Leaving Saigon chronicles the Nguyen family’s flight from North Vietnam in 1954 to escape the communist takeover and begin anew from a Saigon resettlement camp. In the South, Hoan Nguyen struggled to support his five daughters and two sons and the family grew steadily more prosperous. From the refugee camp, they began life in Saigon in a one-room house with a dirt floor and coconut leaf roof. Over the next ten years, the family fortunes improved and they moved into the Millionaire’s House.
Xuan, the oldest daughter, recounts her life from the rural North through the last stages of the Vietnam War, and how it was for her to “grow up ugly” in a culture that was undergoing a great cultural and political change. She worked for the Americans on Saigon’s giant Tan Son Nhut Airport, became involved in the black market, and married an American Army sergeant. Her forbidden relationship with the Americans disgraced her traditional father and ostracized her from her family and neighbors.
The forty-year family journey goes from Nam Dinh to Saigon; from Dalat, Kontum, and Pleiku to the Mekong Delta and Phu Quoc. Saigon fell and the family scattered. For some there was political prison; for others, escape to the United States, new lives, and changed fortunes.
This is a story about adopting a new culture, friendship, and enduring.
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