Abortion, drugs, homosexuality, interracial dating. These are not issues even discussed in most Vietnamese American families, but a new bilingual weekly newspaper in Orange County hopes to change that.
"After 25 years in this country, our community has a lot more variety of interests than just communism and anti-communism," said Hieu Tran Phan, editor of the English-language section of Viet Tide, a Westminster-based weekly tabloid that debuted in July.
In its first weeks, the section already has explored subjects shunned by traditional Vietnamese publications: A young man caught between cultures finds comfort in the rave party scene and the drug Ecstasy; a 23-year-old gay man from Santa Ana ponders how to come out of the closet; and a 21-year-old Anaheim Hills woman wants advice on how to break the news to her parents that she is in love with a Mexican man.
The section is a medley of opinion columns, news briefs, poetry and an open forum called "Heart to Heart." It is inserted inside the new but more traditional Vietnamese-language newspaper. Topics in the English-language pages are decidedly different from those in the Vietnamese section, which features news stories on politics, and national and international events.
The subjects may not seem groundbreaking by mainstream media standards, said Phan, 27, who left a daily newspaper reporting job to take the helm of Viet Tide's English-language section.
"But for us, this is truly revolutionary," he said. "These things happen in [the Vietnamese American community], but they are rarely discussed in the open."
Viet Tide is published by the company that owns Little Saigon Radio, a longtime fixture in Orange County's Vietnamese American community and named for the Westminster area that serves as a commercial and cultural hub.
California, with its large and diverse immigrant population, has one of the most vibrant ethnic media scenes in the country. New California Media, a network of ethnic publishers and broadcasters, counts more than 200 publications among its members, although Viet Tide is not one of them.
The challenge for many of these newspapers and magazines, observers say, is how to remain relevant as their readers age and their children become more assimilated into the larger culture.
