When Lang opened the door to her new home, she found the house fully furnished, the refrigerator and cupboards stocked with Vietnamese food, rice, bowls, even chopsticks! The church would take turns sitting with the kids whenever they went to ESL classes, even giving them a ride to the classes. Back in Vietnam, “we lived a very good life,” said ... Read More »
I just felt like America was a “land of opportunities”, and when I received a job offer that required moving here… I just took it. I don’t think it really sunk in until later, when I had time to process the fact that I was moving to a whole new country by myself. Did you prepare for the move? If ... Read More »
Quy Lee tells a gripping story of his escape by boat from Viet Nam, along with 264 passengers he took along. Also, time in a Malaysian Refugee Camp, followed by a new life in the USA. Quy was part of a storytelling event called “When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Stories of Escape and Refuge.” It was co-sponsored by the ... Read More »
On November 1, 1955 the Vietnam War began, the North Vietnamese against the South Vietnamese. It was hard for the people and for the government. Tons of people had to leave. People couldn’t live under these conditions. The north came over to the south and robbed the south. Kim’s family (name changed) left when she was eighteen years old to ... Read More »
In 1999 I married my wife and my oldest child was born the next year. Even though I was now a father, I knew full well that life in this country could not continue. I had spent the previous four years before my marriage traveling around Myanmar. Based on these experiences, I learned something about my own country: that there ... Read More »
Seng Ra was born in Myanmar. When she was 16, she ran away from a civil war. Afterwards, she sheltered in a refugee camp in Malaysia. When she was a month away from her 18th birthday in 2008, she came to the United States with the help of UNHCR. Seng was sent to a Refuge Foster Family home in Concord, ... Read More »
Watch Quy present his story in front of an audience, or scroll down further for the written story. It was 1975 in Vietnam. Quy was living in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. All around him, he was seeing effects of the Vietnam War and communist control. Ethnic Chinese like him were being discriminated against to the point where their ... Read More »