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ABSTRACT
The ‘mid-island’ is the folk name given to a peripheral piece of land in the Red River at the heart of Hanoi, Vietnam. This essay surveys this place’s representations in contemporary cinema, literature, television, and photography. Through these meaning-making practices, the mid-island becomes a narrative construction, revealing an alternative history of Hanoi's identity with many unknown or marginalised aspects. It has become a place where many layers of meaning are piled up, sometimes conflicting: it is both a check-in site where many activities of Hanoian youth culture take place and a refuge for those marginalised, who cannot find anywhere else in the city to survive. It is both a ground for Hanoi men to perform their masculinity and a private space for a Hanoian child to find the remaining mysteries of the city. Currently, the city’s government is promoting a plan of transforming the mid-island into an ecological-cultural park. To do so without paying attention to the narrative meanings of the landscape, however, could lead to the loss of memories of the place and even become an act of violence against the most vulnerable communities, human and not-human, of the city.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
All translations into English of quotations from Vietnamese and French texts, if there is no specific notification, are the author’s own.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tran Ngoc Hieu
Tran Ngoc Hieu earned his PhD in 2012 and now works as a lecturer at the Hanoi National University of Education. He has contributed to some edited volumes such as Environment, Media, and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia (Springer Singapore, 2022); The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies, (London: Palgrave, 2022). Email: [email protected]