple of years because we didn’t have any harassment. We lived poorly, but we weren’t harassed by the government like we were in Central Vietnam. Central Vietnam was where most Communists were based. More towards the South, people were more relaxed. There were fewer Communists. It was tough, but we survived day-by-day.

Q: Out there in the jungle area, was there a big community?

BD: It was a small Catholic community. My mom decided to live in a Catholic community because at least they could protect us. They really helped us when we didn’t have our father around. My big brother tried to escape Vietnam many times and spent time in a reeducation camp as well. My mom was a vendor selling used clothes on the streets town-to-town so she wasn’t home mostly. My sister, who was 17-years old at the time, had to take care of the five of us [siblings]. I remember I learned quickly how to trap animals and hunt. That’s all the meat we could gather for meals. We didn’t have rice to eat. We ate mostly corn. Things got better when two of my brothers separately escaped Vietnam to Japan in ’79. We got some money from one when he was living in the Philippines in a refugee camp. He was able to send us money to buy food.

Q: In your interview with Richard Chang of the OC Register, you said of the woman in Thu Duc, “she lives in the Communist country, but look at her. She’s looking away, dreaming. She wants to escape Vietnam. Hồ Chí Minh is next to her, but Communism is no longer in her.” How much of this has to do with your own feelings of living in Vietnam?

BD: I went back to Vietnam four times. The first time was in ’98, second in 2001, 2004, and last year 2008. I’ve seen Vietnam change like China or other countries around in the last 10 years. I think it’s due to the way the economy has gone. It’s not like the time we lived there. Now people are able to have an education, dress nice, or start a business. You see some rich people with Mercedes Benz’s, you see new houses, luxury hotels, cafes, internet cafes. You go there and you’re surprised people pay $10 for a meal. I mean, it’s more expensive than it is here. I see now young people working for banks or foreign companies, trying to get scholarships to travel and study in some country. There are a lot of tourists too, a lot of Westerners in Hanoi and Saigon. It’s funny, now there’s a luxury town outside of Saigon. Only Taiwanese, Chinese, and Koreans live there. My friend and I was there visiting, taking pictures and my friend says, “Hey Brian, you feel like we’re walking in Brooklyn, New York?” There was a Louis Vuitton store, Mercedes Benz’s, BMW’s, Hummers lining the street, sushi restaurants. My friend and I were like, “Wow.”

Q: Twenty years ago, this was non-existent?

BD: Before it was just empty. Now there are skyscrapers and the people…all foreigners. It’s funny that there are no Vietnamese there. There are some Vietnamese working there, but it’s mostly foreigners working in Vietnam who live there.

Q: When you say “…Communism is no longer in her,” is this the popular sentiment of people there today?

BD: Of course Communists still control the government and society, but the Vietnamese population is like 80 million people now and the Communists are only maybe 3 million members? Most Vietnamese want to move forward. Young people have no idea who Hồ Chí Minh is or know about Communism. They are more interested in getting an education, moving forward. Also I see more consumerism. They want to have Japanese cars, motorcycles, nice watches, nice clothes, and hang out in clubs. That’s all they care about. I’ve asked them, “You think about freedom?” “…about the Communists?” They avoid the question. They say “No.” They accept where they are.

Q: When you say they want to escape, you don’t mean they literally want to escape Vietnam?

BD: No, no, most of them want to go to the U.S. to study. Before they could go to Russia or China or Korea for college, but the majority of students want to go to the U.S. and study there. If they’re lucky, they’ll marry someone and get a job and never go back. In my time there, we had to join Communist youth groups. They organized people and you had to be a member of a group to be able to socialize in school. They really controlled you and you had to be loyal to the government, to Hồ Chí Minh, but now you don’t have to do that. People had to join those kinds of organizations to be able to get a job from the government.

Q: Nowadays, it kind of resembles a capitalist society, right?

BD: Exactly. If you speak English and your GPA is high, a foreign company will hire you then. Before, if you had a Communist member in the family, you get a job. Now with foreign companies they hire people with quality, not background.

Q: Now going back a little bit, you said you tried to escape Vietnam and you were imprisoned two times.

BD: I tried to escape Vietnam 11 times with my family. The first time I got caught was in ’78 at 10 years old. My brother and I spent like two and a half months in prison. The second time I got caught was in ’86…no ’83 or ’85…I don’t remember. I got seven months.

Q: How did the authorities treat you when they caught you?

