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Marian devotionalism was the most popular faith practice among twentieth-century Vietnamese Catholics. Yet its contents were not uniform but reflected shifting realities of church history and Vietnamese history. In particular, the period 1940–1975 witnessed a monumental movement that associated Marianism with anticommunist nationalism among many Vietnamese Catholics. This development came from a combination of several interlocking factors, some global and some local. The development indeed reflects a pattern of interactions between the global and the local in the history of Vietnamese Marianism. It further illustrates the agency of Vietnamese Catholics, who welcomed ideas and beliefs from the global church yet also actively shaped them to further the destiny of their national church.

ABSTRACTSince the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnamese Buddhists who resettled in the Gulf South have gathered for worship in rented apartments, mobile homes, converted garages, vacant offices, fishing camps, even vacant lots. They have also raised funds to build a number of temples, especially during the 2000s, in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. In the process, Vietnamese refugees and immigrants have built an indelible Buddhist presence in a region that previously knew little about this religion. How this presence came to be and what it meant in practice for the Vietnamese form the backbone of this important monograph by the anthropologist Allison Truitt.

This article re-examines Vietnamese diasporic anticommunism in the context of twentieth-century Vietnamese history. It offers an overview of the Vietnamese anticommunist tradition from colonialism to the end of the Vietnam War, and interprets the effects of national loss and incarceration on South Vietnamese anticommunists. These experiences contributed to an essentialization of anticommunism among the prisoners, who eventually provided a critical mass for anticommunist activism in the United States since the early 1990s.