Ho Tran, Tony. Interview April 22nd, 2023.

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00:00:00JENNIFER HO: So, today is April 22nd, 2023. My name is Jennifer Hồ (Jennifer Ho), and I’m interviewing Tony Hồ Trần (Tony Ho Tran) for the Children of Refugees, the Vietnamese American Oral History Project. Thanks for being with me here today, Tony. How are you?

00:00:16TONY HO TRAN: I’m doing great! Thank you so much for having me. This is—I’m excited.

00:00:19HO: Cool! All right. Okay. So, I just wanted to start from the beginning, the beginning of your life. Tell me when and where were you born.

00:00:26HO TRAN: I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1992, St. Francis Hospital. It’s a hospital that is no longer there. I had the opportunity to visit it years ago. It’s just a parking lot now. But, yeah. That’s where both my parents met each other and where they moved to after they left Vietnam. And yeah. That’s where I spent the first year of my life before moving to Sioux City, Iowa, where my family established themselves and where I grew up.

00:00:55HO: Okay. Sioux City, Iowa. Why did your parents move to Sioux City?

00:01:00HO TRAN: From what I understand, they moved out there because they had heard that there were meat packing jobs out there. Like Sioux City’s a big meat packing town with Tyson plants and the John Morrell plants. And there was a big like Vietnamese refugee community there—that was like established back in the ‘80s and the early ‘90s. And also, you know, as a consequence, also like Hispanic families as well. And so, I believe one of my uncles moved out there first before saying like “Okay, there’s some jobs here. We can move out here and have steady work.” And so, they moved to Sioux City where we all lived and shared the same trailer for, I believe, like the first two or three years of my life until my father got into his mind that they should open up their own business and, you know, stop working for the man, so to speak, and, you know, start generating their own income that way. So, he decided to open up a Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant in Sioux City, and yeah, it was a place called The Cow. They bought a space like this old, this hundred-year-old building out on West 7th and Omaha Street in Sioux City, Iowa. And yeah. That was the first home I can remember like if I really think about it. Like we grew up in the apartments that they had like right above the restaurant. (holds up his right hand to indicate above something) And yeah. Me and my cousins and my brother and I were all restaurant kids.

00:02:22HO: Oh my gosh. That’s really cool! How old were you when the restaurant was opened?

00:02:27HO TRAN: I think I was just about two or three. I don’t remember it opening, of course. But my earliest memories are of that restaurant. Like I remember like my brother and I, would al—my cousins would always play like on this wooden staircase that would lead up to our apartments all the time. We would fall off of it constantly (laughs) and like I remember having to bus tables like I wasn’t even as tall as this chair (tapping the chair he’s sitting on) like after running around. Helping fill up peoples’ waters and help take orders and what not. Occasionally bring food out. But yeah. It was a nice little quintessential sort of vision of like what the American dream is or that’s at least what I told myself growing up (laughs). It was probably like immigrants just really coming together as a family and just struggling together, working together, and just trying to make something for themselves. In the middle of the Midwest.

00:03:18HO: Yeah.

00:03:19HO TRAN: Yeah.

00:03:20HO: So, there was a Vietnamese community out there for you, even after you left, even after your parents left the meat packing business then.

00:03:26HO TRAN: Mm-hmm. There was a like—Like I said, like you know with these big companies like Tyson or somebody, you know, they’re not really—they don’t really care. Like they just need people who could come in and work. And so, it’s low barrier and entry for someone who, you know, is fresh off the boat from Vietnam who just wants to make a steady paycheck for themselves and their family. So, yeah.

00:03:55HO: Thank you for sharing that story.

00:03:56HO TRAN: Oh, of course.

00:03:57HO: How long was the restaurant open?

00:03:59HO TRAN: The restaurant was open up until, gosh, I should know this. Well, it’s still open. But my parents and my aunt and uncles, they sold the restaurant back in 2019, I believe. Yeah, that’s right. Right before the pandemic happened weirdly enough. It was like one of those weird coincidences. But they were going to sell this restaurant to a woman who is now running it now and refurbished and revamped the whole place, which is strange because like when I went back to go visit it recently, it looks completely different. Like some of the old charm of it where it’s just like honestly like kind of dirty. Like I remember the floor used to have carpets for years and which is like what restaurant has carpets and carpeting like in there? Like and you know like the walls were dirty. It had like really old like ‘90s decorations and like the fixtures weren’t great and everything. But this woman came in and cleaned house. It looks nice but like it doesn’t look like the home I grew up in. You know what I mean? The restaurant which sort of like raised me and my brothers and my cousins.

