For the generation that fled Vietnam, 30 April is a provocative anniversary. It’s marked by mourning about the loss of country, anger about how things turned out—and gratitude towards the countries that provided refuge. But what are the feelings of the generations that follow? This year I felt our responses to the 50th anniversary reflected a deep sense of ambivalence. Most chose to express feeling gratitude for sacrifices made, for the lives they had now. But others were unsure of how to make sense of it all. This seemed especially true for those who don’t feel connected to the Vietnam of today. There were also responses that tied our collective past to histories of colonization, such as Australia, as well as what’s happening in Gaza and elsewhere.
Some chose to opt out of commemorating altogether. This particular response interested me as it brought to mind a discussion I hosted a few years ago at Cabramatta Library with André Dao, Tracey Lien and Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai for the Sydney Writers’ Festival and Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. A young woman in the audience asked the panel a question that has haunted me ever since.
If we keep writing about the war, doesn’t that enforce the stereotype that we are a ‘war-torn’ community?
It’s a question that deserves serious reflection, especially at this fifty-year milestone. Does the constant remembering mire us in the past, damning us to never escape being framed by war? When I look at my own work, it’s true that I often touch on the Vietnam War; though I do not always centre it. But I’ve come to accept that that’s fundamental to my work because if it wasn’t for this history, I wouldn’t be who I am as a writer and artist. Currently I’m developing a major play set between Saigon 1971 and Sydney 2001, which is about the impact of the war and its consequences—and it’s not all bad. Somehow, I feel a great sense of responsibility about this story. But when I consider my own biography, it’s not surprising that I regularly return to all this history. After all, my father served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. He was in a reeducation camp for several years, before he organised a boat to flee—that’s how my parents met. I was born less than a year after they were resettled in Australia. So, temporally, I was close to the source, yet physically I was far removed. It remains a source of fascination though the way I understand it continues to shift.
One of the programs I made which first altered how I fundamentally saw the war was an audio documentary I produced entitled “Saigon’s Wartime Beat.” In the program, I explored the rock music of the 60s and 70s in Vietnam, a fascinating period of history in the South. Making it revealed my mother’s history as a singer and understanding her better has contributed to our relationship.
Not too long after producing Saigon’s Wartime Beat, I turned my attention to the 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Back then I felt it deserved some sort of second-generation recognition and I decided to organise a night of Vietnamese Australian writing in Sydney. The night attracted a large audience who were receptive to what we had to say. One of the continuing legacies of that particular event, now that I think about it, is how it marked the start of my work as an independent literary organiser. Before then I had organised talks and storytelling nights, but since then I’ve mostly focused on writers in particular.
Ten years later, “The Things We Carry” occurred on 15 April 2025, with in-kind support from the Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta and part-subsidised by generous grants I received to develop my play. The title riffs off The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, placing a different spin on the title so that it centred on our voices. That night, under the canopy of twinkling fairy lights, the courtyard of the Riverside was transformed with a performance from Vietnamese traditional band, Nostalgia, followed by poetry and stories from Annabella Luu, Thang Luong, and Antoinette Luu. Afterwards, our discussion panel was joined by psychologist Chris Tran.
I think it’s fair to say that Annabella’s and Antoinette’s poetry made the night feel particularly special. It was a powerful experience to hear from these two young women who not only conveyed what many of us felt but also provided a glimpse of the next generation’s preoccupations as well as strengths. I was touched that it was the first occasion they both wore áo dài, ones that had belonged to their mother who also performed that night in the band.
Our intergenerational conversation was also a highlight, a rich and deeply felt exploration of how we have all reckoned with the past as well as finding ways to heal and make meaning from what we’ve inherited. Below is an edited transcript of what was shared because it seems important to record the event for posterity, though it’s also true that the power of such gatherings is because they are ephemeral, never to be repeated again.
One final thing I wanted to note before diving into the panel below is the night received detailed coverage from SBS Vietnamese, a vital channel for the diaspora in Australia. If you understand Vietnamese, you can listen to the SBS Vietnamese podcast and read the accompanying article. Thank you to Mai Hoa Pham for her beautiful words and for being a bridge between generations and languages. Thanks also to our photographer Tammy Dang for the wonderful photos.
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Sheila Ngoc Pham: What I’ve noticed recently of the framing of this anniversary is that people prefer to talk about it as “50 years of Vietnamese settlement in Australia,” thinking about it in a more positive light. But at the same time, it’s also true that it’s 50 years since the end of the war, which represents a real kind of sadness in the Vietnamese community. I think we can all acknowledge that, because of those events, that’s how our families came to be here, and from that we built these new lives and a whole other story that branches off from Vietnam is in Australia now. I’d like to hear more about your family stories. What do you understand of how they came here?
