Phillip, the oldest of three siblings, joined the military at age 18 and was deployed to Afghanistan. The Fall of Kabul and the resulting turmoil that led to a mass exodus of refugees, changed his perspective of his parents and gave him context for what they lived through after the war in Vietnam. His father was one of nine Vietnamese refugees who fled the country in 1984 in a small sampan fishing boat with no motor and just two oars. After seven days at sea, they were picked up by a French...

Mother, Métis, Memory is a documentary film by Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, whose practice is fueled by research and a commitment to communities that have faced traumas caused by colonialism, war, and displacement. Through his continuous attempts to engage with vanishing or vanquished historical memory, Tuấn investigates the erasures that the colonial project has brought to bear on certain parts of the world. Mother, Métis, Memory is a documentary that captures interviews conducted in 2018 with the...

Kim Thái, shares the story of how her parents Chánh and Phượng Thái met, fell in love, and began their journey as husband and wife, only to get separated by the aftermath of the war in Việt Nam. During the height of the war, her father was stationed abroad, and made the decision to return to Việt Nam to be with his wife and baby, even though many had advised him not to. Upon his return, her father was imprisoned in a re-education camp, everything was taken from them and her mother had to find...

Siblings Hương, Karin Hạnh, Hedda Hiếu, and Benjamin Hoàng Nguyễn grew up together in the San Francisco Bay Area in a boisterous Vietnamese American family. In 2019, their father, Nguyễn Khánh Hưng, a first-generation immigrant from Việt Nam, passed away. To pay tribute to their father, the siblings participated in our 3rd Annual Mỹ Việt Story Slam in 2022 with their spoken word piece, “Ngày Về Của Bố” (roughly, “The Day of Dad’s Return”), a reflection on grief and Vietnamese mourning...

The Vietnamese Boat People’s fourth annual Mỹ Việt Story Slam celebrates stories from the Vietnamese diaspora, and explores the theme of Ba, Mẹ ơi. Five storytellers were selected from an open call for submissions, to share stories about their mom, dad, or someone they consider to be a parent-figure. This live, virtual event features Cindy Truong (Connecticut), Vanessa Nguyễn (New York), Kim Thai (New York), Geoff Vu (Liverpool), and Nicole Ngo (Sydney) with guest appearances from Jackie...

Kevin Truong was born in a refugee camp. His mom fled Việt Nam with his two older sisters, while two months pregnant with him. Kevin grew up in Oregon ashamed of his immigrant mother and how un-American their lives felt. For the past ten years Kevin has been working on a documentary called Mai American. The film is about a 70-year-old Vietnamese American refugee living in Oregon who writes down her life story, indelibly shaped by the War in Việt Nam. As she shares what she has written with...

Buried Ruins is a play written by Vietnamese American actor and playwright, Carolina Đỗ . It started out as a series of interviews that Carolina did with her parents, over the course of almost nine years, and turned into a personal writing project about memory and wishful dreams. The play is centered around a series of torturously absurd family dinners interrupted by glitches of memories of the past. It is a reflection of Carolina’s own experiences about Vietnamese parents and daughters...

Lisa Phu is an Alaska-based journalist and the creator of "Before Me", a limited series chronicling her mother’s journey to America. Lisa has always wanted to record her mom's story but never quite found the right moment, until she gave birth to her first child in 2016 and her mom came to care for them both. During that visit, Lisa's mom finally shared the real story about growing up in Cambodia, fleeing genocide by the Khmer Rouge, surviving as a gold dealer in Vietnam, building a home in...

PodSwap with Self Evident podcast! Before Me is a limited series launched by Self Evident with Alaska-based journalist Lisa Phu, chronicling her mother’s journey from Cambodia to America over the course of decades. The story unfolds between Lisa and her mother Lan as the two care for Lisa's first born daughter — and for the first time, Lan feels ready to share her own experiences fully with Lisa, on tape. But it’s also a long overdue conversation between mother and daughter about their...

PodSwap with Seven Million Bikes Podcast!Suzanne Thi Hien Hook was a baby found on the street and placed in an orphanage during the Vietnam War. She’s Amerasian; with a Vietnamese mother and an African-American soldier father. She was adopted into a white English family and moved to the UK when she was just three years old. Unfortunately it was not the beginning of a happy childhood that many would expect. Despite an abusive upbringing she became a trained chef, gained a business degree and...

The stories we share on Vietnamese Boat People are often harrowing tales of people surviving adversities and finding strength and resilience to move forward. Diving into their family histories and trauma, our interviewees can all be described as brave and introspective. And the same can also be said about our listeners. Over the years, listeners have reached out to us sharing how the podcast has given them a newfound connection with the culture. Our desire to bring people together to share...

Family Histories & Emotional Truths: Healing Thru WritingAn intimate discussion with three Vietnamese-Americans who turned to writing as a way to confront and reconcile with their histories and upbringings. Featuring:Alison Hong Nguyen Lihalakha, author of Salted Plums ;Christina Vo, author of The Veil Between Two Worlds ;Len Tran, author of Split Up By The Sea Replay of the discussion is also available on Vietnamese Boat People Youtube channelEpisode Credits: Sound Editing: Tracey...