BD: Horrible. They mostly allowed Vietnamese to try to escape Vietnam. They typically put us in a small cell. I remember when I got caught in Central Vietnam there were 98 people in a small room. We didn’t have enough space to live. People were layered up like sardines.

Q: Were you trying to go by boat or trying to cross the border?

BD: By boat. The border patrol saw our boat sinking. They sent us to prison. By that time, I was about 15 or 16 years old. I denied my background because I was afraid if I told them my real background, my father would have problems. He had already been released from the reeducation camp and I was afraid they would harm him some way. I gave them my fake I.D. so they wouldn’t be able to track down my address. They tried to investigate who I was, what my real name was, stuff like that so I was kept a long time.

Q: Were you with your siblings or by yourself?

BD: My sister and my dad got caught.

Q: Is your whole family in the U.S. right now?

BD: Yes.

Q: How did you eventually get here?

BD: In 1991, my father applied for a program for political refugees. We came here at the end of ’91, three days before Christmas.

Q: You came here more than a decade later than the original Boat People, who mostly settled in Little Saigon as you know. You came here for the same reasons, but the circumstances in which they came were different than the circumstances in which you came. How does this disparity affect how you relate to the community and their concerns?

BD: We first landed in San Francisco, and then we went to live in San Jose for a while. My brother flew from Japan to visit us. We had friends here. One was a friend of my dad who was able to escape in ’75. We are different, I have to say. They spoke differently, they were more successful, and they looked good.

They did not treat us very well. They would say, “You have to do this or that,” “If you don’t speak English, you’re in trouble. You’ll just end up washing dishes in restaurants.” I said, “No, I want to go to college.” They would say, “No, forget about college, go and wash dishes.”

Six months we lived in San Jose and then we decided to move to Little Saigon. My cousin thought we could find help in a bigger community. A couple of my father’s former army subordinates had successful businesses so I had opportunities for work, but I ended up not working for them. First, they didn’t want to hire me, because how would they treat me? It was better for them to hire Mexicans so they could do whatever with them, but hiring me meant they had to watch out for my dad because my dad was their boss before. So I couldn’t find a job through my father or with Vietnamese who came here before me because I think they didn’t know how to treat me or my brother. They couldn’t treat us badly because we didn’t have strength like Mexicans to carry boxes around. We were skinny and just came from Vietnam so we could not work as much as Mexican workers.

Secondly, they couldn’t treat us badly because of my father. They knew him. So we couldn’t find a job. It’s weird that they kept saying, “You have to work this and that and forget about school.” They gave us a bunch of advice, but it wasn’t really helpful. Even with my own brother, it’s kind of different. He would say, “We came here when there were no Vietnamese at all, we worked hard, went to school, and now you guys are lucky. Now with Little Saigon, you’re able to have Vietnamese food.”

But you know when they came, the system provided welfare with help from the Carter administration. Vietnamese people could get support from the government. By the time we came, we only had six months of welfare to better our English, to find work. Not a lot of time. The people who came here first really looked down upon us.

Q: How did you feel about that?

BD: Kind of small. Not to say that I hate them, but I felt they shouldn’t have treated us like that or talk like that to us. Once I was at a party that my father’s friend invited us to. He had a big house. Pointing at me, he said to his son, “You remember this guy? He used to be in kindergarten with you.” Now he was a doctor, owned a business. His son said “Yeah…yeah,” but he barely remembered. How could he remember when we were kids, 5 or 6 years old? He spoke English. Of course, I didn’t speak English at all. His girlfriend was Caucasian and he was dressed in a suit. I didn’t have clothes. We just came from Vietnam. I really must have looked like a monkey to them. They tried to be nice, but I thought, “Please, at least talk to me in Vietnamese.” They kept talking to me in English and I didn’t understand, then his father said, “You know…now he owns three houses.” I just felt like, “Is it really necessary to tell me that?” It was just intimidating to see how successful they were. We just got here, new, cold, and looking horrible.

Q: Were you the first in your family to go to college?

BD: No, two of my brothers who escaped to Japan have a degree. In the United States, I’m the only one to go to college.

Q: How did you become interested in photography?

