Self-immolation isn't what it used to be.

This ultimate form of protest became global news in 1963 when the venerable monk Thich Quang Duc set himself ablaze in the middle of Saigon, Vietnam, protesting religious oppression. Doused in gasoline, the monk sat serenely in lotus position and lit a...

Note: I wrote the essay below a decade ago and it was collected in "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." On the occasion of Mother's Day, it is reposted here. My mother suffers from dementia and forgetfulness now, and is growing frail, but her ways remain forever devoted to...

Note: I wrote the essay below almost two decades ago, at the beginning of my life as a writer. It is collected in my first book Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora which won a Pen Award in 2006, and is anthologized widely over the...

Mẹ Việt Nam ơi, Chúng Con Vẫn Còn đây (Oh Mother Vietnam, We Are Still Here)

The lyrics from this sentimental song come back to me once in a while, especially when I think of the Vietnamese Diaspora and its complicated relationship with its homeland. One bitter evening on April...

SAN FRANCISCO -- As the story of the Tsarnaev brothers unfolds -- from asylum, to attempts at assimilation and finally to terrorism -- I hear echoes of another set of brothers from my own country, Vietnam.

On April 4, 1991 three Vietnamese brothers and a friend --...

Vân, Cúc, Trúc, and Trang; Dũng, Dai, Khôi and Phát. In my mother tongue these names carry music, cadence, poetry. They evoke for the listener images of clouds, peonies, bamboo, jade; acts of bravery or wishes for prosperity. In English, alas, they lose all meaning as the inflexible American tongue...

In early April the Associated Press announced that it would no longer use the word "illegal" when referring to undocumented immigrants. The decision has been hailed by immigrant rights groups and others, who say the term is a pejorative that dehumanizes large swaths of the U.S. population, immigrant and native-born...

There's an ongoing joke in China that both captures the long standing competitive nature between Beijing and Shanghai while tying it neatly with the country's number one preoccupation: pollution. "In Beijing you just need to open your window, inhale and you'll get the equivalent of having smoked three cigarettes," a...

In Vietnam there's new horde of consumers with dispensable income and a penchant for luxury goods and real estates overseas. Small but growing in number, they follow the footstep of their Chinese predecessors to travel the world as shop-til-you-drop-tourists. They have Gucci, Shiseido, Nokia and ipods, and some with luxury...

Almost 4 decades ago, fresh from the refugee camp of Vietnam, I was first made acutely aware of my own Asian looks by a schoolyard bully in my junior high in Colma, California. He pulled the sides of his eyes back to make them look slanted and sang the well-known...

Two years ago the Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami devastated the region, seriously damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant, sending radiated fumes into the air and leaking radiation into the waters. Nearly 16,000 people were killed by the earthquake and tidal waves, and 2,600 others were missing.

In Japan's most popular cultural genres known as manga (comic books) and anime (animation films and series), there's a recurrent theme in which the country is routinely devastated. Tokyo, home to more than 30 million people, is destroyed so often in the Japanese collective imagination there's an alternative version of...

EDITOR'S NOTE: New America Media editor Andrew Lam has made his name as a journalist, but in his newest book, his past as a Vietnamese refugee reverberates through short stories about characters who fled Vietnam and made new lives in the Bay Area. NAM reporter Anna Challet spoke...

A meteor estimated to be 10 tons by NASA exploded Friday morning over Russia's Ural region and its shockwave caused injuries to over 1,000 people. It took out windows and walls in the city of Chelyabinsk. And it temporarily shifted the conversation here on earth to talks of the heavens....

Nearing the end of her life and plagued with senility, my grandmother fell into a strange state of grace. At 95, she believed herself a young woman again living in her hometown in the Mekong Delta. One day when I visited her in her convalescent home in San Jose, California,...

What do you do when you graduate from Berkeley with a broken heart and a B.A. in biochemistry? You break your immigrant parents' hearts and become a writer.

In my freshman year at Berkeley I fell hopelessly in love; in the year after I graduated my heart shattered. While working...

Born in the Mekong Delta in 1932 to a wealthy land-owning family, Thi Quang Lam spent 25 years in the army and rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the Republic of Vietnam by the time the Vietnam War ended. In Vietnam, he obtained a French baccalaureate...

SAN FRANCISCO--"Dear Mr. Lam. I loved your essay, 'The Palmist,' but I can't figure out what the main theme is. Is it dying and being all alone? My teacher suggests I read more of your writing... I'm glad I found you online.... Thank you very much for your help."

The...

One summer afternoon many years ago, I stole home and robbed my parents of their American Dream. I wasn't going to be a doctor, after all. I was going to study creative writing.

When they heard the news, it was as if all the air had been sucked out of...

Vietnam, a police state where freedom of expression can come with a multi-year prison term, is awash in cell phones. Whether for talking, texting or taking photos, Vietnamese are buying up mobile devices at a rate exceeding the country's own population.

A sign of the communist nation's...