Thi and Phuong Nam Doan are two sisters born in Portland, Oregon. In 2020, their mom was diagnosed with lewy body dementia, a type of progressive dementia that leads to a decline in thinking, reasoning and independent function. The family has been navigating how to take care of a woman who used to take care of them. Their cousin, Andy Nguyen remembers how his aunt has always been like a second mother to him. The three grew up as a very close unit and they share how much the mom is the...

Trung Lê Nguyễn was born in 1990 in a refugee camp in Palawan, Philippines. His parents escaped Vietnam by boat and resettled in Minnesota, USA shortly after Trung was born. He grew up learning English with his parents through picture books and was always specifically drawn to fairytales. He studied Art History in college and eventually found himself gravitating towards being an artist. Trung's list of accomplishments and published works includes DC Comics, Oni Press, Boom! Studios, and Image...

​Many of us have experienced losses that have changed our lives. We have lost loved ones to war, harsh living conditions and arduous migrations or to illnesses, age and more recently to the pandemic. But sometimes the loss can be an invaluable object, a community, a place we call home or a state of being. The process of losing someone or something that is irreplaceable can turn our world upside down. However, the journey to heal can lead us to finding ourselves again. For 2022, we invited...

When she was six years old, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and her family left their small village in northern Việt Nam for Bạc Liêu, a city located in one of the southernmost points of the country. As a northerner growing up in the south after 1975, Quế Mai witnessed the post-war devastation felt by those on both sides of the conflict. She gained a deep appreciation for the stories of all those around her, including the many boat people who were fleeing the country at the time. She had always wanted to...

Growing up, Ly Nguyen and her mom did not have the most understanding or tender relationship. Ly remembers the friction starting very early in her childhood, when she was molested by a family member and found that she wasn’t able to talk about it with anyone. To protect the family’s reputation, the incident was kept a secret. Leaving Ly feeling alone and unprotected by her mother. Over the years, their relationship progressively worsened. It wasn’t until Ly had her own daughter, did the...

Jolie Phuong Hoang remembers how her family ran into hiding in a temple as her town of Đà Lạt was being taken over by North Vietnamese soliders in 1975. She escaped Vietnam in 1983 with five of her older siblings on a boat that their father had built. After 14 months of waiting in Indonesia at the Galang I refugee camp, the siblings were sponsored to Canada. She finally felt free. But that freedom would come at a cost. In 1985 her parents and her younger siblings planned a second escape. But...

Ly Tran was born in Viet Nam and came to America at the age of three in 1993 with her older brothers and parents through the U.S. Orderly Departure Program called Humanitarian Operations. Soon after they arrived, Ly joins her parents and three older brothers sewing ties and cummerbunds in their apartment to make ends meet. She grew up in Queens, New York, living just below the poverty line while her parents struggled to financially support the family. Ly found herself lost in the inherited...

Breaking Barriers Through Conversations: The Making of the Vietnamese Boat People Podcast. Bonus Episode, Seven Million Bikes: a Saigon-based podcast hosted by Niall Mackay, originally from Scotland, who now lives in Saigon. The podcast shares experiences of people from all walks of life, who have a love and deep connection to Vietnam.  Tracey Nguyen Mang, the founder and creator of the Vietnamese Boat People, chats with Niall about her family’s background from Vietnam to America. She came...

Bonus Episode, Dear Asian Americans: a podcast for and by Asian Americans, rooted in origin, identity, and legacy. Host Jerry Won brings on guests from diverse backgrounds and career paths to celebrate, support, and inspire the Asian American community.  In this bonus episode: Lisa Tran, owner of Tân Tân Foods, joins Tiffany guest host of Dear Asian Americans for an open and personal conversation about the American origin story of the Tran family, how the early years of American life shaped...

Bonus Episode! Join podcast host Tracey Nguyen Mang, artist and filmmaker Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Chrysler Museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, Kimberli Gant, to explore the exodus of Vietnamese individuals and families from their home country after the conflict in Vietnam. In this conversation Tuan and Tracey discusses their personal histories, creative endeavors, and Tuan’s 2020 film The Boat People, currently on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art. The film is a dreamy,...

My name is Tracey Nguyen Mang, I am the creator of the Vietnamese Boat People podcast. I was born Nguyen Quan Truong-Anh, the youngest of seven children, in Nha Trang Vietnam. When I was only one, my father and oldest brother fled our country by boat. After that, my three older brothers escaped, and in 1981, my mother braved the journey with three girls under the age of 10. Three separate escapes, three different refugee camps and three years later, reunited in America as one family. This...

Trista Goldberg, born Nguyễn Thi Thu 1970 in Vietnam, was adopted at the age of 4 through Holt International Agency and brought to the United States into a loving family in Pennsylvania. Around the age of 10, she was shown her adoption papers which opened up Pandora's box and would haunt her into adulthood. In 1999, the internet boom enabled Trista to explore Vietnam online and learn about the country and culture. Through Yahoo chat groups she met other Vietnamese adoptees from around the...