Shows
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleA Return HomeWhat does it mean to return to the country your family once fled? To walk the same streets, speak a familiar language in a new voice, and search for belonging in a place both foreign and deeply yours? In this episode, producer Kavi Vu shares her life-changing decision to move from the U.S. back to Vietnam—a journey that reshapes her understanding of what it means to be Việt Kiều. Alongside John Vu and Chris Tran—who also returned after growing up in North America—they reflect on the evolving meaning of Việt Kiều and the emotio...
2025-06-1024 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleCooking in CommunityIn Cooking in Community, we follow producer Tricia Vuong into the kitchens and conversations of a new generation of Vietnamese cooks in New York City. Amid a city defined by hustle and reinvention, a grassroots supper club is reimagining what it means to cook, eat, and build community as Vietnamese Americans. Shaped by a rotating cast of collaborators, the club creates space for storytelling, connection, and dishes rarely seen on restaurant menus—showing how food can be both a tool for survival and a canvas for cultural renewal.
Episode Credits:
Associate Producer: Tricia Vuong
Senior Pr...
2025-05-2719 min
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 Bui
2025-05-1317 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...
2021-04-1329 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleLIVE Episode! Sigh, GonePhuc Tran, born in Saigon Vietnam, immigrated to America along with his family in 1975 when he was just a baby. He grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, being one of the few Asian families in a small town, his family struggled to assimilate into their new life. In his debut book ‘Sigh, Gone’ Phuc shares his coming-of-age story, the push and pull of finding and accepting himself, and the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion. In this interview, Phuc opens up about the complexities of Viet culture, growing up as an Asian American in the 80s and what...
2021-03-1641 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleHave FaithTwo siblings share their experiences in post-war Vietnam and what it was like to be separated as a family. Danny fled Vietnam as a teenager with his brothers and later had to fight for his life after a severe brain injury just a month after arriving in America. While Tu-Anh was moved from place to place in Vietnam as her mom made several attempts to get them out of the country. They share their journeys and struggles and their search for a guiding light during the toughest times.
2021-02-1624 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleThe Perfect StormQuang was born in Ha Noi in 1953 just a year before Vietnam was divided into two and his family migrated south to Saigon. In 1970 he was drafted into war and recruited to Division 3 of the Special Task Force for the South. Days before the Fall of Saigon, Quang’s special unit was stationed in a small village when they had lost contact with their main command. They remained in hiding for days and emerged only to find that they had lost the war and had to surrender to the North. In 1978 in Quang’s second attempt to flee Vietnam, he w...
2021-01-2633 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleSecond GenTo close out season three, we explore perspectives from the American born Vietnamese, those who are categorized as second generation. For most second generation Vietnamese children, their childhood looked nothing like that of their parents. They did not grow up during the Vietnam War era, nor do they have memories of the life threatening escapes from the country. Even so, this generation still internalizes the experiences, some through stories told by their parents, while others can feel the effects of the trauma, even if those stories were never told. In this episode, we explore how this generation manages to...
2020-09-2934 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleSnow in VietnamAmy Le was born in Tra Vinh Vietnam in 1974, with a severe heart condition. The doctors predicted that she would not live past her childhood. Desperate to find the right medical care, her mom decided they needed to escape the post-war conditions of Vietnam. In 1980 they arrived in Kent, Washington State. Growing up, her relationship with her mom had its ups and downs and her Dad was in and out of her life. In 2017, when Amy’s mom passed away, her world shattered. To honor her mom’s legacy and sacrifices, she left her job in corporate America to writ...
2020-08-2627 min
The Vietnamese Boat People2020 TrailerThe Vietnam War is one of the most widely-known and controversial events in world history, yet the stories of the Vietnamese refugee experience as a result of the war are marginalized. Almost two million Vietnamese risked their lives to flee oppression and hardship in one of the largest mass exoduses in modern history. Here’s a preview into the personal stories of hope, survival and resilience of the Vietnamese diaspora, told by multi-generational voices. Subscribe today and visit www.vietnameseboatpeople.org to join us in preserving these stories.
2020-07-2901 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleOne Way TicketCô Loan was born in Saigon and left Vietnam with her family on April 30 1975, the exact day when the South Vietnamese Army surrendered, bringing an end to the civil war in Vietnam. She was 11 years old and would face many new challenges as her family tries to adjust to a new country. But her greatest challenge came much later in her life, when she learns about her daughter with transgender experience. A term she knew nothing about. She shares her journey of trying to understand and accept, during a time when she felt her life had hit rock bottom. T...
