Meet Thuy Vo Dang | Oral Historian and Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Thuy Vo Dang and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Thuy, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
While hard to pinpoint just one factor contributing to my success as an educator and oral historian, I consider ‘community’ to be the essential ingredient. No one does any of this alone. I have been able to build a strong personal network of friends who uplift me and give me the necessary reality checks. When I am in their company, I usually feel creative and energetic. Relationships with friends, colleagues, students I mentor, and my family fuel my sense of justice and drive my work to build archives for those whose histories are erased, distorted, or missing.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am a professor of Information Studies at UCLA. I just wrapped up my first year and was recognized last month by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center with the 2022-2023 C. Doris and Toshio Hoshide Distinguished Teaching Prize! [https://www.aasc.ucla.edu/news/hoshide2023.aspx] At UCLA I teach and mentor masters and Ph.D. students in the Library and Information Science field and conduct research and public service towards creating more just and equitable historical records. I am also an oral historian. For 20 years, I have been practicing oral history research, mainly focused on interviewing refugees from Vietnam. I was a child refugee from Vietnam and came to the United States with my very large family by boat in the 1980s. In many ways, the professional work I do in higher education is a way to honor my parents and my resilient refugee community. The work reflects my passion and commitment to centering marginalized voices.

Before coming to UCLA in 2022, I was the Curator of the UC Irvine Southeast Asian Archive and before that I designed and implemented an oral history project on Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. Today this repository is the largest publicly accessible collection of life stories of Vietnamese Americans. I am most proud of this work because it enabled me to build community around storytelling and intergenerational healing, especially relevant in Orange County where we have the largest population of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam. This is where I am making a home for myself, my partner, and our three children. I think that “home” and “community” are two really important ideas that give me purpose and fulfillment.

Were there challenges you faced in your life and how did you overcome them?
How did a refugee kid who didn’t speak English when she arrived in America become a professor? It wasn’t just the language barrier that led to challenges in my youth. My family came from the Mekong Delta, the “deep south” of Vietnam. My parents had little formal education. I am number six in a family of nine children. I was the first to go to college; the only one to go after a Ph.D. My family couldn’t offer me any roadmaps and, like many other refugee families I know, they didn’t offer encouragement either. Through years of research and oral history work, I now understand that many of these challenges are a result of war, displacement, cultural norms, economic hardships–not because my family did not love me. My childhood was hard, but I also had the good fortune of being surrounded by compassionate and kind teachers. My 3rd grade teacher was the first real role model I had of an educator who led with compassion and love. She saw in me a writer when I did not have the confidence or skills to communicate in English. Throughout that year and in the years after, we remained close. I got into Scripps, a private liberal arts women’s college, on a full scholarship to major in English. And that was when my horizon expanded. I could start to imagine a future in academia for myself through engaging with professors and friends from all different walks of life. I learned to become an advocate for myself and my community in the safe confines of the college campus.

When I moved to San Diego to pursue my Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies, I faced a different kind of challenge–the loneliness of academia sometimes felt overwhelming. And I also struggled with imposter syndrome, although we did not have the same vocabulary to describe it back then. To overcome these challenges, I strengthened friendships and extended my care to those who would care for me as well. I built community. As I developed a research agenda that would lead me to oral history, I leaned into my mentors at UC San Diego for guidance, elders in the Vietnamese community for their wisdom and nourishing food, and my partner who I married during those tumultuous years of grad school. To sustain myself in this work, I think about what makes a place a “home” and I do what feels like the right thing to do: surround myself with people who bring light and joy.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If I could take a friend around LA, we’d do the things I love doing all the time: walk, eat, explore. We would start in the early morning with a beach walk–one of the best beach walks is Malibu’s El Matador State Beach. After over an hour of walking and talking, we can drive down PCH and go to Tartine in Santa Monica for a leisurely brunch. The pastries at Tartine are devine!

Because LA traffic must be factored into any plans around the city, we’d stay put on the westside and explore some of the coolest parts of UCLA–the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, Fowler Museum, and Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden. Walking around the campus will work up our appetites for a treat, so we will pop into Westwood Village and grab some cookies at Diddy Riese or ice cream at Saffron & Rose.

For dinner on the westside, I would take my friend to Simpang Asia–it might be the best Indonesian food in LA! We would order family style so we can share everything. The mie tek tek, laksa, and fried fish are a must have.

If we have more time, I’d also show my friend one of my favorite areas to spend the day: Little Tokyo. We’d start with a full tummy of udon at Marugame Monzo. Then, we’d check out the exhibits at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). One of my favorite exhibits is The Interactive StoryFile of Lawson Iichiro Sakai. The exhibit uses a new storytelling technology to give visitors a realistic experience of engaging with World War II American veteran–visitors can walk up to Lawson and ask a question and he will respond.

After spending 2+ hours in JANM, we can cross the street to Japanese Village Plaza and explore some more until we get hungry. One of my favorite treats to get there is red bean cakes made fresh at Mitsuru Cafe. We can pair the cakes with a sugar cane coconut drink or boba tea at one of the nearby shops. While I am not as big a fan of anime as my pre-teen son, I can appreciate the eclectic mix of new and vintage shops around Little Tokyo.

If we’re feeling like braving the LA freeways, I’d venture from Little Tokyo to the 626 Night Market to sample the trendiest foods and people watch out in the San Gabriel Valley.

Other spots I love around LA are Cambodia Town in Long Beach for the best Cambodian food in SoCal, The Huntington for the beautiful gardens, catching a show at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, or having a fancy dinner at Crustacean Beverly Hills.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to give a shoutout to my two coauthors, Elaine Lewinnek and Gustavo Arellano. We co-wrote A People’s Guide to Orange County (University of California Press, 2022), a guidebook at centers the stories of groups often left out or misrepresented in mainstream histories of our region. Elaine is a professor at Cal State Fullerton and Gustavo is a journalist with the LA Times. We combined our expertise in archives, history, ethnic studies, journalism, and Orange County to create a “dream team” for this book. Since it came out last year, we’ve been giving talks and tours all over So Cal and the book is now in its second printing. I’ve learned so much from Elaine and Gustavo and I’ve really enjoyed being “on tour” with them this past year!

Website: thuyvodang.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thuy-vo-dang-118102181/

Twitter: @thuyvodang