Culture
But What Even Is an Expat: Unpacking the Highly Contentious Term, in Vietnam and Abroad “Expat is a racist as hell term” — this is the take of Misan Harriman on the popular internet show SubwayTakes. The reasoning goes that the term expat, short for expatriate, is racist because it is applied to migrants unevenly. Along this line, Mawuna Remarque Koutonin writes in Silicon Africa: “Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races.’”
By San Kwon Sep 2, 2026 15 min read
For You edition 10 stories from the archive
Culture But What Even Is an Expat: Unpacking the Highly Contentious Term, in Vietnam and Abroad “Expat is a racist as hell term” — this is the take of Misan Harriman on the popular internet show SubwayTakes. The reasoning goes that the term expat, short for expatriate, is racist because it is applied to migrants unevenly. Along this line, Mawuna Remarque Koutonin writes in Silicon Africa: “Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races.’” By San Kwon · Sep 2, 2026 · 15 min read Music & Arts How Vinahouse Fosters Sonic Belonging in Modern Saigon's Queer Collectives If you spend a night wandering along Bùi Viện Walking Street and its dense concentration of bars and clubs, you will almost certainly hear the same sound spilling from multiple directions: fast, pounding basslines layered with Vietnamese pop melodies, punctuated by dramatic buildups and explosive drops. If you fall into the right algorithm on TikTok, you might encounter these same sounds circulating as background audio. This music is Vinahouse. Its ever-presence in both physical and digital spaces makes it one of the most recognizable yet least critically examined musical forms in contemporary Vietnam. By Đỉnh Nguyễn · Aug 24, 2026 · 9 min read Natural Selection Is the Yeti Vietnamese? This Ancient Ape Might Hold the Answer. Can you name a Vietnamese animal that hasn’t been hunted to the precipice of extinction or become a commodified item whose flesh, fur, or feathers are only deemed significant in relation to their practical use by humans? By Paul Christiansen · Aug 22, 2026 · 8 min read Food Culture What Cooking Bún Chả for My Birthday Abroad Taught Me About Vietnameseness “Hot summer night, mid-July, when you and I were forever wild,” Lana Del Rey croons every July 15 to celebrate my birthday. Those melodramatic words consistently evoke three specific elements in my mind: Heineken or Tiger beer cans on the floor; the sweet smoky smell of bún chả and nem enlaced with the rainy air of a darkening Saigon sky; and my friends and family under the LED-lit roof of an iCool karaoke room. Such pillars uphold what I consider the quintessential Vietnamese birthday experience. By Khuê Anh · Aug 18, 2026 · 8 min read Environment How Overreliance on Pesticides Traps Thai Farmers in a Vicious Circle of Debt As the sun rises over the village of Ban Wichit Pattana in north-east Thailand, 62-year-old Chuchart Srithachum does his morning exercise, walking as best he can on his prosthetic leg along the street outside his home. By Pratch Rujivanarom · Jul 30, 2026 · 13 min read Ton-sur-Ton Great Vietnam Resurrects Nguyễn-Era Fashion, One Traditional Costume at a Time In the last four to five years, ancient Vietnamese costumes have gained more visibility, becoming a welcome sight among young locals thanks to the efforts to reproduce and promote historic fashion from a number of designers, brands, and interest groups that appreciate the country’s history and traditions. By Bảo Hoa · Jul 27, 2026 · 9 min read Saigon From D4's Village Past to Now, History Keeps Wanting to Widen Nguyễn Tất Thành Street A century before today's bulldozers, colonial planners were already wrestling with the same congested waterfront corridor — and the same promises of transformation. By Christopher Denis-Delacour · Jul 26, 2026 · 9 min read Loạt Soạt Nguyễn Đổng Chi's Classic Retelling of Vietnam's Fairy Tales, Now in English Folklorist and anthropologist Nguyễn Đổng Chi dedicated decades to weaving a significant portion of Vietnam’s folklore tapestry. He collected, researched, and rewrote over 200 Vietnamese folktales from all corners of the country. His work, initially scattered across five volumes published individually and consecutively over 25 years, appeared as a complete anthology in 1982. Guided by a comprehensive treatise of Vietnamese folktale, Chi’s Kho tàng truyện cổ tích Việt Nam (Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales) might be daunting for readers drawn to Vietnamese folklore but disenchanted by rigorous academic discourse. By Khuê Anh · Jul 20, 2026 · 9 min read Vietnam Vietnam Sound Library Races to Capture Saigon's Sounds Before They Disappear Thwunk! Thwunk! Thwunk! Thwunk! The vendor’s cleaver struck the heavy wooden chopping board again and again after slicing through duck meat. Centimeters away, a microphone hovered, capturing each strike. By Paul Christiansen · Jul 17, 2026 · 9 min read Loạt Soạt Cliché or Parody? Orientalist Readings of Nam Le’s ‘36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem’ One may be surprised to learn that Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer was rejected by 13 out of 14 publishers before its eventual publication. He describes in an interview why he believes his novel was rejected by all but one publisher he submitted to: “I knew in writing the novel that I was deliberately not doing what I was supposed to do as an Asian American writer, which is [...that] you have to end on a note of Americanization. You have to end on an embrace of the American dream, explicitly or implicitly. And the novel does not do that.” He comments elsewhere along similar lines, “I refuse[d] to subscribe to dominant American narratives and mythologies that allow someone like me a very narrow space to speak.” By San Kwon · Jul 12, 2026 · 10 min read Load more