Chris Tran: My grandparents and great grandparents, they all came from the south of China. They moved to Vietnam for work. With my mum’s side, there was a bit of a chain reaction sparked when my eldest uncle was conscripted into the South Vietnamese army. I don’t know too much about it. All he says is that it was hell: the training was hell, being in the army was hell. That he tried to run away every year or two, but they’d find him and bring him back. And once the North Vietnamese won, he was being watched, felt really unsafe and grabbed two family members and left. My other uncles were hiding so they didn’t become conscripted as well. So, the whole family just uprooted and left and joined my uncle.
On my dad’s side, he was actually born in Cambodia and moved to Vietnam when he was about 12 to work and learn how to repair watches. He didn’t really have his parents – his grandparents sent him to learn a trade. And because he was a foreigner, foreigners were being rounded up and taken to camps. So, he left, came here, stayed in a share house in Punchbowl with a whole bunch of people, met my mum, and then they started a life here in western Sydney.
Sheila Ngoc Pham: That’s incredible family history. One thing that strikes me is you mention the things you don’t know. I think that’s a theme that has come up with all of us, so much we just don’t seem to know or we’re trying to understand and work our way towards. Thang, you were in Vietnam at the time the war ended, as you left on the 30th of April. How have you now patched up the story because you have so many gaps in your own knowledge and your own understanding of your family’s history and your own?
Thang Luong: Because my family were torn apart and a couple of years after I came here, I really psychologically just retreated and I didn’t really understand what was going on. But thankfully there were other family members who were able to take care of me. My father is almost like a ghostly figure to me. He never spoke about his family at all. He came from North Vietnam and at some point he went to Saigon… because I don’t read Vietnamese, I had no idea the significance of all his precious documents, and he would scold me if I moved one newspaper to another part of the place if I was cleaning up. My mum was banned so I didn’t see her for over 25 years. So, there was zero knowledge about my mum; it was only in the last three years that she told me she survived World War II when the Japanese were in North Vietnam, when up to two to 400,000 people perished. Luckily, she was connected because my grandmother was a nurse working for a French hospital, so when Vietnam was divided at the militarised zone, my mother’s side of the family went to Saigon. But I still don’t know when the story starts, I’m always in this loop.
Sheila Ngoc Pham: So I met Thang a couple of years ago at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and started to think a lot about what it means to have an intergenerational dialogue. Thang’s a little bit older than me and, in fact, we represent all the generations tonight, because even in the band I understand there’s someone who’s a teenager right through to their sixties. Chris is in his thirties, I’m in my forties, Thang is in his fifties. And Annabella and Antoinette, they’re in their twenties. I love the continuity and the intergenerational friendship and dialogue we’ve been developing. When I hear both of your poetry, I do feel you are a bit further removed than what I am from the source and I wanted to ask you: is it through your writing that you are trying to capture this history as well?
Annabella Luu: We’re sort of removed from everything that happened with the war. All that we know of it we can’t really find in history textbooks because they’re often biased and there’s such a disjunct between what a history textbook says versus what your family experiences. My poem was about my biggest regret. My regret being that when you’re young and you really care about playing, you don’t really care about your history, colonialism. Not at 10 years old. And my biggest regret is not speaking to my grandfather because he had so much to say—but bless my sister, she had recordings of his stories.
I think as I grow up, I realise now it’s really not too late to learn about those kind of things because, again, it doesn’t end with him. It sort of continues in my family and I learn new things about him when I talk to my family as well. So, they’re sort of my access points rather than a history textbook. A mantra that Annette and I keep repeating is that the past was never too late.
It’s like what Annette’s explored in her poem: there’s ways that our ancestors lived through us in ways that we don’t even realise. From the way we exchange little phrases in our kitchen to the foods that we eat and just all of our little tendencies. So yeah, it is really hard and it is really intimidating when you get to the ripe young age of 21 and you realise there’s a whole history behind you that you don’t understand. One thing I’ve been telling myself, and that I learned from another artist whose name is Linda Sok, is that things like storytelling, poetry, art, are just as equally reliable archives as any other academic resource that there is.
Sheila Ngoc Pham: That’s a beautiful thing that Linda has imparted to you—and I think I would agree. And I hate to tell you, but it doesn’t seem to get that much easier. I have a lot more “academic” knowledge about the war, and I’ve done so much more research, so much more writing, so much more thinking. And yet I still find that it seems very difficult to be able to bridge that chasm. As time has gone on, I’ve tried to shift my thinking about this, and organising tonight is for us to come together and find new ways of making meaning from this experience.
I guess there is no definitive account of our own histories, but it’s a blessing, I think, to have elders you can talk to and to hear from others. I suppose that’s something Thang that you’ve felt that you’ve lacked from what you’re saying, not having those elders to be able to hear from. But it sounds to me that you’re also now reaching a point where maybe there’s some healing that’s happened as well, especially the last few years.
