Shows
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBreaking the SilenceBreaking the Silence follows producer Ngoc Bui in an exploration of how Vietnamese families are beginning to confront the trauma passed down through generations—fifty years after the Fall of Saigon. What happens when silence begins to crack open? Sparked by a deeply personal conversation, Ngoc speaks with mental health professionals and diaspora voices to uncover how healing is taking shape—through cultural understanding and intergenerational dialogue, led by younger generations. This episode traces an ongoing journey of healing, connection, and a reimagining of care—beyond the boundaries of Western therapy.
Episode Credits:
Associate Producer: Ngoc Bui2025-05-1317 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleDo you speak Vietnamese?Do you speak Vietnamese?” For many in the Vietnamese diaspora, this simple question evokes not-so-simple feelings —whether you’re from the North or the South, educated before or after 1975, a fluent speaker or someone learning as an adult. In this episode, producer Saoli Nguyen examines the interplay between language and identity, and the role of Vietnamese as both a connecting and dividing force in our culture.
Episode Credits:
Associate Producer: Saoli Nguyen
Senior Producer: James Boo
Sound & Editing Support: Matt Young
Executive Producer: Tracey Nguyen Mang
2025-04-2926 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleSeason 7 Trailer - THEN & NOWThe year 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon — a moment that forever changed the lives of millions of Vietnamese people and shaped the diaspora we’re part of today. It’s a milestone that invites us not only to remember, but to reflect on what’s shifted — in our families, our culture, and ourselves. In past seasons, we’ve shared stories of escape, loss, and rebuilding. This season, we’re asking: How have we changed? What does it mean to be Vietnamese now? And where do we go from here? Welcome to Season Seven "Then & Now".
Suppor...2025-04-2302 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleThe SampanPhillip, 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 merchant ship and eventually resettled in the U.S...2023-12-2024 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleLive Episode! Mother, Métis, MemoryMother, 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 Senegalese-Vietnamese communities in Dakar and Malika Senegal. Throughout the First Indochina War, between 1945-1954, France had mobilized an estim...2023-10-1128 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleA Love StoryKim 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 a...2023-08-0936 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleNgày Về Của BốSiblings 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 rituals. In this special episode of Vietnamese Boat People, the Nguyễn siblings are...2023-07-1233 min
The Vietnamese Boat People2023 Mỹ Việt Story SlamThe 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 Nguyễn, entrepreneur and owner of CafeCaphe and filmmaker Bao Nguyễn. The event replay and featured stories can be viewed onlin...2023-06-2237 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleMai AmericanKevin 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 Kevin, they begin separate but parallel journeys confronting the t...2023-05-1028 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBuried RuinsBuried 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 trying to get through to one another despite generational trauma and the force of cultural assimilation. The play premiered in a...2023-04-1439 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleLive Episode! Making Before Me w/Lisa Phu
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 America while navigating the fallout and traumas of war… and carrying the...2023-03-1448 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBonus Episode: Before MePodSwap 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 family’s history — through war and violence, separation and loss, endings and beginnings. Because wh...2022-12-1429 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBonus Episode: Suzanne Thi Hien HookPodSwap 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 started a successful company. In 2006 she visited Vietnam for the first ti...2022-11-301h 08
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBonus Episode: Listening PartyThe 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 stories and experiences, along with inspiration from podcasting colleagues Self Evident and PRX, led us to organize the...2022-11-1631 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBonus Episode: Healing Thru WritingFamily Histories & Emotional Truths: Healing Thru Writing
An 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 channel
Episode Credits:
Host & Executive Producer: Tracey Nguyen Mang
Supported by New Jersey Council for the Humanities 2022-23 Action Grant and...2022-10-261h 05
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleAmbiguous GriefThi 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 foundation in their lives. She is the matriarch...2022-07-2736 min
The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen162- Tracey Nguyen Mang - Founder Vietnamese Boat People podcastTracey Nguyen Mang is the creator and host of the Vietnamese Boat People (VBP) podcast and nonprofit. She fled Vietnam with her family at the age of three and grew up ashamed by the stigma of being a refugee and struggled with navigating her own Asian American identity. In 2018, she began to document her family's story and along the way, discovered that there are many others like her, trying to piece together the history. Tracey started VBP by publishing her family’s story in Season 1 of the podcast, and today, the organization shares stories from other families an...2022-06-301h 11
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleLive Episode! The Magic FishTrung 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 Comics. The MAGIC FISH is his debut graphic novel. It is about an immigrant family, interweaving fairytales with the story of...2022-06-1448 min
The Vietnamese Boat People2022 Mỹ Việt Story SlamMany 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 storytellers
