OUR VISION
An independent, diaspora-led initiative reimagining The Tale of Kiều through an anthology, exhibition, and digital platform
Tracing Kiều brings together creatives of Vietnamese heritage to respond to, reimagine, dialogue with, and critically confront The Tale of Kiều across generations and contexts. At its heart lies a question: How can a 19th-century epic resonate in a fragmented, global 21st century? Through a multi-genre, multi-format approach, the project connects diasporic voices with international audiences, making the poem accessible as a shared space of creativity and dialogue.
Last updated: [September 25, 2025]
At a glance: Download our 5-page Project Summary (EN PDF), or read on for the full story.
Why Kiều, Why Now?
Nguyễn Du’s The Tale of Kiều (Truyện Kiều, c. 1805), a 3,254-couplet epic, is Vietnam’s most celebrated literary work. For more than two centuries it has shaped language, music, and culture, celebrated by many and contested by others. The story of Thúy Kiều – a young woman renowned for her beauty, talent, and passion – follows her 15-year journey through separation, hardship, and transformation before her eventual return. Rendered in verses of extraordinary lyricism and imagery, this odyssey has made Kiều an enduring cultural figure and the poem a classic of world literature. Like Shakespeare’s plays or Goethe’s Faust, it raises moral, political, and human questions that remain alive across generations.
From the start, the poem provoked debate: admired at court yet censured by Confucian moralists, later taken up by reformers, revolutionaries, and modernists, each reading it through the lens of their time. The poem has often been read as a meditation on suffering and desire, bridging Confucian and Buddhist thought, which adds to its lasting spiritual and philosophical resonance. Its influence remains vivid in Vietnam today, where writers, artists, and musicians continue to reimagine it.
Beyond Vietnam, it has been translated into over 20 languages – yet remains marginal in global conversations – recognized by specialists but rarely visible to wider audiences. Tracing Kiều addresses this by moving Vietnamese culture and diasporic perspectives from the margins to the center, creating a platform that carries the poem into new contexts and publics.
Recent milestones underline its continuing importance. UNESCO marked the 250th anniversary of Nguyễn Du’s birth in 2015, recognizing the poem’s universal value. In 2025, Vietnam celebrated both the poet’s 260th birthday and 150 years since the first widely circulated quốc ngữ (Latin-script) edition of Truyện Kiều with exhibitions, readings, and performances nationwide.
The year 2025 also marked 50 years since the end of the Vietnam-American War, often seen as the start of large-scale overseas migration. Yet the Vietnamese diaspora reaches further back – to colonial-era movement as much as displacement, to the aftermath of the French Indochina War, to Cold War study exchanges and labor contracts, and to family ties – reminding us that no single event defines its multiplicity.
At the same time, Vietnamese diasporic voices are asserting their presence across today’s literary, artistic, and media landscapes – arenas where they have historically been less visible, yet are now expanding their reach on the global stage. Against this backdrop, Tracing Kiều looks both backward and forward: it acknowledges layered histories of displacement and movement while returning to Kiều not as static heritage but as a living text – one that anchors artistic innovation, critical reflection, and transcultural dialogue. In doing so, it embodies a spirit of community, bringing people together through tradition and literature even as we move into a digital future that is at once globalized and fragmented.
Our Approach
Tracing Kiều grows out of the lived experience of the Vietnamese diaspora and creates space for creatives to (re)connect with this foundational text. The project title carries a double reference: to the poem’s heroine, Thúy Kiều, and to Việt kiều – overseas Vietnamese. Although the two terms are unrelated in origin, their shared sound, spelling, and themes of displacement and return allow us to draw them together here. Connections to Vietnam take many forms – some deeply embedded, others more distant or reimagined – and Tracing Kiều embraces this full spectrum as vital to the project. We also welcome creative voices from within Vietnam, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds or whose perspectives bring nuance and context. In “tracing Kiều,” we trace many diasporic journeys: of migration, adoption, mixed heritage, and rediscovered or layered ties to Vietnam – forming a community archive that is diverse, unsettled, and sustained through exchange.
The project connects to the Vietnamese tradition of reinterpreting – even playfully engaging with – The Tale of Kiều by adapting bói Kiều, the folk practice of opening the poem at random to seek guidance, as a creative method. Long woven into everyday cultural life in Vietnam, bói Kiều demonstrates how the poem has served as a resource to be consulted, questioned, and reimagined. As an artistic prompt, it allows contributors let a verse, character, or theme spark new work – or place existing pieces in dialogue with the poem’s enduring questions. Each encounter becomes a negotiation between inherited text and lived diasporic experience.
Multi-Genre, Multi-Platform
Tracing Kiều unfolds across three interconnected formats offering multiple ways to engage with the poem – from the intimacy of the page to the spatial encounter of the exhibition, and the ongoing accessibility of a digital archive.
Together, these formats form an international framework where new voices connect with one another – and with audiences worldwide – through The Tale of Kiều, while showing the depth and complexity of resonance this classic continues to inspire.
Thematic Dialogues
Five thematic dialogues offer orientation – echoing Kiều’s 15-year odyssey while opening onto wider questions of diaspora and human experience. They open paths to respond to Kiều, to reimagine it, dialogue with it, or to critically confront it across generations and contexts.
Berlin as Anchor
As the primary base of the project team and the setting for the exhibition, Berlin is a uniquely resonant site. The team members themselves embody different and distinct diasporic relationships with the city and are able to activate diverse networks to shape a locally rooted yet internationally open discourse and outreach program, developed together with community and institutional partners.
The exhibition and its public program will engage Berlin’s vibrant artistic scene while also working in dialogue with its Vietnamese communities – from former contract workers in the East to refugee networks in the West, as well as students, academics, professionals, mixed families, and other histories. These are overlapping but distinct audiences, allowing the project to move fluidly between community engagement and contemporary cultural discourse.
Berlin’s division and reunification mirror ruptures and reconciliations that mark both Vietnamese history and diasporic experience. At the same time, the city is home to many other communities shaped by migration and displacement, situating Vietnamese diasporic perspectives within a wider landscape of transcultural exchange.
A Resonant Space
By treating The Tale of Kiều as both heritage and catalyst, Tracing Kiều opens space for inventive responses that connect Vietnamese diasporic voices with global conversations on memory, belonging, transformation, and cultural inheritance. Contributions form part of a collective archive, positioning diverse voices as active interpreters and transmitters of cultural knowledge.
The project takes a decolonial perspective – by which we mean shifting Vietnamese culture and diasporic perspectives from the margins to the center and emphasizing plurality and dialogue rather than singular or hierarchical readings of the text.
In doing so, Tracing Kiều balances the cultural history of Vietnam’s most celebrated classic with its framing in contemporary art and literature. This approach grounds the project in historical depth while recognizing Vietnamese diasporic voices – in their layered, hybrid, and global forms – as integral to contemporary cultural discourse, and ensuring that Kiều continues to resonate across borders and generations.