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Southeast Asia
Organized Panel Session
This paper explores the ethnoreligious characteristics of the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement (VEYM, or Thiếu Nhi Thánh Thể in Vietnamese) among the first and second generations of Vietnamese American Catholics. With origins in Europe and colonial Indochina, VEYM was the most popular Catholic youth organization in South Vietnam before 1975. After the Vietnam War, Catholic refugees and immigrants successfully replicated this organization in the U.S., and it has 132 chapters and approximately 23,000 active members today.
From research and interviews with VEYM adult youth leaders in San Diego and San Jose, I argue that this transnational and ethnoreligious organization offers a window to understand the experiences of Vietnamese Catholic communities in the United States. As part of the 1.5 and second generations of Vietnamese immigrants, the youth leaders were trained to combine ethnic identity and cultural memory to Catholic doctrines when guiding younger members on how to navigate the complexities of American society. My research expands upon Peter Phan’s scholarship, especially his argument that Vietnamese American Catholics have occupied a distinct “betwixt-and-between” position within both the American Catholic Church and the Vietnamese Church. I will analyze VEYM as a transnational space where Vietnamese American Catholics can cultivate relationships among their co-ethnics, build their religious faith as part of their identity in America, and learn about the sacrifices made by the earlier generations of Vietnamese Catholics.
Ngoc-Mai Phan
University of California, Berkeley