The Virgin Mary With an Asian Face: Religion and Race in the Lives of Vietnamese Catholic Refugees
Thien-Huong T. Ninh

Invitation to Colloquium Series "Global Migration as the New Social Question"
Sociology of Transnationalization, Development and Migration
Wednesday, May 24, 16-18 c.t.
Room: X-C3-107

Since the end of the American war in Vietnam in 1975, Vietnamese Catholic refugees have been scattered throughout the world. They have the largest concentration in the U.S. Despite two decades of isolation from their homeland before 1995 – when the U.S. normalized relations with Vietnam – Vietnamese Catholic refugees in the U.S. continued to worship Our Lady of Lavang (an apparition of the Virgin Mary who appeared in Lavang, Vietnam in 1978).

Immediately three years after the normalization of relations, they transformed the European depiction of Our Lady of Lavang into a Vietnamese woman and exported this new image to co-religionists Vietnam and other parts of the world. This presentation examines the implications of her ethnic transformation for theorizing the intersectionality of religion, race and migration, particularly within the lives of refugees.

Thien-Huong T. Ninh is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, CA. Her publications and research interests are in the areas of Religion, Critical Refugee Studies, Gender, and Race. Her forthcoming publications include Race, Gender, and Religion in the Diaspora: Ethnic Vietnamese in the U.S. and Cambodia (Palgrave) and a co-edited journal issue on “Globalizing Vietnamese Religions” (University of California Press).