Table of Contents

Introduction: Private Desires on Public Display
1. Assimilation and Ambivalence: Legacies of U.S. Military Intervention
2. Vietnamese by Other Means: The Overlapping Diasporas of Little Saigon
3. Pageantry and Nostalgia: Beauty Contests and the Gendered Homeland
4. Consuming Transcendent Media: Videos, Variety Shows, and the New Middle Class
Conclusion: Transnational Flows between the Diaspora and the Homeland
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

About the Author

Nhi T. Lieu is assistant professor of American studies, Asian American studies, and women’s and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reviews

"Nhi T. Lieu insightfully demonstrates how important popular culture is to the self-fasionioning of Vietnamese Americans. Her groundbreaking book validates what many Vietnamese Americans demonstrate in their everyday lives: that the pursuit of leisure and the rituals of entertainment are as crucial to community formation as political advancement and economic empowerment." —Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America