Her Việt Nam
The women of the North so captivated photographer Nancy Hoàn Lê that she snapped 2,000 pictures of them. Now, she wants her images to inspire people to raise funds for a worthy cause.
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 As a professional, Nancy Hoŕn Lę has an eye for a picture. And on a trip to North Vi?t Nam two years ago, she was so taken by what she saw that she captured more than 2,000 memories on her camera. But Lę — a photographer for more than 30 years who had dreamed her whole life of visiting the area where her parents lived, before their move to Sŕi Gňn — didn’t shoot the typical tourist scenes of beaches, monuments or local attractions. While on her second trip back to Vi?t Nam, but her first to the north, she became fascinated by the women she met and observed. So Lę, 61, chronicled both the daily struggles and the spiritual beauty of those she encountered, of all ages. She came home with souvenir images to share with her American friends, telling them just how different the lives of Vietnamese women are from their own. “If you live in this country, with a car and everything convenient for everybody, you don’t understand. But you go there and you go back three decades,” she said. “I was really shocked. Why, in this century, the women have to work hard like that? “The ladies there carry children, heavy things on the back. I show how Vietnamese women, even highlanders... work, work, work. I wanted to capture everything.” But her photos have become more than a coffee-table album. Instead, 50 of them are now the basis of “My Vi?t Nam: A Photo Essay of Women in Vi?t Nam,” an exhibit to open Sunday at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, Calif., as an effort to educate Americans about immigrants as well as the source of a fund raiser to help low-income women access free mammograms and breast-cancer detection services. “Nancy’s photographs opened my eyes in ways I never expected,” said Diane Masseth-Jones, executive director of the YWCA of North Orange County. “I knew that if I was so strongly impacted by her photographs that others would be, too, and we needed to use them as a way to build understanding between cultures here in Orange County.” She and Lę approached officials at the Muckenthaler to see if they could set up an exhibit. The two organizations agreed to a long-term partnership to educate communities about women of all cultures and celebrate their lives through art, said Lę, who lives in Santa Ana, Calif. She then decided to sell reprints of some of her photos and donate the proceeds to the YWCA, where she works as outreach manager. She understands the startling reality: Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second-leading cause of cancer-related death after lung cancer for women in the United States. On the positive side, a steady drop in its overall death rate has been seen since the early 1990s, according to the National Cancer Institute, which also said that the use of regular screenings to detect the disease early may allow patients to get more effective treatment with fewer side effects. Lę worries that most immigrant women who come from such countries as Vi?t Nam, or its neighbors, where mammograms are not routine medical tests, do not necessarily learn about the need for screenings and so fail to get them. They, in turn, do not teach their daughters the importance of being tested, causing the younger generation to fail in that as well, she said. “Myself, I never knew about the mammogram. About six years ago, before working here, I went to doctor and he asked if I had had a mammogram,” she said. Once he explained to her that it was an x-ray of her breast, she told him it was a new concept. She responded: “No, I never do that in my country, in my life.” Almost immediately after that first screening, Lę became a volunteer for the program that she has run for nearly five years. In this job, she educates women about breast cancer screenings. She translates for Vietnamese speakers who need assistance either at the YWCA or during one of the organization’s free breast screening clinics, offered to those who meet the federal low-income criteria who also are uninsured or underinsured, and who do not have either Medical or Medicare, she said. The YWCA, which provided nearly 5,000 screenings last year, holds clinics throughout Orange County, mainly in areas near the low-income women the program serves. Women, especially those older than 40, should get a mammogram annually, Lę urged. To drive that point home, she shares pictures of breast cancer victims as well as invite those diagnosed with the disease to talk to female audiences of varying ages. When people learn and know how important it is to get mammograms, “they keep coming,” she says. “Ninety percent, we can save them if they get mammograms” regularly. “My Vi?t Nam: A Photo Essay of Women in Vi?t Nam,” will open Sunday with a benefit reception and fashion show of traditional Vietnamese dress from 1 to 4 p.m. The Muckenthaler Cultural Center is at 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton, Calif. The exhibit will run through May 28. For details on the benefit, contact the YWCA North Orange County at (714) 871-4488. For details on the show, call Muckenthaler Cultural Center at (714) 738-6595 or visit www.muckenthaler.org.
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