About the Author

Sara Ann Swenson is an Assistant Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College, where she focuses on contemporary Buddhism in Vietnam. She holds a PhD and MPhil in Religion from Syracuse University, an MA in Comparative Religion from Iliff School of Theology, and a BA in English from the University of Minnesota Duluth. Swenson’s work bridges anthropology, religious studies, and social theory, offering a nuanced view of the role of Buddhism in modern Vietnam.

About the Book

In Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charity in Urban Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2025, part of the AAR Academy Series), Sara Ann Swenson presents one of the first major ethnographic studies on Vietnamese Buddhism, delving into how grassroots Buddhist charity movements have shaped the urban landscape of modern Vietnam. This pioneering book offers a new perspective on the intersection of religion, migration, urban development, and humanitarian efforts. Through detailed ethnographic research and interviews, Swenson brings to light the diverse and often marginalized voices involved in these charity movements, offering readers an unprecedented view of Buddhist charity in Vietnam.

As Vietnam's rapid urbanization strains public infrastructure, particularly in urban centers like Ho Chi Minh City, religious communities have stepped in to meet critical social service needs. Volunteers, often led by Buddhist practitioners, have adapted Buddhist teachings and practices to organize charity events that support the most vulnerable: low-income laborers, elderly women, migrant workers, and queer individuals. In Near Light We Shine, Swenson examines why people join these grassroots movements, exploring the philosophical and social dynamics that drive this kind of charity.

Swenson’s book draws from two years of ethnographic research in Ho Chi Minh City, offering deep insight into the intersection of Buddhism and charity and providing an analysis of the diverse motivations of volunteers and recipients alike. The book explores the tensions between different approaches to charity and altruism, revealing the philosophical and ontological disputes over what constitutes "true charity" in a rapidly changing society. Volunteers promote Buddhist cosmologies that are at times traditional, pro-socialist, skeptical, queer, and modern, shaping not just how they engage with charity, but how they view their role in transforming society.

By examining these movements through a Buddhist lens, Swenson explores how religion, charity, and social networks come together to create moral communities that address the complex issues brought on by urban migration and development in Vietnam. Near Light We Shine highlights how Buddhist charity is not just about giving but is deeply embedded in the creation of social meaning and the negotiation of power dynamics in contemporary Vietnam.

Key Themes and Insights

• Grassroots Buddhist Charity: The book explores how grassroots charity movements adapt Buddhist teachings to meet urban Vietnam’s growing humanitarian needs. These volunteers work to provide vital services like road construction, subsidized medicines, and food distribution.
  
   
• Philosophical and Ontological Debates: Swenson delves into the different philosophical underpinnings of charity, highlighting both the conflicts and collaborations between traditional Buddhist values, pro-socialist ideals, queer identities, and scientific approaches to charity.
  
   
• Diverse Perspectives on Altruism: The book gives voice to a range of marginalized Buddhist practitioners, including day laborers, queer men, elderly women, Buddhist nuns, and urban migrants, exploring how these groups engage with charity and the Buddhist tradition in deeply personal and transformative ways.
  
   
• Buddhism as Adaptable Resource: Near Light We Shine demonstrates how Buddhism functions as an adaptable resource for moral community building, both in the context of Vietnam’s urban development and in the global landscape of grassroots humanitarian work.
  
   

Why Read This Book?

Near Light We Shine is not just a study of charity; it is a profound exploration of how religious practices are reshaped by social, cultural, and political forces in a rapidly modernizing society. This book will appeal to scholars of religion, anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, and anyone interested in the intersection of religion, charity, and social justice in the context of urban Vietnam. Swenson’s ethnographic approach sheds light on the lived experiences of marginalized individuals within these movements, offering a more holistic understanding of Buddhist charity as a force for social transformation.

The book is now available from Oxford University Press. Pre-order your copy and engage with the first comprehensive study of grassroots Buddhist charity in Vietnam, with an exclusive 30% discount using code: AUFLY30.

A film that asks what happens after history

Being officially shortlisted for the 98th Academy Awards in the category of Best Documentary Short Film, On Healing Land, Birds Perch (Đất Lành, Chim Đậu) is a powerful mid‑length documentary (≈33 minutes, 2025) by Vietnamese‑born filmmaker Naja Pham Lockwood. Rather than revisiting the Vietnam War through familiar battle lines or political abstractions, the film begins with a single, globally recognized photograph—and then asks a quieter, more unsettling question: what becomes of the people and families who are turned into symbols by history?

At its center is Eddie Adams’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph “Saigon Execution” (1968), an image that has circulated for decades as an emblem of the war’s brutality. Reproduced endlessly in textbooks, museums, and media, the photograph has often stood in for an entire conflict. Lockwood’s film gently but firmly resists this flattening. It turns away from the image’s symbolic weight and instead follows the long, human afterlife of that moment.

