Wagner Alum Glen MacDonald Writes about Vietnam during COVID

Wagner Alum Glen MacDonald Writes about Vietnam during COVID

After Glen MacDonald graduated from Wagner College in 2018, he decided to take a risk and pursue a job teaching English in Vietnam. It was his first time to ever travel to there, a world quite unknown to him. Since then, he has been teaching at public schools and learning centers in Hanoi. But in addition to teaching, soon after arriving, he also found away to put to good use the skills as a journalist that he aquired at Wagner while writing for the Wagnerian newspaper and working at Wagner's WCBG Radio. He began writing articles for Chào Hanoi, an online monthly English-language urban lifestyle magazine for Vietnam's capitol city.

In addition to articles about expat poets and Vietnamese traditions, MacDonald also wrote one about life and culture during the Coronavirus pandemic in Vietnam. There he foregrounds how artists in Vietnam have reflected on the complex history of how disease was mis-managed in Vietnam under French colonial rule and how the  country so successfully combatted the new pandemic in 2020.

This year, he became the English editor for the Vietnamese Times. One of his articles offers a unique perspectives on the famous Vietnamese-American authors Viet Thanh Nguyen, Monique Truong, and Andrew X. Pham. His other articles range from an exposé on an British travel vlogger's representation of life in Vietnam during the pandemic to ancient Vietnamese cultural traditions to expat responses to a second lockdown. Perhaps his most adventurous article is his trip to visit the sites captured by a well-regarded visual artist in Vietnam, Le Huy Tiep. For anyone planning their own trip to the beautiful southeast Asian coastline, MacDonald's travel writing is a useful and insightful blending of reflection, cuture, and personal experience.

MacDonald has made a home for himself in this foreign country, and, even though he may soon return home to America, his experience is testimony to how a Wagner education might lead one to the most unexpected of fulfilling adventures.