Thang Luong: I’ve had mental health counselling in the last few years and I guess a lot of the hurt has come out of me as a result. I just keep digging through his documents, get a few translations going, ask family relatives what’s going on, the pictures coming slowly together. But if I was an AI algorithm, if you could put 30,000 Vietnam War books in my head, plus another a hundred thousand written in French and a lot of other languages, maybe I’d get closer, but I’m probably at, I don’t know, I feel like 1% sometimes.
Sheila Ngoc Pham: It does often feel like that. Chris, I wanted to ask you, hearing what you’ve heard tonight too, from what Thang has said and what everyone’s shared, and wearing your psychologist hat on specifically, how do you reflect on the legacy of the war and the refugee migrant experience and its impact? Do you think that 50 years on that this is what healing looks like? How can we all collectively grieve as well as come together as a community?
Chris Tran: Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff there. So, I guess firstly, we’ve heard about all the suffering, all the death, but then there’s all the little things along the journey as well. So just like you guys, I missed a lot of opportunities asking my grandma stuff when she was alive. So now I’m picking my uncle’s brain while I can. And from what you hear the typical things about being at the refugee camp and not being certain when or if you’re going to leave, but even that you’ve left behind family members, you’ve left behind your dreams, what your life was going to be like.
Then there’s the coming here and having those power imbalances when you’re facing racism for decades, and the shame that that brings. So, if you actually think about the sum of all those things, it really makes sense that with our elders, there’s that goal of getting security, that stability, that constant fear. I know that my dad instilled a lot of fear in me, so much so that I felt paranoid at times. And it takes a really long time to let some of that stuff go.
I think that’s the thing we first need to actually be aware that we are carrying some of this stuff and some of this pain if we want to do anything about it. We also need to commit to healing and doing the work that it takes. And it’s not easy; it’s hard. A lot of people when they start that process, it’s really painful, it’s really tiring and you probably run away from it a couple times before you actually commit to it. And having things to motivate you, like your loved ones. But also knowing that we matter as people as well and matter enough to heal.
Then there’s a lot of things we can do to heal. We’ve talked about expression and art: that’s a really good way of doing it. Therapy as well. But I guess one protective factor is connection to culture. So all three of you have talked about things like language, like little things that we do that we’ve learned from our parents and our uncles and aunties. And then I guess the other thing is connection. We all share these long histories together: there’s centuries if not thousands of years of history. There’s this thread that connects us to everyone else and all our ancestors before us. So I guess coming together and supporting each other is one way to do it.
Sheila Ngoc Pham: Chris, you were talking about the things that we carry, which is the title of the evening, but also you were talking about protective factors and that’s something that you carry as well. That’s actually a positive thing. It’s not a burden. And I wondered what everyone thought about this. What other things that you carry?
When I think about this, my answer changes as the years go on too. But I suppose I find it difficult now to think of it as a very negative thing. I actually think that this is just the journey that my family went on, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without all of that having happened. And even though it was a terrible thing objectively—a war and people died, I feel like a profound sense of gratitude that I’ve been able to have the opportunities that I have and the life that I lead as well. So I guess the thing that I could say I carry, especially these days with my own children: a sense of gratitude that this is the path that we’ve taken. I wondered what your reflections were in terms of what do you feel like that you carry both in the negative sense and maybe in the positive sense too.
Antoinette Luu: It’s so funny, when you grow up with immigrant parents, there’s always that argument of anything that you are suffering through, they would’ve suffered through 10 times harder. It’s like, “Oh, when I was your age, I would’ve done this, this, and that.” And I do think there’s a lot of truth in that. Obviously, sometimes that can make your suffering feel really small, that comparison of suffering. Sometimes it’s almost not even comparable. But I’ve sort of tried to shift my mindset to not say, “Oh, my suffering is so small in comparison to the generation that came before me.” Because I think that thinking tends to dismiss what you’re feeling. But sometimes when I think about what my parents had to go through and I only know half of it, it does make the thing that’s causing me grief, feel smaller. It makes the pain itself feel smaller and therefore more manageable.
So I guess that skill—if you could call it a skill—is something that I carry. Also, I think as someone who’s coming into her own as an artist and a writer, the thing I carry right now is the war has created almost an imperative for me. I learned this coming from Vivian Pham’s event, “Stories Are Seeds.” It was all about building bridges between who we are as Vietnamese people who came as “boat people” and building bridges between what’s going on in Palestine right now. And what is our relationship as “boat people” who come here onto lands that are unceded and stolen? And how do we honour the traditional storytelling? I think coming from a legacy of war has fueled that imperative within me to create bridges.
