Immersion experience in Vietnam sparks curiosity and understanding for Vanderbilt students

As Vanderbilt students Katie Wong (junior), Ren Adajar (junior) and Christin Ann Sanchez (senior) coasted through the bustle of Ho Chi Minh City on the backs of motorbikes, holding tightly onto their peer tour guides this past May, it was hard to believe that 24 hours earlier they were on campus saying goodbye to friends, professors and Nashville for the summer. The three students knew their itinerary and whom they would meet with, and thanks to their professor's advising, they understood the learning objectives on gender equity and human rights, but they did not know how much of an impact the following few weeks would have on their lives.

"Any preconceived notion of what we thought this was going to be was not correct,"
Adajar said. "It was so much more."

Wong, Adajar and Sanchez received the inaugural Millby Fellowship to participate in an ambitious two-week immersion experience in Vietnam that was led by Ben Tran, associate professor of Asian studies and English. Funded by The Millby Foundation and a Provost's Faculty Immersion Grant, the trip allowed the students to see firsthand how gender inequities function in Vietnam's garment industry by learning about histories of the region and listening to the experiences of Southeast Asian women working in domestic, agricultural and fashion-textile sectors.

"The trip's purpose was quite simple: to see what all goes into the production of a T-shirt," Tran said. "But what we experienced were the manifestations of history, the aftermath of war and violence, the unequal divisions of labor and gender, and just conversations and perspectives of people making our everyday things."

Katie Wong, Christin Ann Sanchez and Ren Adajar visit the Bản Giốc waterfalls in the Cao Bằng province of Vietnam. (Photo by Ben Reich, Kilomet109)

A whirlwind itinerary

Tran and his students started in Ho Chi Minh City, where they visited fabric markets, toured monuments and important war sites, and met with journalists, activists, students and poets working on issues of gender, climate change, human trafficking and LGBTQ rights. They also visited the Ho Chi Minh City War Remnants Museum to study the stories of women throughout former-Saigon's history and provide historical context for the rest of their conversations in Vietnam. "I learned how, across time, Vietnamese women have continuously redefined what it means to be a woman, whether through resistance in wartime, labor in traditionally male-dominated spaces or simply by choosing to speak out," Wong said of her visit to the museum.

The group then traveled to the Mekong Delta, a lowland region in southwestern Vietnam. Tran, Wong, Adajar and Sanchez stayed with a local family to learn about the region's ecology, lifestyles and farming practices. "We talked a lot about climate change and how that was affecting the Mekong Delta," Sanchez said. "When we talked to the locals in the Mekong specifically about how they viewed it, they just had such a mental fortitude in the face of it all. And also so many different creative ways that they were trying to shift their lifestyles and their agricultural techniques to be strong in the face of climate change."

Sanchez photographs Adajar's catch from the Mekong region. (Photo by Ben Tran)

After leaving the Delta, Professor Tran and his students flew north to Hanoi. They went on a tour of the city that examined feminist perspectives of life and labor in Vietnam, visited a support center for women and girls recovering from human trafficking, and met with artists, fashion designers and professionals working to support low-income manufacturing workers in Vietnam. Wong, Adajar and Sanchez explored the capital city, immersing themselves in the vibrancy of Hanoi and learning about their own increasing capacities to be engaged in global affairs and impacts on people's daily lives.

The final portion of their trip brought them to the northern province of Cao Bằng where they participated in a three-day textile workshop. Through a collaboration with Kilomet109, a Vietnamese clothing brand that prioritizes local, sustainable production, and an indigenous Nung An textile community, Tran and his students engaged in the participant observation research method as they observed the process of cloth production from the fields to the loom. They listened to women in the Nung An community tell their stories and got a glimpse of the broader forces that impact their lives and their perseverance through them all. "These women were dealing with a severe drought that threatened the year's entire indigo crop," Tran said. "As our conversations went deeper, we learned about the extreme violence they and their loved ones suffered, decades ago, during the Third Indochina War, when Vietnam was at war with Cambodia and China. They told us about the challenges and histories that they face. We could see the strength and skills of their hands-hands that tended livestock and acres of crops, that wove and dyed fabrics. We could feel the care and laughter that they had for and with each other."

Adajar, Tran and Wong make cotton thread during a textile workshop led by Nung An artisans in the Cao Bằng province. (Photo courtesy of Ren Adajar)

Insights and reflections

From touring shoe factories to producing cotton thread by hand, Wong, Adajar and Sanchez saw fast and slow fashion at work during their time in Vietnam. They talked to those invested in all levels of garment production to understand how global politics, climate change and societal gender norms influence this industry.

For Sanchez, one of the biggest takeaways from the trip was how product consumption in the United States is so abstracted from production processes. "We got to see the whole production process of shoes, from the rubber to talking to people in corporate philanthropy, thinking about the time and effort that gets put into everything that I don't have to think about." As she nears graduation and beginning a job in technology and finance, Sanchez has been thinking about how she can incorporate this insight into her future career. "I'd like to find a way to delve more into people's stories and find a way to amplify them."

Women from the Nung An textile artisan group lead Adajar, Sanchez and Wong through their cornfields in the Cao Bằng province. (Photo by Ben Reich, Kilomet109)

This immersive experience also clarified Adajar's interest in becoming an educator. "It made me realize that there are a lot of ways to be engaged with education and a lot of ways to be engaged with academia but still work with that advocacy part of things to make an overall change on the community."

And for Wong, the experience helped her feel closer to her Southeast Asian identity and Asian American studies major. "Going on the trip, there were so many people, so many different paths," Wong said. "You realize, yes, I can be a STEM person, but I can also have this really good connection to Asian American studies. … It helped me realize that I do have other options."

Lasting memories

With countless meetings, tours, meals and travel days squeezed into two weeks, the trip flew by. But looking back on their time in Vietnam, the students discussed the many valuable lessons of this immersion experience.

"Even though the trip was very fast paced-we were doing things every day-it definitely was a lesson in how to slow down, taking into account everything that builds the world around me as well as being grateful for all of that," Sanchez said.

Wong and Sanchez enjoy drinks at a café in Saigon over a conversation about Asian American studies. (Photo by Ren Adajar)

When asked about standout memories from the trip, food featured prominently for Tran and his students, but not just because they enjoyed the fresh seafood or the rich matcha lattes."One of the things that I loved so much about this trip was not just the conversations and the food, but that a lot of these conversations took place over food," said Adajar, recalling various meetings with academics, artists or activists and the foods that accompanied them. "I found so much joy in those moments."Breaking bread together over local cuisine served as akey locus for initiating deep, intellectual conversations about complex topics with a vast array of scholars and creatives. The students hope to keep that tradition alive when having meals with their friends back on campus.