Vietnamese Buddhism in America

Abstract

Abstract Vietnamese Americans constitute the largest Buddhist population group in the United States today, yet this community remains under-documented in the study of Asian American religions and Buddhism in America. Previous scholarship emphasizing an ethnic model approach fails to reveal how Vietnamese Buddhists in America actually understand their identities in relation to political, social, and institutional structures. Analysis framed in terms of racialization, however, enables us to see how members of Buddhist centers, joined by anti-communist “compatriot Buddhists,” utilize the temple and its festivals to manage the transgenerational effects of war while navigating changes in citizenship status and generational succession. It also allows one to see how Black Buddhism in America intersects with the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and the advent of Vietnamese Buddhism in the United States.