After the Tatmadaw coup of 2021 led to widespread suffering in Myanmar, Saigon-based university students Nguyen Tam and Nguyen Phuong Anh set out to raise awareness among their peers in Vietnam and ended up collaborating with contacts at the Interim University Council–University of Yangon to produce an English-language digital zine that is now reaching a wider audience than they anticipated. That self-published zine, From Our Place to the Front Line, features interviews, poetry, artwork, and other Burmese reflections on post-coup life in Myanmar. Tam and Phuong Anh will talk about their decision to undertake this long-term project, the editorial process, and their next steps. They will also share the digital zine and invite members of the Yale community to collaborate on future issues. From Our Place to the Front Line can be accessed here: https://fromourplacetothef.wixsite.com/my-site.
The speakers have invited their Burmese friend(s) from “Visual Rebellions” to join as participant(s) to hopefully create some fruitful 3-way youth-to-youth conversation about the Myanmar issue with students from Yale University.
Phuong-Anh Nguyen is a History sophomore at Fulbright University Viet Nam, whose current interest is human rights in Southeast Asia.
Tam Nguyen is a poet, art writer, and apprentice curator based in HCMC, Vietnam. His practice merges creative writing, critical theories, and art history to investigate Vietnamese and Southeast Asian modern and contemporary cultural spectacle in light of neoliberalism and globalization.