00:05:05HO: How did that feel for you, seeing that it was new and different?

00:05:09HO TRAN: Oh, it was a trip. I mean like that might—I think my family really had a complex relationship with that restaurant, to say the least. You know, like especially like, you know, things are stressful enough like coming to this country, I can imagine, and trying to raise a family and trying to work with your family as well, you know. So, it was like my dad and his brothers. They were really kind of the owners of this restaurant. And you know, inevitably, you know, under the best of circumstances you’re still going to have issues, you know. When you’re family, like I don’t know, I feel like that created an environment where they just like butted heads a lot more. And so, I mean, like I can tell you, and my cousins could tell you, too, and so could my brother, about like just hearing fights like going on all the time like in the back of the house. And just like knowing that there was always sort of simmering tensions between the brothers because of this, just this restaurant that they had built together. That, you know, ironically enough had given us our entire lives. Like we were able to build a nest egg because of it. Like we were able to move out of the apartments and into like really nice houses because of it, you know. Like my cousins had a house with a pool. That was a big deal. I remember when they bought that. I was so jealous. But like it was a marker that they had—that we were kind of doing the right thing. You know, the right thing being like really working hard and trying to make something of yourself, you know. You know, and to think like a decade before, two decades before, you know, my uncles, my aunts, my mom, they were fighting for their lives, you know? In this war-torn country like not knowing if they were going to have a future. And so like, you know, that’s just one of the—that’s all I’ll say, you know, that tension, the fights that they had. It was just like it was a trade off from the alternative which was, you know, being in a country that they simply could not be in anymore. At least that’s what they tell me. Yeah.

00:07:09HO: Yeah. Great. Okay.

00:07:13HO TRAN: I’m sorry if I’m rambling.

00:07:14HO: No! Don’t be sorry. Please don’t. (laughs) I just have to—I’m just marinating on what you said. Thinking about the next step. Thank you for sharing that. So, you said there were tensions between your dad and his brothers. Did you have any cousins?

00:07:33HO TRAN: Oh yeah. I have—I grew up—I have cousins in Sioux City and I also have cousins in Texas. Chú Oh yeah. I have—I grew up—I have cousins in Sioux City and I also have cousins in Texas. Chú Vượng (Chu Vuong, Uncle Vuong) is one of my uncles. He lived in Texas. He didn’t—I guess he didn’t—I never asked why but I guess he didn’t want to go in on the scheme to like move out to the Midwest and work in meat packing and then open up this restaurant. But they built a nice life for themselves in Dallas. And I have three cousins there. But the cousins I grew up with in the restaurant there were, yeah, there were three of them. There’s Khanh (Khanh) who is the oldest. There’s Việt (Viet), middle child. And there is Thị, Em Thị (Em Thi, younger sister/cousin Thi). She was the youngest. She was kind of like my sister growing up. Like we were like the closest in age. So, yeah. It was nice. Like we all grew up in that restaurant together for years and it’s weird thinking about it. Because like I remember going to school and just like being so distinctly aware of how different our living situation was from like the rest of the kids, whose parents were like, you know, they’re like lawyers, accountants, like normal stuff. I don’t think there was a single person who worked in the service industry, let alone owning a restaurant. And so, you know, hearing them talk about their family and what they did like during the day. It’s like “Oh, you know, we had a barbeque in our back yards.” Or “We did this and that.” Or I—And if they ever told me like “Oh, yeah. We went to go over to grandpa and grandma’s house” or “Went to go play with my cousins.” It was always to a different house. But like to me it’s like now like the family unit was like one thing. Like we all helped raise each other. We all like interfaced and interacted constantly. There was rarely any private space and so yeah. I remember like being in kindergarten and just being like “Oh yeah. My family is like way different, isn’t it?” and not having realized it necessarily until that moment. Yeah.

00:09:26HO: Yeah. Okay. What would you and your cousins like do for fun together? Or were you just always at the restaurant?

