Lunar New Year: San Jose
Preserve Cultural Heritage
Since Asian American refugees and immigrants began to adapt, settle, and form communities in the United States following years of turmoil, they have brought the shared cultural practice of celebrating the Lunar New Year. Community members, displaced from their original homes in an adopted homeland, organized gatherings between families and friends in proximity to retain, remember, and recreate the rich and vibrant atmosphere of the traditional holiday season in their neighborhoods. In the City of San José, home to one of the largest Asian American populations in the United States, community organizations and organizers have held a longstanding tradition to host festivals that bring together members of the community for celebrations centered around families reuniting, connecting across generations, and a creating shared sense of cultural identity – locally and across the diaspora.
Youth-Led Festival in 2024
Nearly half a century since the first Vietnamese refugees resettled in San Jose, the Vietnamese American Roundtable (VAR), in partnership and collaboration with the United Vietnamese Student Associations of Northern California (NorCal UVSA) and The Museum of the Boat People & the Republic of Vietnam (Viet Museum) plan to host a youth-led and community-engaged LNY Festival at History Park at Kelley Park in East San Jose for 2024 to celebrate the LNY of the Dragon. The event will be free and open to the public. Drawing from our community-based organizations’ networks and partnerships across cultural and ethnic boundaries, the LNY Celebration aims to feature festivities and opportunities for cultural learning from communities celebrating the holiday – many of whom call San José home. In light of historical and contemporary divisiveness rooted in interracial and intergenerational tensions and trauma, we want to exhibit a shared sense of collective recovery and healing through the establishment of this new festival.
~ thanks to our staffs and more ❤
