Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey

Vietnamerica: A Family’s Journey is a graphic memoir by illustrator and designer GB Tran. Published in 2010, the memoir encompasses four generations of GB’s family and focuses on the lives of his mother, Dzung Chung, and father, Tri Huu. Through intersecting narratives from various narrators, locations, and time periods, GB traces his parents’ experiences from their youths in Vietnam during the Japanese and French occupation to the subsequent Vietnam War and their lives as refugees in the US. As a US-born Vietnamese American, GB devotes the memoir to retelling his parents’ stories and portraying an intimate account of the sacrifices and modes of survival that his family endured. In understanding his family’s past, GB develops a stronger appreciation and respect for them and his Vietnamese heritage. Vietnamerica earned a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal in 2011 and was listed in Time’s top 10 graphic memoirs.

This guide references the 2010 hardcover version published by Villard Books.

Summary

GB divides the story’s events into 12 nonlinear segments with multiple narrators in varying settings. Most sections begin with Dzung Chung, his mother, telling him stories about the family’s past while preparing a meal. As the narrative weaves in and out of the past, GB gradually pieces together the complex history of his family’s life in Vietnam, which provides context for his richer understanding of the present. To help distinguish among the multiple narrators, GB uses different font styles: His mother’s voice is in cursive, and his father’s voice is in all-capital letters. Inside the book’s cover are portraits of “The Cast” at different ages in their lives.

As the memoir begins, GB accompanies his mother, Dzung Chung, and his father, Tri Huu, on a flight to Vietnam, a country his parents left 30 years ago. They’re returning to attend memorial services for Dzung Chung’s mother and Tri Huu’s father. The first illustration is a flashback to a plane in a red-colored sky, as Dzung Chung tells GB that at 30, he’s the same age his father was when they left Vietnam in 1975.

The family visits Vung Tau, where Dzung Chung reunites with her family to celebrate the memory of her mother, Thi Mot. In a more somber encounter, Tri Huu visits the grave of his father, Huu Nghiep, and pays an awkward and cold visit to his father’s second wife. Tri Huu harbors a deep resentment toward his father for abandoning him as a child to join the Viet Minh. In a reunion with his childhood friend, Do, he expresses disdain at Huu Nghiep’s status as a war hero, because Tri Huu thinks his father died disillusioned by Vietnam’s current government and the state of corruption and capitalist materialism in the country.

Through stories from his mother, GB learns that Thi Mot ran a bakery in Lang Son during the First Indochina War. Her husband was accidentally killed by French soldiers, and she remarried. As fighting in the North escalated, Thi Mot was forced to abandon her home and seek refuge in Vung Tau, where she raised Dzung Chung and had a son, Vinh.

Dzung Chung describes how Tri Huu was born in 1941 during the Japanese occupation and was three years old when his father left his family to serve the Viet Minh. To evade repercussions from her husband’s role as a revolutionary, Le Nhi fled their home in My Tho and went into hiding. When she returned, her house was occupied by a French colonel, with whom she began a relationship and had a child. Tri Huu’s family then moved with the Colonel to Saigon.

Tri Huu grew up in Saigon dreaming of attending a school abroad like his brother and sister, but his application was rejected as the administration transitioned from French to American officials. Although he was accepted to a local architecture program, he gave up his studies and enrolled in a teaching program in Dalat to excuse himself from the Southern army’s draft. When he returned to Saigon after three years of teacher training, he married an old classmate, a French woman who remains unnamed in the narrative.

At age 26, Tri Huu was arrested and tortured by army officials searching for his father. Held captive for three months, Tri Huu had no information on Huu Nghiep’s whereabouts and was finally released. He later obtained a teaching post in Vung Tau and commuted there, while his wife and two children remained in Saigon. The distance, their cultural differences, and the trauma of his imprisonment strained their marriage, and his wife left him and their children.

Tri Huu moved to Vung Tau and enjoyed a relatively stable life teaching French at a school. In his spare time, he painted and taught French and Vietnamese to Americans. His closest friend, Do, moved to Vung Tau too. Tri Huu met Dzung Chung when she entered his class as a student. They married in 1973.

Dzung Chung and Tri Huu lived a fulfilling life in Vung Tau, a region distanced from the war’s violence. Dzung Chung earned a promotion at her bank job, and Tri Huu found success as a painter and obtained a high-paying teaching position in Saigon, where his mother, Le Nhi, lived. Dzung Chung’s brother, Vinh, was drafted into the Southern army and wounded in battle. When their American friend, Leonard, offered to help the family migrate to the US, the couple had little interest in leaving Vietnam. Not until the announcement of the US ending their involvement in the war did Dzung Chung and Tri Huu take up Leonard’s offer.

On April 5, 1975, five days before the fall of Saigon, Dzung Chung and Tri Huu boarded a cargo plane to the US with their children—Manny, Lisa, and Vy—and his mother, Le Nhi. The family settled in South Carolina, where GB was born. After the Vietnam War, Do was sent to a labor camp, and Huu Nghiep attempted to reunite with his family only to learn that they’d left Vietnam.

Alternating with Dzung Chung’s narration of the past are sections that delve into the Tran family’s lives in the US and their struggles to adapt. Dzung Chung was overworked as a waitress and mother, and Tri Huu lashed out at his family through emotional and physical abuse. Tri Huu hoarded boxes of items that he refused to throw out, and Dzung Chung often threatened to divorce him. Le Nhi passed away after battling cancer, and GB, along with his older siblings, felt the tensions between their Vietnamese and American identities.

As an adolescent, GB was indifferent to his family’s history. He was insensitive to his mother’s mispronunciation of English and had no interest in taking a trip to Vietnam with his parents in 1994, their first return to their homeland. During this visit, Tri Huu reunited with Huu Nghiep and negotiated his conflicting feelings of anger for his father’s abandonment and sympathy for his devotion to a nationalist cause. When Tri Huu returned from his trip, he gave GB a book about the Vietnam War as a high school graduation present. Having confronted his past, Tri Huu told GB that he could learn something by visiting Vietnam, but GB merely tossed the gift in a box with his other belongings. As a young adult living on his own in New York, GB declined another visit to Vietnam with his parents. However, as he unpacked his belongings in his new apartment, he rediscovered the book his father had given him and called his mother back to ask if he could join her on the journey to Vietnam.