00:09:32HO TRAN: Uh, I mean we were at the restaurant but like, you know, we’re kids. Kids are always going to try to like find ways to have fun. So, we would do that. We would play pretend a lot. We would always go to each other’s houses. My cousins, you know, since they had a bigger family, they were like they were making more money. So, they always had like more toys and like video games. I would always like always beg my mom to go over there. Because like, you know, Anh Việt (Anh Viet, older brother Viet) would have like a huge tub of Legos that I didn’t have. (laughs) And so I had to go over there and play with them. Or he would have—he had a Super Nintendo before me, and a PS1, that kind of thing. And it was fun. You know, kids, they try—they make their own fun regardless, you know, of where they are, you know. You really—you see that anywhere. And, you know, I think you can especially see it if you go to like an immigrant-owned business, like a service business. Like you go to any of these restaurants here in Argyle (motions behind him with his left thumb) inevitably you’re going to see a restaurant kid. You’re going to see a kid like on his iPad or his laptop or a book, drawing like in a corner. It’s a table that’s like their table, that kind of thing. You hear kids screaming in the background. And like—Or you also see like a Hispanic restaurant. Like my barber, he’s a Hispanic man who immigrated here from Guatemala and his family lives at that barber shop, pretty much. Like after school, all his kids are there. They’re running around. They’re screaming. And to me, I mean, like that’s a marker of a good business who’s like they’re putting in everything they can for you. (laughs) Because they need your business. But to me it’s the marker of a family, like getting by, doing the best they can, trying to make something of themselves in this country. And I think that’s beautiful. You know? Like I’m always really happy whenever I go into a Vietnamese restaurant. I see a kid there. I’m like, “Ah, I’ve been there, man. Like I know how it is.” And, you know, they might not like it but, you know, there’s a lot in that not to like. But like, you know, one day they’ll come back to look and appreciate, you know, having something like that. Having the ability to grow up with your parents so close to you all the time, you know. That’s not necessarily a luxury that, you know, even, you know, kids with like parents with normal jobs have, you know. Their parents are away like most of the time. But no. Not with me and my cousins. Like we were always there with our family. But yeah. That’s all to say that kids find their own fun. (laughs) No matter where you are, you just turn whatever into a playground.

00:12:04HO: Do you still talk to these cousins?

00:12:07HO TRAN: Oh yeah! Not like regularly but like we interact as much as we can with like social media. If I’m ever in their city, like I’ll be sure to hit them up. If they’re ever in Chicago, I mean, I hope they know they can always like give me the head’s up and we can meet up for coffee or drinks or something. But yeah. I love my cousins like dearly. Yeah.

00:12:25HO: Yeah. That’s great. That’s really great that you have that shared experience together. That’s very special.

00:12:30HO TRAN: Of course, yeah.

00:12:31HO: Yeah. That’s awesome. So, you mentioned that the other kids had families where their parents, you know, were lawyers or whatever, normal—normal office jobs—

00:12:41HO: Quote, unquote, “normal” kids.

00:12:43HO: Yeah. So, were these other Vietnamese kids that you’re referring to? Or like white kids? Or like what was—

00:12:51HO TRAN: Oh sure, yeah! I mean, Sioux City, Iowa is like primarily white. The school that I went to growing up was a Catholic school. And I was in Catholic school pretty much all my life until university. Not pretty much, that was just all my life until university. And so, it being a Catholic school meant it was also a private school. So, it was like a lot of white kids. I remember we had maybe two Black kids and one other Vietnamese kid in my grade. But he didn’t—I didn’t like have him my class until like I think it was in maybe middle school. It was up until then. But yeah. Mostly white kids which I think added to the idea that I was like “Oh, my family is different.” Not only like is our living situation different but like racially I am a different sort of kid. Like I don’t look the same as everyone else. My name is considerably funnier to them like than some of theirs were. Yeah. Mostly white kids.

00:13:56HO: Okay. You mentioned your last name. Is this your dad and mom’s last name? Like hyphenated?