2020-07-0131 min
The Vietnamese Boat People2020 Mỹ Việt Story SlamTen Storytellers from across America were selected from a nationwide open-call for submissions, sharing their Vietnamese American experiences in celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month. Each Storyteller shares their very personal experiences in the form of monologues, music, poetry, art and more. Featuring Lynn Kim Do, Julian Saporiti, Hop Nguyen, Kavi Vu, Lauren Nguyen, Trammy Lai, Cindy Nguyen, David Kaizen, Dieu Ngoc Nguyen, and Quentin Nguyen-Duy. Thank you WHRO Public Media, Asian Women Giving Circle and Asia Nation of Live Nation for making this event possible.
Visit our website to view the 2020 Mỹ Việt Story...
2020-06-171h 15
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBeing BaoBao Nguyen is an award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker whose work has been seen on The New York Times, HBO, NBC, PBS and more. He has directed, produced, and shot a number of short films, which have played internationally in festivals and museums. His feature documentary directorial debut, Live from New York, opened the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. His latest film is, Be Water, a documentary about Bruce Lee, airing on ESPN on June 7, 2020. Bao is a child of refugees and grew up working in his parents' fabric shop. From childhood to high school, Bao was a studious student. He was...
2020-06-0123 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleVan DaYen Ngo is number eleven of twelve children, born in Da Lat Vietnam. Her parents were both orphans and even though they did not receive a formal education themselves, they raised their kids to excel in school. After 1975, Yen’s oldest sister made the decision that the family needed to flee Vietnam in phases, and that the youngest children should go first. Yen arrived in America at the age of 13 and shares the loneliness she felt going from having a large family surrounding to feeling isolated in a new country. She studied engineering but stumbled into the restaurant industry an...
2020-04-1031 min
The Vietnamese Boat PeopleBe PresentGene Binh Nguyen, the youngest of two children, grew up with a widowed mom. His father died in the Vietnam war when he was just two months old. Because Gene’s father fought on the South Vietnamese side, his family was ostracized in the new government regime. When Gene and his family finally escaped from Vietnam, they were put in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles California, where he faced racism, violence and gang life daily, while his mom tried to make ends meet. But despite all the challenges, he turned adversity into opportunity and opportunity into ad...
2020-03-0127 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#16 - The Ground Kisser
Thanh is the oldest of six children and was just eight years old at the Fall of Saigon. She was living in Tân Châu, just six miles from the Cambodia border and she remembers vividly the blood bath from the continued warfare between Vietnam and Cambodia. With Communism breathing down their backs and their wealth and freedom wiped out, Thanh's parents had to make an agonizing decision. Without enough gold to pay for a family of eight to flee Vietnam, they had to choose whether to stay together and face whatever came in the new Communist regime, or ris...
2020-01-3127 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#15 - LIVE Episode! Butterfly YellowThanhhà Lại was born in Vietnam in the middle of the war. She wrote about growing up there and leaving on a navy ship two days before the war ended in her first novel Inside Out & Back Again, which won a Newbery Honor and a National Book Award and eight years later is still a New York Times bestseller. She is the youngest of nine children raised by a single mother. Her father went missing during the war when she was just one years old. Her life in America would begin in Alabama and despite the trauma that was...
2019-12-1245 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#14 - The World Looked AwayTom Pham, was born in 1971 in Saigon as Hung Quoc Pham. At the end of the Vietnam War, his father Quoc Pham, a former South Vietnam Naval officer was sent away for many years in re-education camp. His mom was left with young children to care for in a war-torn country. Tom was sent to live with his grandparents at age four until one day, a father he barely knew started to appear again. And the two of them would escape Vietnam in 1980 when Tom was just eight years old. Tom shares what it was like growing up in...
2019-11-0629 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#13 Bonus Episode: Miss VSAVBP Student Spotlight: Growing up in Brooklyn New York, Vivian was not surrounded by many Vietnamese people. Her parents fled Vietnam by boat as refugees in 1978. And while she grew up in the largest melting pot in America, Vietnamese-Americans don’t even come close to 1% of the entire population in New York City. She never connected with her heritage until college, when she met a group of passionate and supportive students who recruited her to join the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA). For the first time, she felt proud about her background and a sense of belonging.
Featuring Br...
2019-09-2620 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#12 - Bolinao 52In 1988, a group of Vietnamese boat people attempted to flee their country in search of freedom. Once at sea, the boat's engine died, leaving over 100 people stranded in the ocean. What happens next is an unbelievable story of perseverance that changed the lives of 52 survivors forever. Award winning documentarian Duc Nguyen, shares his journey in unraveling this story and making this regional Emmy award-winning film.
Film (English): https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bolinao52
Film(Tiếng Việt): https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bolinao52viet
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/righthereinmypocket
2019-07-2227 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#11 - Live Episode! Nailed ItIn virtually every city, state and strip mall across the U.S., people get their nails done in salons likely owned by Vietnamese entrepreneurs. How did our community come to dominate the $8 billion dollar nail salon industry? Director Adele Free Pham set out to explore the history of Vietnamese nail salons and discovered it all began with 20 Vietnamese refugee women and a chance encounter with famed Alfred Hitchcock actress and humanitarian Tippi Hedren. The "first 20" Vietnamese manicurists sought a way to support their children and families, unknowingly sparking a cultural phenomenon.