From icon to aftermath

Rather than re‑litigating the photograph as evidence or argument, On Healing Land, Birds Perch shifts the frame to those who inherited its consequences. Through rare and intimate interviews, the film brings together: The daughter of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the South Vietnamese officer who fired the shot; The children of Nguyễn Văn Lém, the man who was executed; and The son of a family allegedly killed by Lém, a contested but crucial part of the photograph’s backstory. These individuals did not choose the roles history assigned to their parents, yet they live with the photograph’s interpretations, judgments, and silences. The film reveals how a single frozen second reverberates across decades—shaping family narratives, migration paths, public scrutiny, and private grief.

Intergenerational trauma and moral inheritance

One of the documentary’s most striking contributions is its focus on intergenerational trauma. Trauma here is not only psychological but social and symbolic: the burden of being publicly linked to an image that the world believes it already understands.

The film shows how children of both “sides” navigate moral inheritance without a clear resolution. There are no easy reconciliations, no definitive historical verdicts. Instead, Lockwood allows contradiction, uncertainty, and empathy to coexist. In doing so, the documentary resists the binary logic—victim versus perpetrator, good versus evil—that so often dominates representations of war.

Diaspora, refuge, and the meaning of “healing land”

The Vietnamese title, Đất lành, chim đậu, refers to a proverb meaning “on good, healing land, birds will perch.” It evokes refuge, resettlement, and the possibility of rebuilding life after upheaval. This idea resonates deeply with the film’s diasporic lens.

Many of the film’s participants, like the filmmaker herself, are shaped by displacement and resettlement—by becoming refugees, immigrants, and “new Americans.” Healing, the film suggests, is not the erasure of the past, nor a final reconciliation with history, but the fragile, ongoing work of living forward while carrying what cannot be undone.

A Vietnamese‑born perspective on a global image

That this film is directed by a Vietnamese‑born filmmaker is especially significant. “Saigon Execution” is among the most widely circulated images of the Vietnam War, yet its meanings have largely been constructed through Western media and institutional frames. Lockwood’s approach does not seek to replace one authoritative narrative with another. Instead, it recenters Vietnamese voices—particularly those whose lives were irrevocably shaped by the photograph, yet rarely heard in its retellings..

Why this film matters today

At a time when images of violence circulate globally within seconds—often detached from context or consequence—On Healing Land, Birds Perch offers a vital counter‑gesture. It reminds us that images do not end when the shutter closes. They travel, accumulate meanings, and leave long shadows across generations.

The film’s quiet, humane insistence on listening makes it not only a meditation on the Vietnam War, but also a timely reflection on displacement, memory, and the ethics of representation in the digital age.

The film will be available to view via Los Angeles Times Short Docs on Feb 2, 2026

👉 Watch On Healing Land, Birds Perch on LA Times Short Docs
https://www.latimes.com/shortdocs

(Availability may vary by region; readers are encouraged to check the listing directly.)

Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2026) by Cindy Nguyen examines the modern library as a contested social and political space in twentieth-century Vietnam. Established under French colonial rule as symbols of Western modernity and instruments of imperial knowledge, state libraries in Hanoi and Saigon were intended to discipline reading practices and shape colonial subjects. Yet, as this book demonstrates, Vietnamese readers did not passively accept these intentions. Through everyday use, public critique, and multilingual engagement, they reimagined the library as a site of social life, cultural negotiation, and political possibility.

Drawing on extensive archival research, including library circulation records, administrative reports, and public debates, Cindy Nguyen traces the emergence of a colonial public from 1917 to 1958, a period marked by dramatic transformations in literacy, education, and language. She situates libraries at the center of what she describes as a “competing world of letters,” where Confucian scholarly traditions in Chinese characters intersected with the expansion of French and vernacular Vietnamese education. In this multilingual environment, reading extended beyond solitary and silent practice to encompass collective, oral, and socially embedded forms of engagement that exceeded Western norms and colonial expectations.

The book further bridges colonial history with contemporary concerns about literacy, information access, and digital futures. By employing methods from digital humanities, Nguyen critically analyzes historical data, exposing its silences and biases, and connecting past infrastructures of knowledge to present debates on information literacy and inequality. Ultimately, Bibliotactics reframes the history of libraries in Vietnam as a story not of institutional control alone, but of reader agency, public formation, and enduring struggles over culture, language, and access to knowledge, offering insights that resonate far beyond Vietnam, in an era increasingly shaped by digital information systems and global debates about reading cultures. 

Cindy Nguyen’s book, Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam, is now available for free open access or as a print copy through the University of California Press.

For more information, please visit: 

https://bibliotactics.com/