Title: Rebuilding Community and Creating Voice and Rebuilding: The New Orleans Vietnamese East Village
Author: Zoe Morris
Affiliation: Louisiana State University
Abstract: The 2006 hurricanes exemplified the exclusion of non-Black and non-white communities from New Orleans’ dialogue. Understanding the perceptions and actions the Vietnamese-American community made before, during and after the hurricane clarifies the renewed voice the East Village has created within itself and for itself.
In Spring 2005 I began my interaction with the New Orleans East Village, a predominately ethnic Vietnamese community. My initial research examined the specific role Vietnamese American college aged young leaders played within their community as generational liaisons and on their campus as cultural brokers.
Post-Katrina, rebuilding the East Village has gone beyond returning the neighborhood to its former state but recreating it as the first "Viet Town" in the United States. This recovery has centered around the Church, but with aid and vision of the young leaders who add both depth and breadth to definitions of community.
The community has experienced the tragedy of all New Orleans, however their particular devastation has been exasperated by the approval of a landfill less than a mile and half from the East Village homes.
Creating a voice and dialogue within the East Village and with New Orleans has been a priority for many Vietnamese-American residents. Post-Katrina this has shifted from a desire to be an accepted and deserving member of New Orleans discourse, to an imperative to be recognized as a destroyed and displaced community actively recovering and reinventing their East Village homes.