Little Vietnam

Vu Nguyen and Hoang Doan are both Presidents of the Vietnamese Student Association at the University of Central Florida but three decades apart. They join 90.7's Matthew Peddie to discuss the generational differences between the first generation of Vietnamese Americans and the next.

In the last months of the Vietnam war, Florida’s first Vietnamese trickled into Orlando with little English and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. They opened restaurants and specialty shops along a thin strip of land near downtown called Little Vietnam. But as 90.7’s Renata Sago reports, a rebranding of the area has people asking whether to even call it that.

Forty years ago was the fall of Saigon, marking an end to the Vietnam War. Soon after Central Florida quickly became a magnet for the wave of Vietnamese refugees, creating the state’s largest Vietnamese community. Now as that generation gets older, their children are starting to redefine what it means to be part of Orlando’s Vietnamese community.

All this week, we're exploring Orlando's Vietnamese community in a series we’re calling “What Is Little Vietnam?” To kick things off, 90.7's Nicole Creston spoke to Father Chau Nguyen of St. Thanh Philipphe Phan Van Minh Catholic Church for a brief history of Orlando’s Vietnamese community, and an overview of how it’s changing.

For fourteen young Vietnamese American women, this weekend is all about ornate gowns, high heels and heritage. The Vietnamese community of Central Florida is in the middle of celebrating its week-long New Year festival, called Tet. On Sunday, a group of high school and college-age girls will showcase their beauty, talent, and cultural knowledge in the Miss Vietnam of Florida scholarship pageant. For the young women, it’s an opportunity to meet other Vietnamese Americans and learn something new about their history. 90.7's Renata Sago sat in on a rehearsal for the competition and spoke with some of the participants and organizers.