Not a Day but a Vu Lan Season: Celebrating Filial Piety in the Vietnamese Diaspora

Abstract

One of the most important observances of the Vietnamese Buddhist calendar is Vu Lan, an annual ceremony framed by Confucian notions of filial piety. Through an ethnographic analysis of the festival at four different Buddhist institutions along the U.S. Gulf Coast, I show how Vu Lan cultivates devotion to motherhood and nationhood, generating both affective ties and material support from lay participants. I pay particular attention to how gendered signs of diasporic nationalism are displayed in order to underscore that what it means to be Vietnamese and Buddhist in the United States is both active and fluid.