Kevin Truong was born in a refugee camp. His mom fled VietNam 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 Vietnam. As she shares what she has written with Kevin, they begin separate but parallel journeys confronting the traumas of their past and the emotional di ..read more

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 trying to get through to one another despite generational trauma and the force of cultural assimilatio ..read more

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 future of her children througho ..read more

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 family’s history — through war and violence, separation and loss, endings and beginnings. Because while we ma ..read more

Bonus Episode: 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 started a successful company. In 2006 she visited Vietnam for the first time to connect ..read more

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 stories and experiences, along with inspiration from podcasting colleagues Self Evident and PRX, led us t ..read more

Family 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: Sound Editing: Tracey Nguyen Mang Supported by New Jersey Council for the Humanities 2022-23 Action Grant and Quill Hawk Publi ..read more

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 foundation in their lives. She is the matriarch of their family, the eldest who always cared for her younger s ..read more

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 Comics. The MAGIC FISH is his debut graphic novel. It is about an immigrant family, interweaving fairy ..read more

​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 storytellers  Alexander Nguyen, Qui-Shawn Tran, Mai Tran, Trinh Mai, and siblings Huong and Karin Han ..read more