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2019-06-2624 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#10 - The Guy Who Steered the ShipLeo was only 26 years old, one of the youngest crewmen on the US Navy chartered military vessel, the SS Trans Colorado. On August 11, 1980 in the midst of a storm, Leo was on watch to steer the ship, when he spotted a small fishing boat far away with two men holding up a red flag in distress. Little did he know that his crew was about to change the fate of 67 refugee lives on that boat.
2019-05-2816 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#9 - Cultural UnderstandingIn 1980, Nesta arrived at the Singapore Refugee camp for the first time, looking to do something meaningful with her time and skills. At first, she was overwhelmed by the chaos and traumatic experiences that the refugees had just gone through. Using a combination of her training, pure instincts and cultural understanding, Nesta became instrumental in helping the refugees transition into new lives and resettlement countries. The experiences at the camp also had a profound effect on her professional and personal life.
2019-04-1719 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#8 - Sound of FreedomMeredith couldn’t bare to sit back and watch the boat people crisis unfold in the news. In 1979, she was among one of the first to volunteer at a makeshift refugee camp at 25 Hawkins Road, Sembawang, Singapore; the site of a former British barrack. She started the language program at the camp, and touched the lives of over 30,000 refugees. Including one young man, with Meredith’s help, was able to hear the sound of freedom for the first time.
2019-03-2715 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#7 Bonus Episode: A Liminal SpaceVBP Student Spotlight: Tuan Pham, a graduate student from Yale School of Art, talks about living in a liminal space as an immigrant in America. As a child transitioning and navigating the ‘unknown’ he was constantly trying to bridge the ‘what was’ and ‘what next’. An introspective journey over the years from rediscovering Vietnam and himself, to studying Vietnamese artists, has enabled him to appreciate that ambiguity can give you the freedom to explore and create. And how that inspired his winning logo design for the Vietnamese Boat People which portrays the arduous journeys and the stories of the human spirit
2019-03-0616 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#6 Bonus Episode: Understanding One’s NarrativeVBP Student Spotlight: Beatrice Bui, a student from University of California Berkley, shares how her family came to America and how the stories of the Vietnamese diaspora has influenced her as a designer. She won the VBP design People’s choice award for her original design that portrays the struggles of the Vietnamese boat people refugees and the inner-generations that connect to form the community and the resiliency.
2019-02-2012 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#5 - Slumdog BrothersChris is the third child out of seven kids. He remembers vivdily the drastic change overnight of going from riches to rags, from pampered baby to slumdog in a war-torn country. He did whatever it took to survive and make money to care for his younger siblings. He was 13 when he made his first attempt to flee the country with his brothers. This is a story about brotherhood and the sacrifices a mother makes, so her children could have a better life.
2019-01-2821 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#4 - Riches to RagsSteve, born in 1961 in Vietnam, was only 14 years old when the South had lost the war to North Vietnam. The eldest son of a socialite family, Steve’s childhood was filled with whatever he wanted. All of that disappeared overnight. A wealthy boy who had never had to do anything for himself but enjoy life, was suddenly forced to become a man. As the oldest child of seven, he quickly felt the burden of having to provide for the family.
2018-12-1725 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#3 - Three Days Old - Part 2Episode 3 continues the story of JoAnh who was just three days old when her family had to flee the city of Da Nang Vietnam, just 30 days before the Fall of Saigon. After the war ended, families were stripped of any wealth and personal possessions and many were separated and sent to reeducation camps under the Communist regime. JoAnh’s family escaped Vietnam in phases, eventually reuniting in America in 1981. She shares her earliest memory of what life was like as a refugee child and the importance of having family during the challenges and transitions.
2018-11-2013 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#2 - Three Days Old - Part 1On March 30, 1975, a Saigon government spokesman said that radio contact with South Vietnamese port of Da Nang had been lost, indicating that the city had fallen to the North Vietnamese. Just days before, a mother wrapped her three-day old baby in a hand-knit sweater as she prepared to evacuate the city of Da Nang. The family, with five other children and a newborn, fought their way through the flooded streets of rampant panic would later get separated, including losing their newborn baby.
2018-10-2918 min
The Vietnamese Boat People#1 - Prelude
Hi I'm Tracey Nguyen Mang. I was just under four years old when my Mom organized an escaped from the Vietnamese Communist regime in 1981. With nothing but clothes on our backs, she left everything behind and took three girls under the age of 10, deep into the jungle in the middle of the night, and eventually out into the treacherous seas. Thirty-seven years later, I'm on a mission to document every part of that escape and the events and turmoil that led my family and many others to choose the possibility of death if it meant freedom and safety on th...
2018-10-0810 min