Latest news with #AmandaNguyen
Sydney Morning Herald
30-04-2025
- Science
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ever notice the colour of the flags at a Vietnamese restaurant? Well, we're tired of binaries
When the spacecraft carrying scientist and rights activist Amanda Nguyen pierced through the Earth's atmosphere last month, the Vietnamese diaspora held its collective breath. In Houston, political refugees who had fled postwar Vietnam clutched their chests as the rocket ascended. In Hanoi, government officials applauded their nation's first woman in space. And in Melbourne, I – a peacetime migrant from Vietnam – found myself unexpectedly weeping at the sight of that rocket trail: a perfect diagonal stitch across the sky, sewing together what history had torn apart. Nguyen – a civil rights advocate, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and daughter of Vietnamese refugees – made history as the first Southeast Asian and first Vietnamese woman to travel into space. Her scientific experiment, carried aboard a Blue Origin mission, was conducted in collaboration with Vietnam's National Space Centre. As her capsule orbited, an extraordinary diplomatic choreography unfolded. In Hanoi, the US ambassador hosted Vietnam's first cosmonaut Phạm Tuân to watch Amanda's launch. In Texas, Vietnam's ambassador greeted her return, bearing a congratulatory letter from Vietnam's president. The same government her parents fled now celebrated her achievement. Fifty years ago, Amanda's parents were among the thousands who scrambled onto overcrowded boats, fleeing a country reshaped by political transition. Each year on April 30, while Vietnam celebrates Liberation Day – the reunification of North and South – diaspora communities gather under yellow flags to mourn what many call Black April or National Resentment Day – the fall of Saigon. This duality lives in our bones: in the way elders still hoard plastic bags like wartime rations, in the hesitation when hearing a Northern accent. Many raised their children with warnings about returning to Vietnam, creating what sociologists call 'inherited disconnection' – where second-generation kids know more about their parents' trauma than their ancestral homeland itself. I've seen this play out in Footscray nail salons and Springvale phở shops, where young Vietnamese-Australians speak of a homeland frozen in 1975. A friend once confessed her non-Vietnamese colleague had been to Vietnam more often than she had. 'How do you mourn a place you've never known?' she asked. Then came Amanda's Instagram post after landing: 'How do you find belonging when the foundation of your identity is rooted in a legacy of conflict?' Her answer – người Mỹ gốc Việt (an American with Vietnamese roots) – echoed inside me, the way I explain to Aussie friends. We, who grew up after the war, live in this liminal space. Like Amanda, we code-switch between worlds: explaining bánh mì to Aussie friends while fielding our refugee relatives' warnings about 'communist influence'. We're tired of the binaries – of being asked to choose between celebration and mourning, between the red flag and the yellow.
The Age
30-04-2025
- Science
- The Age
Ever notice the colour of the flags at a Vietnamese restaurant? Well, we're tired of binaries
When the spacecraft carrying scientist and rights activist Amanda Nguyen pierced through the Earth's atmosphere last month, the Vietnamese diaspora held its collective breath. In Houston, political refugees who had fled postwar Vietnam clutched their chests as the rocket ascended. In Hanoi, government officials applauded their nation's first woman in space. And in Melbourne, I – a peacetime migrant from Vietnam – found myself unexpectedly weeping at the sight of that rocket trail: a perfect diagonal stitch across the sky, sewing together what history had torn apart. Nguyen – a civil rights advocate, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and daughter of Vietnamese refugees – made history as the first Southeast Asian and first Vietnamese woman to travel into space. Her scientific experiment, carried aboard a Blue Origin mission, was conducted in collaboration with Vietnam's National Space Centre. As her capsule orbited, an extraordinary diplomatic choreography unfolded. In Hanoi, the US ambassador hosted Vietnam's first cosmonaut Phạm Tuân to watch Amanda's launch. In Texas, Vietnam's ambassador greeted her return, bearing a congratulatory letter from Vietnam's president. The same government her parents fled now celebrated her achievement. Fifty years ago, Amanda's parents were among the thousands who scrambled onto overcrowded boats, fleeing a country reshaped by political transition. Each year on April 30, while Vietnam celebrates Liberation Day – the reunification of North and South – diaspora communities gather under yellow flags to mourn what many call Black April or National Resentment Day – the fall of Saigon. This duality lives in our bones: in the way elders still hoard plastic bags like wartime rations, in the hesitation when hearing a Northern accent. Many raised their children with warnings about returning to Vietnam, creating what sociologists call 'inherited disconnection' – where second-generation kids know more about their parents' trauma than their ancestral homeland itself. I've seen this play out in Footscray nail salons and Springvale phở shops, where young Vietnamese-Australians speak of a homeland frozen in 1975. A friend once confessed her non-Vietnamese colleague had been to Vietnam more often than she had. 'How do you mourn a place you've never known?' she asked. Then came Amanda's Instagram post after landing: 'How do you find belonging when the foundation of your identity is rooted in a legacy of conflict?' Her answer – người Mỹ gốc Việt (an American with Vietnamese roots) – echoed inside me, the way I explain to Aussie friends. We, who grew up after the war, live in this liminal space. Like Amanda, we code-switch between worlds: explaining bánh mì to Aussie friends while fielding our refugee relatives' warnings about 'communist influence'. We're tired of the binaries – of being asked to choose between celebration and mourning, between the red flag and the yellow.