00:14:01HO TRAN: Yeah! So, I grew up—When I was born, I didn’t have a name. I don’t think my parents had decided what my name was (laughs) and they just had me and I’m not sure if my mom even knew my gender. They really wanted a girl. (laughs) When I came out a boy, it was funny, because they had a—my mom had sewn together a bunch of girls clothes and they had bought a bunch of girls clothes. So, I remember having like a pink hat and like they—my mom showed me all this later—of course I don’t remember it but she showed me later. It was like this little pink outfit for me and everything. And yeah. When I was born, I didn’t have a name or anything. So, they called me baby boy Ho, which is my mom’s last name, on the birth certificate. And yeah. It wasn’t until my mom had talked to a priest that had helped her and my grandmother establish themselves in Pittsburgh, because apparently the Catholic church was really helpful for them in sort of establishing Vietnamese refugees within Pittsburgh there. I’m not entirely sure what it is. I’ve been meaning to look it up for years like just so I can maybe go back and thank these people. You know, God willing, they’re alive. And—But she went to this priest, and she essentially just asked him like “Hey, can you come up with like a list of like American boy names for my boy?” (laughs) And—Because they, my mom and dad had decided on a boy name for me in Vietnamese which was Đông (Dong) which ended up being my name. It means winter in Vietnamese. It also means money. (Note: the Vietnamese word for money (đồng) is actually different than winter (đông).) I’m not sure which one my mom wanted more for me (laughs). But for the American name, they—this guy—this priest came up with a list of names and my mom chose the shortest one that seemed to be the easiest to pronounce as well, which is Tony. And so, not Anthony, just Tony. And so, they went back to the hospital, and they were like this is the boy’s name. It’s going to be Tony. And so, they had my birth certificate updated and everything to just Tony Ho. And yeah. I took my mom’s name for years. I believe it was because my parents weren’t officially married for, yet, for years, for like years and years. So, I had just kept my mom’s name up until sixth or seventh grade until I got to the point where I think my dad had finally—he was just like “No. We’ll get married, and we’ll just make this legit. Like it doesn’t make any sense that we’re, you know, this is happening.” And so, yeah. They—After that whole process happened, they ended up—I remember I had to go to court and everything. (laughs) Like we had to go to like a courthouse to get my name legally changed. So, officially the U.S. government recognizes me as Tony Tran. But I always write Tony Ho Tran. Like I don’t know. Like it’s for me I grew up Tony Ho, as Tony Ho for like so much of my life. That’s what I know myself as. Like and, you know, I’ll write Tony Tran on checks and everything and on the back of my credit card and any official government document. But I’m Tony Ho Tran. Like I need both those names. Like that’s—my mom is as much a part of my identity and forming that as much as my father is. Like I don’t think it makes any sense that like why I would drop her name at all, especially considering like the struggles that she went through to like raise me and also like my grandma went through to come to this country and everything. It’s kind of a disservice, I think, and kind of an insult if I just dropped that. But yeah. That is why my name is Tony Ho Tran. That’s why I always sign it that way if it’s not an official government document. That’s everything on social media, it’sTony Ho Tran. It’s my byline whenever I publish something in my job. And yeah. That’s kind of the origin of that.

00:18:02HO: Okay. Thank you for explaining that and sharing.

00:18:04HO TRAN: Of course.

00:18:06HO: Was it important to your parents that you legally change your name?

00:18:11HO TRAN: Yeah. I think it was very important to them. I think it was—I’m not sure why. I think they wanted it to be cleaner (chuckles) essentially. They wanted it all to just look nicer in government documents and just to have a record straight. And I think, you know, also part of it like they recognize that like we’re in America now. In America, we take the guy’s name, someone can tell you take the husband’s name when someone marries. And, you know, everyone’s—the father’s name has to be there. It has to be clean. So, and it did help clear up a lot of confusion growing up because I remember, you know, I would have kids over and they would greet both my parents and they knew me as Tony Ho. So, they would go up to my dad and they’d be like “Hello, Mr. Ho.” And I was like that’s weird. I’d be like “He’s not Mr. Ho. He’s Mr. Tran. Like that’s not his name. You can call my mom Mrs. Ho. That’s totally fine.” But yeah. It did—It mainly made things a lot easier just to, you know— We don’t have to get over that like weird conversation where it’s like “No, my—” you know “His name is Tran. I’m Ho. My mom’s Ho.” We don’t have to deal with any of that. But yeah. It—That’s all to say that it was important for my parents that I change my name.

