The Vietnamese Boat People

What 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 emotional complexity of reconnecting with a homeland shaped by memory, distance, and love.

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In 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.

Breaking 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.

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.

The 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". 

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 merchant ship and eventually resettled in the U.S. Their boat was tugged to France by the merchant ship and Phillip’s father always dreamed about finding that boat again. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Phillip joined his father on a mission: find the sampan. They embarked on a quest for answers that would lead them to France, then California, and would eventually reunite the group of survivors nearly three decades later. 

Executive Producer: Tracey Nguyễn Mang

Associate Producer: Saoli Nguyễn

VBP theme music: Clarity, Paulina Vo

Other music: The Quiet Hours, TREVOR KOWALSKI; Shifting Waters; HELMUT SCHENKER; I Will Remember, GAVIN LUKE; Image of You, JOHANNES BORNLÖF; Golden Thought; MEGAN WOLFFORD; Dismantle, PETER SANDBERG 

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 Senegalese-Vietnamese communities in Dakar and Malika Senegal. Throughout the First Indochina War, between 1945-1954, France had mobilized an estimated 60,000 tirailleurs in Vietnam. Tirailleurs, or Senegalese soldiers, were a corps of colonial infantry in the French Army and among the forces deployed to Indochina to combat the Vietnamese uprising against French rule. After the beginning of the end of the French Empire, hundreds of Vietnamese women and their children migrated to West Africa with Senegalese husbands, some voluntarily but others against their will. Some soldiers left their wives and took only their children, while others took children not their own and raised them in Senegal without connection to their Vietnamese origins. 

This interview was part of a film screening event hosted by Vietnamese Boat People and Co-sponsored by Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University during Tuấn's first USA solo exhibition Radiant Remembrance opened on June 29, 2023 at the New Museum 235 Bowery in New York City. 

Photo: Taken from Mother, Métis, Memory

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 a way to raise their child alone. Their story is one that proves above all else, love prevails through war, separation, and hardship, even when all odds are stacked against you. This episode celebrates 50 years of their love and marriage. 

This episode is directed and produced by VBP 2023 Mỹ Việt Story Slam storyteller Kim Thái, a writer and Emmy-award winning producer whose work can be seen on MTV, TED,  New York Magazine’s The Cut, Newsweek, and Buzzfeed. 

Show Credits:

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 rituals. In this special episode of Vietnamese Boat People, the Nguyễn siblings are at the helm as our first-ever guest hosts. They’ve brought their group dynamic and conversational style to Vietnamese Boat People’s format, in order to delve into their father’s life, legacy, who he was, and his unique and multifaceted experiences.

The siblings also host a podcast called Growing Up Nguyễn, a story of 4 siblings holding onto our identity while fulfilling our parents’ dreams: the blessings and challenges of being Nguyễn in America.

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 Nguyễn, entrepreneur and owner of CafeCaphe and filmmaker Bao Nguyễn. The event replay and featured stories can be viewed online at www.vietnameseboatpeople.org

Thank you to this year's Story Supporters: Qeep Up, VietFive Coffee, Key to Teas, Red Boat Fish Sauce, Hello to Chao, Quill Hawk Publishing, Media Vines, Traveling Calligrapher, Kahana Press, Contemporary Arts Network. 

Episode Credits