Also I feel a bit of responsibility now to take all of these fragments I have of being Vietnamese and try to make sense of them, try to make some sort of meaning of them. There are some days that it’s really hard and I think, why am I even doing this? Then there’s other days that it brings me a lot of joy and it’s very satisfying when you can connect some dots. It also just reminds me, cultures are meant to be exchanged, right? They’re not meant to be stepped on or stamped down or stolen.
And so the biggest thing that I carry now, if we’re looking in a positive sense, is that I am teaching myself Vietnamese /getting my mum’s help. Only in the last year I’ve started to treat my mum like a human being and not just a mother. And I think that’s so important. That’s what my second poem was about. I started talking to her about literature and poetry – and for some reason, only in the last year, I found out that she wrote as a kid in Vietnam. Somehow for 20 years I didn’t know that because I never cared to ask. So what I carry with me now is the project of using art and poetry and storytelling to open ourselves up. That can be really painful at first, but I think realistically that’s what the task of healing looks like.
Thang Luong: I was just reflecting on when my parents broke up. I was probably praying to God every day of the week because it was all about hope. I carry the same hope I had as a 12-year-old, that the world around us can be compassionate. My mum’s taught me about being compassionate; if we care for each other and if we also exercise some self-care, the two will go hand in hand. And hopefully people can let go of some of their ego and talk about some of their fears and really break down those communication barriers that the world seems to put up.
Chris Tran: I definitely carry a lot of anxiety from my dad, but I carry my mum’s personality. So she was that person, just like her mum, who felt responsible to be there for other people. They had to big family and she was always the one that went and talked to people when they felt sad or angry. She was there to help people out. She was the first one there when a kid was born. People would always come to the house and do favours for us and say, “Well, mum is always helping people.” I’ve tried to take that into work as well. So for people who know psychology as an industry, it’s very Anglo and Eurocentric. And after many years of working for other people, it was time to try and pitch in to our community.
Sheila Ngoc Pham is a writer, editor, producer and curator. She has written for arts and cultural institutions and a wide range of literary and mainstream publications, and is the 2025 Imago Fellow at the State Library of NSW. Sheila is a contributing editor to the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network and has held editorial roles at the ABC, producing radio documentaries and stories. Her full-length radio features include the Tongue Tied and Fluent series (2019) (co-produced with Masako Fukui), The Lost Cinema of Tan Hiep (2016) and Saigon’s Wartime Beat (2012) – with her feature about Vietnam’s rock music history inspiring the mainstage play she is currently developing with support from National Theatre of Parramatta. She curated an exhibition of Đông Hồ paintings (2019) for the State Library of NSW, and most recently, MÌNH (2023) for Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. Her parents came to Australia as resettled refugees in 1980, eventually settling in Western Sydney in 1982.
Thang Dac Luong is a writer and lawyer, who was born during the Vietnam War. In June 1975, his family was one of first several hundred refugees to arrive in Sydney. He is inspired by his late father who was a jailed journalist during the war. His novella Refugee Wolf (Flying Pig Media, 2013) is inspired by The Three Little Pigs fairytale and his experience of facing racism. It’s a dystopian, allegorical comedy which satirises a society of excess and shows how it fears asylum seekers and refugees.
Annabella Quỳnh Luu is a Vietnamese-Australian writer, slam poet, and perennial student from southwestern Sydney. For Annabella, poetry is a way to access the tenderness of our hardened selves. Her work sustains an ongoing conversation between her cultural heritage and her experiences as a second-generation daughter of refugees living on Darug Land.
Annabella studies English, Creative Writing, and Screen Production at UNSW. Her family, friends, and writing community are the lifeblood and core audience for her writing. They have inspired her to learn Vietnamese.
Annabella has performed her poetry at Sydney Opera House, the Museum of Contemporary Art, FCMG, Sydney Town Hall, Bankstown Poetry Slam, West-Side Poetry Slam, UNSW and most notably, in front of her dogs. She has published her writing in Platform 1 with Story Factory and featured on FBi Radio. She has also exhibited her visual artworks at AGNSW, Tweed Regional Gallery, and PYT Fairfield.
Antoinette Luu is a Vietnamese-Australian writer practising in south-west Sydney. Her alchemic process of writing and editing reworks her cathartic scribbles into profound poetry, immortalising both her youth before it is over, and her culture before it is erased. She currently volunteers with the Bankstown Poetry Slam and was a three-time finalist at their National Youth Poetry Slam. At the University of New South Wales, she majors in English, Creative Writing, and Screen Production, and is an editor of the UNSWeetened literary journal.
Chris Tran is a psychologist who supports people from immigrant families to improve their mental health, family relations, and intergenerational healing. His parents and extended family were refugees who fled Vietnam and settled in Western Sydney. He strives to give back to the communities that have nurtured him by helping community members gain independence and balance, so they can live their own lives. Through his work in NGOs and the public sector, he has also supported people with disabilities, parents, and organisations with making the changes they desire.