00:19:20HO: Okay. And did your mom change her name as well?

00:19:22HO TRAN: Yes. I believe she’s Mô Ngọc Trần (Mo Ngoc Tran), now. Yeah.

00:19:26HO: Okay. Okay. Hhmmm. You mentioned your Vietnamese name is Dong. Is that—This is a complicated question.

00:19:38HO TRAN: No. (shakes his head)

00:19:39HO: But how connected do you feel to that name? And who calls you—who addresses you by that name?

00:19:43HO TRAN: That’s a great question. I love that question. Because like, you know, I feel like with immigrant kids who grow up essentially with two names, sometimes I think it’s kind of funny. But, you know, there’s good reasons behind it, you know. Like you want your kid to grow up essentially like normalized, like just like every other kid. You don’t want them to like have to struggle like with explaining their names to people and I understand that. But that’s all to say when I think about my name, you know, it’s always been family who calls me that. It’s always been Vietnamese people who call me that. No one else calls me Dong, except for mom, you know, Mẹ (Me, Mom), Bố (Bo, Dad), or Chú Vượng (Chu Vuong, Uncle Vuong) or Bác Chính (Bac Chinh, Uncle Chinh), you know, Chú Tuấn (Chu Tuan, Uncle Tuan). They’ll call me Dong. Or my brother will call me Dong sometimes. Or my cousins will call me Dong. When I hear that name, it’s like a hug, you know. It’s just like, oooh, I’m home. (chuckles) I like hearing it. I wouldn’t mind it at all. That’s all to say that I wouldn’t mind it, you know, if you, Jennifer, called me Dong. Like I’d be like “Ooooh, that’s kind of nice, actually.” Or like if my, you know, my partner she called me Dong, that’d be cool too. Like I’d love that. But yeah. I feel very connected to that name. Like I wish I had the gumption to use it more. I wish I had used it more when I was young and just sort of like kept that part of my identity instead. But it's weird, you know. Like I also feel very connected to Tony. Like people—everyone knows me as Tony. Like I think it’s silly that my name is just Tony and not Anthony. Like I love that. It’s just like, what a weird thing. Like I’m officially like Tony, like a nickname. Like I think that’s silly. (chuckles) And—But, you know, I love it and, you know, it has—it’s a story, you know. Like people’s names are stories. And I’m lucky enough to have like all these weird combinations of my name. Am I Tony Ho? Am I Tony Tran? Tony Ho Tran? Am I Dong Ho? Dong Tran? Dong “Trần”? You know, like it’s weird and it’s like I’ve been thinking about this. Because I’ve been trying to write more about like my background and where I came up from. And in a weird way, it really kind of illustrates beautifully like this idea of growing up an immigrant child, a second-generation immigrant child in like this country that like tries to put you into these boxes whether or not you’re Vietnamese, whether or not you’re American. And being second-generation—Are you second-generation? Or are you first?

00:22:17HO: I was born here.

00:22:18HO TRAN: You were born here.

00:22:19HO: So, depending on the definition.

00:22:20HO TRAN: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the depending on—I consider that a second-generation.

00:22:22HO: I do too!

00:22:23HO TRAN: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, like I also understand if it’s first-generation. I was always confused about the terminology as well. But like so you understand what it’s like, you know. Essentially, growing up, like not knowing like what identity you immediately fit into because you don’t immediately fit into any identity. And when we think about our names, that is your core—that is the first thing you tell people about you. Like “Hi. My name is Tony.” Or “Hi. My name is Jennifer.” “Hi. My name is Randy.” That’s a person’s immediate connection to you. That name will follow you until you die. That thing will be etched in your gravestone. It will be inked into an obituary about you. Historians years from now will know you by that name, by that identity. And the idea that immigrant, second-generation immigrant kids often have these dual names like these like all sorts of different names that they go by, I think, you know, it illustrates very beautifully sort of like that tension between—with us, like that sort of tension between us and the world trying to pull our identities into separate places, trying to fit them into these little boxes that they don’t fit into. But yeah. That’s kind of like my rant about like immigrant children names like. And, you know, in high school I talked to my cousin about this because Em Thi like because Thi went by Stephanie for most of her life growing up, up until she got out of high school, and she had a conversation with the teacher who asked her what her Vietnamese name was. And she was like “Oh. My Vietnamese name is Thi.” And he just called her Thi for the rest of it, for the rest of the school year. And that was a moment for reflection. It’s like why am I going as Stephanie? I’m Thi. Like that’s what I was born as. Like why would I choose any other name? Like why would I reject this sort of—my Vietnamese-ness, this core piece of my identity? Like I’m ashamed of it. And so now she goes by Thi. And I think that’s beautiful. Like I’m like good for you. Like if anyone can do that, like absolutely, 100%, go for it! Like embrace that, which is, you know, also raises the question like well, why don’t I do it? Like, I don’t know. Like, I like Tony. (chuckles) I also like Tony. Like I like that part of my identity, too, you know. To reject it would be to say like I wasn’t Tony for a while when I was. I absolutely was, you know? Like that’s who I was. That’s who I am. Like I’m Tony. I’m Dong, Ho, Tran, you know, all these different things.

