The Vietnamese Boat People

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 be a writer, but initially pursued a career in business instead. But the dream to be a writer was always there. When Quế Mai published her first book of poetry in Vietnamese, there was no looking back. In 2020, she published THE MOUNTAINS SING, her debut novel and first book written in English. Set in 20th century Việt Nam, it tells the multigenerational tale of the Trần family as they experience several crucial moments in the nation’s history. The novel became an international bestseller, as well as a testament to the power of Vietnamese stories. Credits: Executive Producer: Tracey Nguyen Mang Associate Producer: Saoli Nguyen (saolinguyen.com / IG: @saolinguyen) VBP theme music: Clarity, Paulina Vo Other Music: Before the War, Lama House; Dew Over Meguro, Lama House; Miika’s Journey, Lama House; Where Legends Dwell, Lama House; Chapters, Aerian

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 complicated and unresolved trauma begin to surface again. In early 2020 during the pandemic, Ly started Cooking off the Cuff, a food blog to preserve her family’s stories for her daughter. It began as a way to heal and later when her mom passed away, it became an important space to remember her mom through the meals they shared and a chance to change their relationship. Content Warning: Please note that this episode contains discussions of sexual trauma as noted in the summary.  Credits: Executive Producer: Tracey Nguyen Mang Associate Producers: Tricia Vuong, Matt Young VBP theme music: Clarity, Paulina Vo Other Music: Liberating, Megan Wofford; Respire, Rikard From; Beyond Imagination, Gavin Luke; Joust, Trevor Kowalski; Returning Memories, Erasmus Talbot (melody stem)

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 soldiers 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 tragedy would change her family forever and Jolie would never be the same again. She grieved for many years, trying to find answers to her open questions. It wasn’t until she started to write down her feelings and her family’s story, did she begin to heal. She published Three Funerals for My Father, a story told in three distinctive voices: her father's, her younger self in Vietnam and herself as an adult returning to Vietnam to visit her father’s grave and memories of her younger sister. 

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 trauma of her father’s PTSD, who served in the South Viet Nam army and was a prisoner of war in Viet Nam for almost a decade. When Ly was eight, she needed glasses but her father convinced her the diagnosis of poor vision was a government conspiracy. His frightening temper and paranoia left a mark on Ly’s sense of self. It was through writing her first novel, a memoir, House of Sticks, that Ly found the courage to confront her past.   

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 to America as a refugee, only 3 years old at the time, and the youngest of seven children. After a modest and humble start in America, Tracey built a successful career in the corporate world, but she realized that while providing more for her children than she ever had, she was distancing them from the values that she had been brought up with. As Tracey became a mother, she wanted to know more about her history so she could share it with her children. So she bought a microphone, and sat with her parents and older siblings to record what they remembered.  The stories enthralled her as she learned untold details of her family's escape. In this episode Tracey shares how 20 hours of family recordings led to the creation of the Vietnamese Boat People Podcast.  For the full conversation between Niall and Tracey, visit Seven Million Bikes Podcast.

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 her identity, and how she fell in love with and innovated her family business to grow it into Tân Tân Foods. Lisa Tran was born in an Indonesian refugee camp, after her parents had successfully fled Vietnam following the Fall of Saigon. Lisa’s parents, Vinh Tran and Mai Nguyen, fled in a tiny fishing boat carrying 13 refugees in 1976 and were sponsored to Oregon in 1981. Many years later, they opened Tân Tân Cafe & Delicatessen in the Portland metro area. Tân Tân means “New Beginnings,” and they were the first Vietnamese restaurant around at that time. Today the business has grown into a consumer products company with homemade sauces being sold in hundreds of grocery stores across America. IG @tantanfoods, www.tantanfoods.com Dear Asian Americans Podcast

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, fantastical tale of children navigating a dystopian world in the former area of Bataan, Philippines. Tuan filmed the project at the former Philippines Refugee Processing Center, where hundreds of thousands of people fled after the war. Set in an unspecified future at the precarious edge of humanity’s possible extinction, "The Boat People" follows a group of children led by a strong-willed and resourceful little girl, who travel the seas and collect the stories of a world they never knew through objects that survived through time. Stay tuned for Season 5 "Lost and Found" launching in 2022! 

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 statement oversimplifies the journey. But the story of how we got here, is anything but simple. Join me in documenting the incredible stories of hundreds of thousands of other Vietnamese Boat People. Subscribe to the show and visit www.vietnameseboatpeople.org

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 world who would motivate and support her search to find her birth family. Trista shares the ups and down of her journey that successfully led to reuniting with her birth mother and siblings. In 2003, Trista started a nonprofit organization, Operation Reunite, to provide information and support to other Vietnamese adoptees going through a similar journey and to build a DNA data bank for families to use to try to identify loved ones.

Growing up in New Jersey, Peter Trinh and his siblings would hear endless stories of how his parents fled Vietnam. When the war ended, Peter’s father, Nhung Trinh, a former pilot in the South Vietnam Air Force reported into re-education camp as required by the new Communist government. He thought it would be for a few days, but instead days turned into weeks, into months, into four years. During that time, he was moved to several different remote camps without his family knowing. Peter’s mom, Tinh Trinh, a young woman in her early twenties, would spend the next few years searching for her husband and scheming to plan his escape from camp, and ultimately an escape for them out of the country. Today, Peter reflects on the stories with great admiration for his parents and a desire to fill in the missing pieces.