New Indian Express
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Empowerment? Or just a hollow word?
When Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova spent three days in space, way back in 1963, all alone up there on a solo mission, she was the first woman in space. Since then, over a hundred women have been on such voyages, but the first all-woman space flight since Tereshkova's took place only this month. On April 14, founder Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin launched six women beyond the Kármán line, in a New Shepard rocket. They flew for eleven minutes in a historical event that was more stunt than space flight. All were public figures: activist Amanda Nguyen, popstar Katy Perry, producer Kerianne Flynn, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe and journalists Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez (who happens to be Bezos' fiancée). The launch was hyped as being about women's empowerment — a claim that has been laughed down by many. Thankfully, 'giant leaps for womankind', to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, have occurred since Tereshkova's sojourn, and we aren't impressed. Perry has taken the most flak for her participation in this event, and has since said that she regrets some of her performativeness around it. On the other hand, Amanda Nguyen's presence isn't highlighted at all. Nguyen's remarkable story involves having put her astronaut dreams on hold years ago in order to devote herself to working for the rights of sexual assault survivors. For her, the experience is not a bored-billionaire-bucket-list one; it's a deferred dream come true. That said, the thing with a reductive stunt like this is that it makes commentators also make reductive observations. The truth is that the vast majority of human beings are probably medically or otherwise unfit to be launched into space, and we are going to behave in silly ways if we get the chance to — even if a suborbital joyride is all we'll take. Astronauts including Buzz Aldrin had long predicted the rise of space tourism, and it's happening now. It is, of course, restricted to the uber-wealthy. Whether or not space tourism should become accessible to everyone isn't the concern. As for the women's empowerment façade: it's mildly surprising that this tokenistic Blue Origin trip wasn't timed for International Women's Day alongside unveilings of pink-branded ventures, pink dress codes, pink record-setting floral displays, and pink debit cards to use on pink discounts galore. No: the most egregious thing about this event is the carbon footprint and to an arguably lesser extent, the financial cost. That the money involved in this undertaking could have gone to philanthropical causes is obvious to all who have righteous judgment about hyper-privileged expenditure. It's the timing of it — that it happened during a genocide-induced famine in Gaza and a clampdown on civil rights in America — that feels especially distasteful. The timing of it also includes ongoing climate apocalypse. We — all living beings of Earth — cannot escape this burning planet, not even for 11 broadcast minutes. Blue Origin claims that its New Shepard rockets have zero carbon emissions. Even if that's true, they definitely emit nitrogen oxide and water vapour. The environmental cost of space exploration for science can be ethically justified, but shooting celebrities into space for fun and profit simply cannot be.
CNN
18-04-2025
- CNN
Amanda Nguyen's journey from survivor to space pioneer
After surviving rape in college, Amanda Nguyen turned to activism, fighting for landmark legislation on rape kit rights. Now, as the first Vietnamese woman in space, she calls her flight a 'full-circle healing" moment for survivors everywhere. CNN's Becky Anderson highlights her story.
CNN
18-04-2025
- CNN
Amanda Nguyen's journey from survivor to space pioneer
After surviving rape in college, Amanda Nguyen turned to activism, fighting for landmark legislation on rape kit rights. Now, as the first Vietnamese woman in space, she calls her flight a 'full-circle healing" moment for survivors everywhere. CNN's Becky Anderson highlights her story.
