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Jean Vanmai’s Chân Đăng The Tonkinese of Caledonia in the colonial era is a rare insider’s account of the life experiences of Chân Đăng, the Vietnamese indentured workers who were brought from Tonkin to work in the New Caledonian nickel mines in the 1930s and 1940s, when both Indochina and New Caledonia were French colonies. Narrated from the unique perspective of a descendant of Chân Đăng, the novel offers a deep understanding of how Vietnamese migration, shaped by French colonialism and the indenture system, led to the implantation of the Vietnamese community in New Caledonia, in spite of the massive repatriation of the workers and their families to Vietnam in the 1960s. Through his writing which blends his own family story with the rich oral testimonies of his compatriots, Jean Vanmai, a passionate advocate for the recognition of the part played by the Chân Đăng in the New Caledonian national history, has succeeded in giving these often faceless and powerless ‘coolies’ a strong collective voice. The translation into English of that voice was long overdue. Only accessible until now to French speakers, this English version opens up the exceptional account of the personal and emotional complexities of the Chân Đăng’s experience to a global readership. The English version not only advances knowledge of the history of indentured labour and colonialism in the Asia-Pacific, thus offering Anglophone historians and interested readers a new understanding of the processes through which histories and memories travel and translate across national, oceanic, and linguistic borders, it also constitutes an invaluable historical resource for Anglophone Vietnamese diasporic communities. One of the significant revisions in this English version is the restitution of the diacritical marks to all the Vietnamese names in the novel. Rather than a simple correction of the printing of Vietnamese diacritics which was unavailable at the time of publication of the origin text, it lends greater authenticity to the story for the Anglophone reader and symbolically restores their full identity to the Chân Đăng protagonists, who had become mere matriculation numbers under the colonial indenture system. The critical introduction by Tess Do and Kathryn Lay-Chenchabi is a richly documented text that contextualises the novel for the Anglophone reader. The photographs and official documents, carefully selected from a wealth of sources, including the National Archives of both New Caledonia and New Zealand, the private community collections and Jean Vanmai’s family photo albums, all contribute to an illuminating and informative visual overview of the Chân Đăng’s working and living conditions in New Caledonia. This emotive illustration of the past also functions as an important reference for the common future shared by all Caledonians, in that it conveys to the reader the long-lasting imprint left by the Vietnamese community on New Caledonia’s economic and cultural scene since the Chân Đăng first migrated to this country more than two centuries ago.
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oapen-20.500.12657-630822024-05-15T11:28:51Z Jean Vanmai’s Chân Đăng The Tonkinese of Caledonia in the colonial era Do, Tess Lay-Chenchabi, Kathryn Chan Dang French colonialism Labour migration New Caledonia Jean Vanmai Chân Ðang Vietnamese Diaspora thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2A Indo-European languages::2AD Romance, Italic and Rhaeto-Romanic languages::2ADF French thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government::JPA Political science and theory thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBH Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000::DSBH5 Literary studies: postcolonial literature thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHB Sociology thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics::CFP Translation and interpretation Jean Vanmai’s Chân Đăng The Tonkinese of Caledonia in the colonial era is a rare insider’s account of the life experiences of Chân Đăng, the Vietnamese indentured workers who were brought from Tonkin to work in the New Caledonian nickel mines in the 1930s and 1940s, when both Indochina and New Caledonia were French colonies. Narrated from the unique perspective of a descendant of Chân Đăng, the novel offers a deep understanding of how Vietnamese migration, shaped by French colonialism and the indenture system, led to the implantation of the Vietnamese community in New Caledonia, in spite of the massive repatriation of the workers and their families to Vietnam in the 1960s. Through his writing which blends his own family story with the rich oral testimonies of his compatriots, Jean Vanmai, a passionate advocate for the recognition of the part played by the Chân Đăng in the New Caledonian national history, has succeeded in giving these often faceless and powerless ‘coolies’ a strong collective voice. The translation into English of that voice was long overdue. Only accessible until now to French speakers, this English version opens up the exceptional account of the personal and emotional complexities of the Chân Đăng’s experience to a global readership. The English version not only advances knowledge of the history of indentured labour and colonialism in the Asia-Pacific, thus offering Anglophone historians and interested readers a new understanding of the processes through which histories and memories travel and translate across national, oceanic, and linguistic borders, it also constitutes an invaluable historical resource for Anglophone Vietnamese diasporic communities. One of the significant revisions in this English version is the restitution of the diacritical marks to all the Vietnamese names in the novel. Rather than a simple correction of the printing of Vietnamese diacritics which was unavailable at the time of publication of the origin text, it lends greater authenticity to the story for the Anglophone reader and symbolically restores their full identity to the Chân Đăng protagonists, who had become mere matriculation numbers under the colonial indenture system. The critical introduction by Tess Do and Kathryn Lay-Chenchabi is a richly documented text that contextualises the novel for the Anglophone reader. The photographs and official documents, carefully selected from a wealth of sources, including the National Archives of both New Caledonia and New Zealand, the private community collections and Jean Vanmai’s family photo albums, all contribute to an illuminating and informative visual overview of the Chân Đăng’s working and living conditions in New Caledonia. This emotive illustration of the past also functions as an important reference for the common future shared by all Caledonians, in that it conveys to the reader the long-lasting imprint left by the Vietnamese community on New Caledonia’s economic and cultural scene since the Chân Đăng first migrated to this country more than two centuries ago. 2023-05-23T15:45:13Z 2023-05-23T15:45:13Z 2022 book ONIX_20230523_9780645371307_3 9780645371307 9780645371321 9780645371338 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63082 eng application/pdf Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 9780645371307.pdf https://doi.org/10.5130/aai UTS ePRESS UTS ePress 10.5130/aai 10.5130/aai feb523b3-bdff-4e43-ad50-063a48b87781 48d439c9-96fa-418c-a0c3-891a538696b6 9780645371307 9780645371321 9780645371338 UTS ePress 306 Broadway [...] open access
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