Many decades ago, the coal mines of Vietnam were home to a unique history that survives today as a collection of anonymous poems.
In her presentation "Learning History through Oral Tradition: The Stories of Vietnamese Coal Miners," Thuy Linh Nguyen (pictured right), associate professor of History, noted that Vietnam became one of the world's leading coal exporters during the French colonial period (1858-1954). Life was not easy for these miners, who had little time for anything but their work.
Thankfully, their stories were not lost to time: They recorded their tales in the Vietnamese poetic form Lục Bát, using their own coded language to avoid the detection of the French management. These poems described the miners' living and working conditions at colonial coal mines, their bondage, their humor, and resilience, as well as the dark sides of debt spiral, opium addiction, gambling, racism, and capitalist exploitation.
These short poems "were very easy to memorize and circulate," Nguyen explained, helping these stories to survive for generations.
"This oral tradition elevates the voices of the workers while highlighting the importance of using mixed sources in writing the history of marginalized and underrepresented groups in history," Nguyen said.
The talk was part of the Mount's Investigating Research on Campus (iROC) series, which provides a forum for faculty, staff, and students to showcase their research endeavors with the college and local communities.
See iROC presentation videos at www.msmc.edu/WatchiROC