The two million Vietnamese Americans in this country often find their stories

are still told through the lens of the Vietnam War, which ended almost 50 years ago.

But as I learned on a recent trip to the Gulf Coast, a new generation is trying to tell a different story about their lives today.

It's part of our Arts and Culture series, Canvas.

For artist Christian Deere... series Canvas.

For artist Christian Din, almost everything he makes contains a tribute to home and to community.

At the Or O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi, Din's memories of growing up in a large Vietnamese-American family are embedded in his ceramic work.

Like this porcelain vase, where he inscribed his grand... in his

grandmother's recipe for steamed fish.

My favorite out of the directions is towards the end

when she explains, you'll know when the fish is ready when the eyeballs turn white.

And I remember her telling me that and I was just like, what does that mean?

Can she give me a temperature or something else?

Or this enormous rice bowl, a giant replica of the small plastic longevity bowls that are

ubiquitous on family tables.

These in a way, these plastic wares are the fine China of Asian American culture.

I wanted to emphasize that, one by its size, right, just making it a more monumental piece

scaling it up to by changing it back into its original material which is

ceramics in another series didn't reimagines the white display hands that are typically

seen in Vietnamese American nail salons. He casts them in porcelain, an homage to his

people's success in that industry.

The Neslon series was a project that I started in 2020, really around the height of the Asian hate crimes.

...