PodSwap! Dear Asian Americans

PodSwap! Dear Asian Americans

Author: VietnameseBoatPeople.org December 14, 2021 Duration: 1:00:29
Bonus 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 grow it into Tân Tân Foods.Lisa Tran was born in an Indonesian refugee camp, after her parents had successfully fled Vietnam following the Fall of Saigon. Lisa’s parents, Vinh Tran and Mai Nguyen, fled in a tiny fishing boat carrying 13 refugees in 1976 and were sponsored to Oregon in 1981. Many years later, they opened Tân Tân Cafe & Delicatessen in the Portland metro area. Tân Tân means “New Beginnings,” and they were the first Vietnamese restaurant around at that time. Today the business has grown into a consumer products company with homemade sauces being sold in hundreds of grocery stores across America. IG @tantanfoods, www.tantanfoods.comDear Asian Americans Podcast

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
2020 Mỹ Việt Story Slam [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:38
Ten 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 Storyte…
Being Bao [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:44
Bao 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 internat…
Van Da [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:08
Yen 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…
Be Present [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:21
Gene 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 os…
#16 - The Ground Kisser [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:01
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 warf…
#15 - LIVE Episode! Butterfly Yellow [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:35
Thanhhà 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 an…
#14 - The World Looked Away [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:18
Tom 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 y…
#13 Bonus Episode: Miss VSA [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:23
VBP 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 Ameri…
#12 - Bolinao 52 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:56
In 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 st…
#11 - Live Episode! Nailed It [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:14
In 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 indus…