Operation Reunite

Operation Reunite

Author: VietnameseBoatPeople.org August 18, 2021 Duration: 24:53
Trista 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 down of her journey that successfully led to reuniting with her birth mother and siblings. In 2003, Trista started a nonprofit organization, Operation Reunite, to provide information and support to other Vietnamese adoptees going through a similar journey and to build a DNA data bank for families to use to try to identify loved ones.

There are stories that shape history, and then there are the ones history nearly forgot, carried across oceans by those who lived them. The Vietnamese Boat People is a collection of those voices. This podcast moves beyond the broad statistics of the post-war exodus, focusing instead on the intimate, human-scale narratives of what was lost and what was forged. From 1975 into the early 1990s, nearly two million people made the desperate choice to flee by sea, embarking on journeys where the outcome was never certain. Through firsthand accounts and curated interviews, each episode delves into the complex tapestry of hope, profound loss, and quiet resilience. You’ll hear not just about the perilous escapes and the struggle for survival against pirates, starvation, and storms, but also about the nuanced reality of resettlement and the long process of building a new life in a foreign land. Created by VietnameseBoatPeople.org, the series serves as an essential oral history archive, ensuring the term "Vietnamese Boat People" is understood not as a monolithic label, but as representing millions of individual dreams and enduring spirits. Tune in for a deeply personal exploration of a defining chapter in modern diaspora, where every conversation reveals the weight of memory and the strength required to cross an unimaginable horizon.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 61

The Vietnamese Boat People
Podcast Episodes
A Return Home [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:26
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, pr…
Cooking in Community [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:35
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 cl…
Breaking the Silence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 17:03
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 sil…
Do you speak Vietnamese? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:35
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 le…
Season 7 Trailer - THEN & NOW [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:40
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…
The Sampan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:16
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 pare…
Live Episode! Mother, Métis, Memory [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:23
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 co…
A Love Story [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:07
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…
Ngày Về Của Bố [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:03
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 im…
2023 Mỹ Việt Story Slam [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:12
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 sh…