Exile on the Commercial Strip: Vietnam War Memorials in Little Saigon and the Politics of Commemoration

"The completion of a memorial by the largest Vietnamese community in the United States challenged the existing discourse on Vietnam War commemoration. As the first officially designated Little Saigon, a term that broadly refers to an overseas Vietnamese community but in this case specifies a tourist and redevelopment zone, Westminster’s Little Saigon is considered the capital of the South Vietnamese diaspora. Prominent members of the Little Saigon business and political community initially envisioned a memorial that contrasted sharply with American and Vietnamese narratives of the war that marginalized the contributions of South Vietnamese veterans. Dedicated in 2003, it is the product of nearly thirty years of predominantly suburban community formation by Vietnamese in the United States. Two years later, a second memorial funded by Vietnamese Americans was installed in a shopping center’s parking lot in southwestern Houston."

Allen-Kim, Erica  “Exile on the Commercial Strip: Vietnam War Memorials in Little Saigon and the Politics of Commemoration,” Buildings and Landscapes Vol 21, No 2 (2014), 31-56.