By Justine Trinh

“You’re my heart, you’re my soul. I keep it shining everywhere I go.”

The synthpop beats of ’80s Euro Disco songs were the soundtrack to my mother’s and my weekly thirty-minute drive to my grandparents’ house. “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul” and “Cheri Cheri Lady” played on repeat. On the way, we would drive down Beach Boulevard through Orange County’s Little Saigon to pick up baguettes and banh mi sandwiches at Lynda Sandwiches for my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. My mom swears up and down that Lynda’s has one of the best baguettes, and we would take them home and make shrimp bread (shrimp, cheese, and mayonnaise toasted on baguette slices). The main wall of Lynda’s shop was adorned with New Wave singers, and my mom would name them for me even though I had no idea who Lynda Trang Đài or Tommy Ngo were—people of my parents’ generation long before my time. 

I grew up decades after New Wave emerged, but I could see how much it meant to the generation before me. I remember going to a Christmas party in my late teens where Don Ho was performing. When he got on stage with the emcee announcing at the top of his lungs “DON HO!!!!,” everyone was up on their feet, dancing and clapping to the beat. I could feel the electrifying excitement and magnetic energy as he belted out his setlist. At the time, I did not know this music genre was called New Wave or the history behind this subculture, but Elizabeth Ai’s book, New Wave: Rebellion and Reinvention in the Vietnamese Diaspora, provides an excellent overview of this movement. 

 In New Wave, Ai looks at how the generation of Vietnamese teenagers and young adults were able to form a new life and identity with New Wave music, following the fall of Saigon and resettlement in the United States. While Ai writes each section’s histories and explains the accompanying photos, there are also essays from prominent community members such as poet Lan Duong, scholar Thuy Vo Dang, and writer Carolyn Huynh. New Wave was not just a type of Euro Disco music for the young generation of the Vietnamese diaspora of the 1980s; it was a lifestyle that encompassed fashion with large hair and denim and punk rebellion as the young diaspora came of age during a time of cultural limbo following loss. The Vietnamese refugees that resettled in the United States had to remake their lives. For the 1.5 generation, those who were children during the exodus, they did not have the same ties to as the first generation did to Vietnam, but they still experienced loss as they struggled to reinvent themselves in a foreign land that was now home. New Wave became a source of healing through community and rebellion. 

This book helped me bridge a generational gap between my mother, who grew up during the New Wave era, and me. I did not have the vocabulary or knowledge base before to communicate with her about her past, as my only experiences were Lynda’s sandwiches, Don Ho, and a couple of pictures I found of her during her high school years. When I got my copy of New Wave from the library, I called my mom to talk to her about it. To my surprise, as my mom does not often read, she knew of the book and started telling me about Lynda Trang Đài and how parents of her generation were appalled that Lynda wore unzipped ripped jeans that showed all of her legs and exposed her belly button (how scandalous!). As I flipped through New Wave and absorbed the vibrant pictures of these New Wave singers, I could see what my mom saw in Lynda. Lynda made looking cool effortless, and I wish I had the confidence to wear what she was wearing.

While New Wave could not last forever as people grew up and aged, it encompassed a moment in time when the Vietnamese diaspora was rediscovering who they were following the war. A part of me feels melancholic, as I grew up feeling and experiencing the lingering traces of New Wave and wondering about the future. In her essay featured in New Wave, Carolyn Huynh describes an Orange County Vietnamese wedding, something I am very familiar with as I grew up going to many. She asks, “How many more Vietnamese banquet weddings would I attend in my lifetime, where the father requested New Wave? Or would this be the last?” This question haunted me because it made me reckon with this same uncertainty. I recently attended a friend’s wedding, and while it was not in Little Saigon (rather, it was in Huntington Beach seven miles away), it still had the same seven-course meal with the crab and white asparagus soup and Peking duck that Huynh mentions. At this wedding, I saw traditions of the past mixed with new, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the old things were just a holdover that would one day disappear completely. Now, as I contemplate my own future wedding (that will not happen for another two or three years), humming “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order, I ask myself, “Will I have an Orange County Vietnamese wedding with New Wave music?” 

I may not know the answer now, check in with me in two to three years (though I can say with certainty that “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “I Melt With You” are a must on my wedding playlist), but this book, New Wave, along with Ai’s documentary, helped me form a line of communication between my mother and me as I was able to get an insight of the culture she grew up in while understanding the context of the synthpop beats from my childhood. Elizabeth Ai’s work around New Wave preserves this movement for future generations to learn about, and bridges past and present.

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Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.