Fields of Dreams: Place, Race, and Memory in Boston's Vietnamese American Community..

Karin Aguilar-San Juan, Macalester College

Abstract

In this article I explain how and why Boston's Vietnamese American story deserves its own telling. Boston's urban landscape presents particular challenges to community-building that require tailor-made strategies on the part of community leaders. They are dealing with Boston's challenges by creating a place that is distinct from Chinatown and laden with its own claims to the past and visions of the future. Seeking to understand the complex relationship between place, race, and memory in the community-building process, I have interviewed most of the community's English-speaking movers and shakers since 1994.