A Southern Futures Undergraduate Fellow created an online cookbook, showcasing the N.C. Vietnamese American community’s rich tapestry of experiences.
Ngan Le, a sophomore economics and chemistry major, remembers chopping vegetables in the kitchen as her mother opened up about the scarcity of food during the Vietnam War.
“I decided to utilize conversations about food as a way to dive deeper into people’s stories of belonging and identity because they’re just so deeply intertwined with each other,” Le said.
In 2023, Le and 11 other undergraduate students were chosen to receive support from Southern Futures, housed within the College of the Arts and Sciences, to complete a summer research project. Southern Futures aims to harness the arts and humanities to reimagine justice, equity and possibility in the U.S. South.
Le was born in Vietnam and immigrated to Chapel Hill as an infant. With her Southern Futures fellowship project, she aimed to embrace the journey of coming into adulthood as a Vietnamese American and to better understand the immigration experience of her family.
“My parents and my sisters, because they were older than me, remember what Vietnam was like compared to the U.S.,” Le said. “I’m trying to understand – What were their challenges? What were their struggles? What were their celebratory moments? I can’t feel what they felt. I can only see and observe and try to empower other people to come into their own as well.”
She conducted 11 bilingual interviews with Vietnamese immigrants across four different cities in North Carolina, covering stories of students, researchers, restaurateurs, diplomats and more. Each interviewee was paired with a Vietnamese recipe that was created or curated by Le to be showcased in the project, what she refers to as a “digital food narratives collection.”
“The scope strives to capture those stories that often get lost because a lot of these interviewees are more comfortable speaking in Vietnamese,” Le said.
She aspires to uplift Vietnamese Americans’ unique stories while championing the connectedness of the community.
“Hope, fear and desires are often kept to yourself in the Vietnamese community, especially for older generations. It can be very taboo to talk out loud about a lot of these aspirations,” Le said. “Something that I hope to foster is this greater sense of community by showcasing the underrepresented diversity among Vietnamese American experiences.”
Growing up, Le often felt as if she was the only Vietnamese American in the state. She hopes her project is both informative and empowering especially to younger Vietnamese Americans in the South who experienced a generational gap like her own.
“I sincerely hope that people listen to these stories, look at the recipes and think, ‘These are versatile people who live and belong in the South yet also hold some resemblance to me,’” she said “Having that bold representation is so crucial to feeling like you can flourish and be a proud Vietnamese American.”
Le said coming to UNC and conducting interviews statewide has introduced her to the vast North Carolina Vietnamese American community, a representation that she has never seen before.
After taking “Research with the American South,” a required course for each Southern Futures fellow co-instructed by Southern Futures staff members Jordan Lovejoy and Tony Royle Jr., Le decided her project would be digitized to make it accessible and digestible to the public. This prompted her to present her research as in-depth oral histories.
“To me, research doesn’t mean much if no one understands it,” she said.
Becky Butler, assistant director for Southeast Asia Initiatives at the Carolina Asia Center, was Le’s mentor for the project. She worked with Le to ensure each story blended seamlessly.
”I think this project has ended up being a diverse representation of people, even in this kind of narrow space, which is really cool,” said Butler.
She describes the website as an online cookbook that displays a rich tapestry of people and experiences that are an essential part of the fabric of North Carolina. Each page is a profile of an individual that ties a recipe back to their immigration experience.
“It’s in the context of this space that people traditionally think of it as very much black and white,” Butler said, “and that’s really not the case anymore. In fact, it never has been.”
According to Butler, while the Asian American population in North Carolina is growing — Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group in America, and North Carolina holds the third-highest growth rate nationally — it is still not as represented in the archives. She believes this project is an important contribution to bring more visibility to North Carolina’s Vietnamese American community.
“Everyone loves to talk about food. It is also this cultural marker. People’s food is very much a part of who they are,” Butler said.
By Sophia Melin, College of Arts and Sciences