BD: When I came here, I dreamed of being a writer like Hemingway, but I figured out that it was too late to become fluent in English. I came here when I was 23 or 24-years old and was working a lot and going to school part-time. I liked to draw. I took some art classes; I loved painting, then I found a passion for photography with some encouragement from Jerry Burchfield at Cypress College. I was working on several projects and Jerry said, “Brian, I think you should go for photography instead of computer science.” I took computer science like all Vietnamese guys, but then I asked myself, “Do I really want to do computer science? I think I like photography.” My mom, dad, and sister all went nuts. They asked, “What are you going to do with photography?” At that time, to an Asian family, engineering was a career. Photography or art was something fun, but not a career. I really drove them nuts. They kept trying to call me to talk about it, but I’m stimg_8228ubborn. If there’s something I want to do, I’ll do it.

Q: What does Thu Duc mean?

BD: Just a location where I took the photograph. It’s in the outskirts of Hồ Chí Minh City.

Q: Tell me about the subject in the photograph. Who is she?

BD: Last year when I was in Vietnam I hung out in coffee shops. I met couples and individuals at the shop. I just approached them and said I was working on a project and if they’d be able to pose for me. Some of them said yes some of them, no. So that girl is one of the people I met. I don’t remember her name. Maybe she gave me a fake name or something, but I just made an appointment and shot her.

Q: Out of your series of portraits of Vietnamese people, this one strikes me as the most overtly political. What was going on in your life or what feelings did you have at the time that resulted in the idea for the photograph?

BD: I got the idea before 2008. I collected a lot of things about Communists and things from the Vietnam War and I wanted to do something with that. Two-thousand eight was the first time I was able to go back to Vietnam as a scholar or a photographer, to observe and look at things in a mature way, not like a student. Sitting in the coffee shop interviewing people, I saw a lot of things were different. Now, when I see the Communists, I no longer hate them. I don’t like them, but my hatred is gone.

The people here, they keep that hatred inside. Some want to kill them. It’s time to stop hating. Both sides have been doing wrong, but we should talk. The younger generation like the girl in the photo is my message. She’s in a Communist country. The things she wears may be Communist, the things next to her may be Communist, but she’s not a Communist.

I wanted to show something political, but I also wanted to show that the sad thing about Vietnam is that it is divided in two parts, North and South. Like North and South Korea. The North was supported by the Chinese and Russians; the South was supported by Australia, U.S., and the free world. We were fighting with AK-47’s and M16’s. None were made by Vietnamese. Both were given to the Vietnamese to fight each other.

So why do we keep fighting? The war is over. The Communists won. The South Vietnamese in Little Saigon lost and ran away to live here. The yellow flag to me has no meaning. I didn’t grow up with that yellow flag with three stripes. No, I grew up with a Communist flag. We have to accept the reality that 80 million Vietnamese live in Vietnam and that some of them like the Communists, some of them don’t. We have to ask the question, “Why are brothers fighting brothers?” That was my point.

In my series about Vietnamese people, most of the pictures are weird…like me. I’ll never be normal. How could I be normal growing up in society that treated me like a second-class citizen? I could never be psychologically normal like people who grew up here. I think most Vietnamese are somewhat psychotic. In many Vietnamese families there is always a conflict between father and son, wife and husband and we somehow isolate ourselves in different corners. I don’t know why. I wanted to show that in my series.

Q: What do you want your critics to understand about you?

BD: I hope they accept me as who I am, respect different voices from a younger generation and different political views. Asking people to understand me is hard. We are multicultural here, a salad bowl. That’s what’s beautiful about the U.S. I understand the Vietnamese here escaped from the war. They’re not really into art. Most want to talk about politics and how to overturn the Communist regime. They came to the F.O.B. exhibition to look for something to protest. We had a beautiful gallery about gay, lesbian Vietnamese. We had different rooms with wonderful work from artists much more talented than me. I was nobody there, but they just targeted me because of the red flag. That blinded them to the whole exhibition. I asked for them to tolerate, to look at the other works as well. Look at the issues the young generation is dealing with such as being gay, identity issues.

It’s not about politics, Communists, a red flag or a yellow flag. Don’t show me a red or yellow flag and tell me to accept one. My flag is the United States flag. People called me a traitor. I didn’t get money from the South Vietnam government; they didn’t pay me to fight the Communists. How can they call me a traitor? I grew up a Communist. Nobody can call me a traitor because I escaped them, and South Vietnam…I didn’t grow up with that government. They got money from the U.S. government to fight the Communists, not me. They lost the war, not me. I’m just a victim. I mean, be able to accept the generation that wants to forget and move on, be able to accept the pain from the North Vietnamese too. I’m just an artist that wants to speak my views on the issue on [which] we’ve been divided.