Alexander Nguyen, Qui-Shawn Tran, Mai Tran, Trinh Mai, and siblings Huong and...2022-05-311h 06
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleThe Mountains SingWhen 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 p...2022-04-2829 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleCooking From MemoryGrowing 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 sta...2022-04-0624 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleThree Funerals For My FatherJolie 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...2022-03-1029 min
Heart to Heart with AnnaDr. Tom Forsberg and Dr. Chad Hoyt: Founders of Healing Hearts VietnamWhy would doctors choose to spend time volunteering in another country and creating a nonprofit organization to save children’s lives overseas?Dr. Tom Forsberg and Dr. Chad Hoyt are co-founders of Healing Hearts Vietnam. Dr. Forsberg is an emergency physician with Centra Health in Central Virginia. He currently serves in four emergency departments throughout the region. Dr. Chad Hoyt specializes in advanced cardiovascular imaging and has been in partnership with Centra Health for the past sixteen years. He currently serves as the executive medical director of Centra’s Heart & Vascular Center, a busy four-hospital system with seven offic...2022-03-0838 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleLIVE Episode! House of SticksLy 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 an...2022-02-0933 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeoplePodSwap! Seven Million BikesBreaking 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 m...2021-12-2249 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeoplePodSwap! Dear Asian AmericansBonus 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 gro...2021-12-141h 00
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBonus Episode: The Boat PeopleBonus 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 form...2021-11-2354 min
The Vietnamese Boat People2021 TrailerMy 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...2021-09-0902 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleOperation ReuniteTrista 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 do...2021-08-1824 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleThe EscapeGrowing 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...2021-07-2128 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleMỹ Thị BùiNaoko Tsunoda was born in Los Angeles in 1976 and adopted by Japanese expats the following year. Despite knowing she was adopted, it was not until she turned 18 that Naoko’s parents revealed that she is ethnically Vietnamese. Thus began a decades-long search for the missing pieces of her history, culminating in the discovery of her birth name: Mỹ Thị Bùi. Now in her forties, Naoko is learning to embrace her dual identities via her love of tea. The events of 2020 propelled her to start her own online tea boutique, Key To Teas, where she offers tea sourced directly from Ja...2021-06-2925 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeoplePod Swap! Self-EvidentBonus Episode, Self-Evident: How Do Stories Change Lives?
The impact of storytelling is often portrayed as a story changing the life of the person consuming it — and changing the world by reaching as many people as possible. But what about the person who offers their story to be consumed? How else can we define the value of our life’s stories, and the importance of how they’re shared?
In this second episode of a three-part series, Managing Producer James Boo invites Randy Kim (Host of the Banh Mi Chronicles) and Tracey Nguyen Mang (Host of The Vietname...2021-06-1532 min
The Vietnamese Boat People2021 Mỹ Việt Story SlamA global pandemic has completely changed our everyday lives, an election year has divided our country, there has been unprecedented racism against Asians, and continued police violence against Black Americans spurred the largest nationwide wave of protests. We've also seen local communities uniting, new friendships forging (even if virtually), and new hobbies and hidden talents emerging. Listen to how 2020 has changed our featured Storytellers: Anthony Nguyen, Belle Le, Kyle Nguyen, Leo Nguyen, Naoko Tsunoda, Vinh Nguyen and Yen Vu, in our 2nd annual Mỹ (American) Việt (Vietnamese) Story Slam event.
For the full experience, view the feat...2021-05-261h 03
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleOther StreetsMark Erickson (Đỗ Văn Hùng) was born in Saigon in 1972 and put up for adoption at two and a half years old. He arrived in the United States as part of the American program Operation Baby Lift and was adopted by a white couple living in Buffalo, New York. Mark grew up in a predominantly white suburban neighborhood and what he knew about Vietnam was through movies and stories told through an American lens. When he moved to Boston for college he discovered a Vietnamese community in Dorchester, got to travel to Vietnam and began to explore his Vietn...2021-04-2020 min
Heart to Heart with AnnaVietnamese Refugee, Author & Heart WarriorWhat is it like to be born in Vietnam in the 1970s with a heart defect? What efforts would a mother make to ensure her daughter has a chance for life? How does understanding one’s family history impact one’s future?Amy M. Le shares an amazing story with Anna about her mother's life-changing decision to flee war-torn Vietnam to save her daughter's life by going to the United States where her daughter could have surgery. In Vietnam, there was no hospital to take care of Amy's congenital heart defect, but in the United States, she could rece...2021-04-1329 min
Heart to Heart with AnnaVietnamese Refugee, Author & Heart WarriorSend us a textWhat is it like to be born in Vietnam in the 1970s with a heart defect? What efforts would a mother make to ensure her daughter has a chance for life? How does understanding one’s family history impact one’s future?Amy M. Le shares an amazing story with Anna about her mother's life-changing decision to flee war-torn Vietnam to save her daughter's life by going to the United States where her daughter could have surgery. In Vietnam, there was no hospital to take care of Amy's congenital heart defect, but...2021-04-1330 min