Nestled along the streets of Dorchester, numerous public art installations reveal the rich culture of its Vietnamese community.
One of these installations is a memorial for the Vietnam War, which commemorates 79 fallen soldiers that lived in Dorchester during the time of war, according to Dorchester Open Studios.
Though Fields Corner hosts a significant Vietnamese community, this memorial is the only one dedicated to the Vietnam War in Dorchester. There is no memorial that reflects the impact of the war on Vietnamese families, let alone shares the stories and history of the Vietnamese diaspora.
Ngọc-Trân Vũ, the lead artist and director of the 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Commemoration Initiative, seeks to change that.
The 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Commemoration Initiative centers around the preservation of Vietnamese narratives and legacies of the Vietnam War within the Dorchester community. There are two distinct subprojects under the larger initiative: Vietnamese Oral Stories and a Vietnamese Diaspora Healing Memorial planned for the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War in April 2025.
The 1975 Initiative’s current focus lies on the Vietnamese Diaspora Healing Memorial.
Over the summer, the 1975 team made great strides toward the memorial as they collected feedback, fundraised and promoted outreach through community events, including a walking tour of the potential sites for the memorial.
According to Ngọc-Trân Vũ, the purpose of the Potential Sites Analysis Walking Tour was to allow the community in Dorchester to present their own analysis of each location.
There would be three criteria for community members to consider while visiting the sites: visibility, community and connectivity, and adequate space. How easily could the community access and view the site? How did they connect to residents, and how would they hold the stories and history of the Vietnamese diaspora? What was the spatial capacity for communal functions?
In preparation for the walking tour, the 1975 team ensured that community health and safety were prioritized. As precautions, they trained volunteers thoroughly in ushering and had water available for those who needed it.
“For this walking tour, because we are outside and we are not in an enclosed space, we had to prepare a lot more for the safety of our community members walking through the streets,” said Linh-Phương Vũ, the outreach specialist of the 1975 Initiative who doubles as an Asian American Studies lecturer and PhD student at UMass Boston.
She added that they made sure to prepare for the tour quality itself. Before the day of the walking tour, the team walked the route to estimate the time it would take, including ample time for community members to contribute their thoughts at each site. Bilingual accessibility during the tour was also important for this reason.
submitted and taken by Lee-Daniel Tran
June 15, in Dorchester’s Boston Little Saigon Cultural District, Vietnamese community members congregated outside Phở Hòa, where the “Community in Action: A Mural for Vietnamese People” mural on its exterior walls provided an inspirational backdrop for the beginning of the walking tour.
The first site of the tour was Hero’s Square, located on Dorchester Avenue. With the site located directly in front of the Boston Little Saigon Office, a central building in the district, its visibility and accessibility made it a feasible spot.
Town Field Park was the second prospective tour site and harbored the most promise for a memorial as a pre-established focal point for community activities and gatherings. The luscious greenery in the park would create a peaceful atmosphere for those that visit to experience and reflect upon the memorial, while the open space would grant easy accessibility and flexibility for the memorial design and installation.
There were three different areas within the park that could serve as a memorial site; however, the most popular spot among the community was the area closest to the town and streets by the baseball field.
With the success of the walking tour, the 1975 Initiative is now proceeding onto the next phase: the designing of the memorial, which will culminate in a showcase of rendered designs and eventually the development of the memorial.
Discussing the work she has been doing ahead of the showcase, Ngọc-Trân Vũ mentioned that she is using digital components and software to create 3D modeling of the designs, as well as experimenting with 3D printing.
“Especially for our community, people want to be able to see [the design] physically too, and that makes it even more tangible,” she explained.
The Design Showcase Event will be held Sep. 14 at the VietAID Community Center in Dorchester from 12 to 3 p.m. After the showcase, a series of community dialogue nights and fundraising events will take place over the upcoming months to gather more community impressions of the initial memorial design and continue raising funds for the project.
More information on the memorial project and a link to the project fundraiser can be found on Ngọc-Trân Vũ’s website, tranvuarts.com.