00:24:58HO: Thank you for that.

00:24:59HO TRAN: Yeah. That’s really ranty. That was like me on a soapbox for a while. I was just thinking about it.

00:25:03HO: No! Not a soapbox at all. I think about that all the time. Because, well this is about you. But I have the same thoughts. So, we’ll talk about me later maybe afterwards.

00:25:11HO TRAN: No. Yeah. No. Absolutely.

00:25:16HO: Briefly, I—you mentioned your mom wanted a girl. I’m kind of surprised by that.

00:25:20HO TRAN: Yeah.

00:25:21HO: Do you know why?

00:25:22HO TRAN: I don’t know why. I think they might have thought it was going to be easier. Or like maybe they were sick of boys because my dad grew up with mostly boys except for one sister who died or, I should say, is like missing. We can get into that, too. But I think—actually, no. Now that I think about it, that could be a big part of the reason why they wanted a girl, at least for my dad. Because, you know, my dad grew up with his brothers. It was him and his three brothers and his younger sister, Nhung. And they, you know, they grew up together like in war. They grew up together through an abusive household. They grew up together through famine and like just being dirt poor, you know. Like that does something. I mean that builds something, that shared trauma, you know. They will always have that as siblings. And I—hearing my dad tell it, he was—he very much loved his sister. He was very protective of her. And like he wanted the best of her, the best for her, and everything. And, you know, and he very much loved her and everything. Like she was the first person he saw when he dropped his rifle and changed out of his uniform from the South Vietnamese Army and went back home after the fall of Saigon, you know. Like he went back and was like “I gotta make sure my sister’s okay.” He went back to go find his sister and his dad, you know. Like he very much cared for her. And, you know, he was able to make it to this country. He was one of the boat people, and he was able to make to this country after getting to—after a few difficult tries including one that didn’t work out that ended up—that resulted in him being arrested and being in a prison for a year. (chuckles) Which is a whole ‘nother story. If you want to interview someone, like interview my dad, like he has a story. He has stories for days. Like the things he’d tell you would blow your hair back. But, you know, any immigrant can do that. Like they—that’s the story. That’s the story of the Vietnamese people. That’s all to say my father loved his sister. And, you know, he was one of the boat people. He came here after spending like a week at sea. They ended up in Malaysia as a lot of boat people did at an island called Pulau Bidong. And he stayed at that refugee camp for I think a year or two, working there, learning English, trying to figure out a place where he could go afterwards. And that place ended up being America where, you know, he moved to Pittsburgh eventually. But all the brothers eventually made it over one way or another. Some waited years. Some tried to get out of it as quickly as possible. The—Nhung tried to make it out too. At this point, she had had a baby and had gotten married with a guy. I don’t know his name. I don’t know the baby’s name. I really should find out. (Note: the uncle was Chú Thịnh (Chu Thinh), and their baby was bé Ngọc (baby Ngoc).) But she had tried to find passage on a boat just like my father as well. But the boat didn’t make it or it just didn’t show up. And yeah. And so, my father just didn’t have—he just lost his sister. But it’s weird, right? Because like they don’t know what happened to her. They don’t know what—He doesn’t know what happened to his sister. I’m sorry. I get emotional about this (starts to wipe tears from his face). Yeah, he didn’t know what happened to his sister and he tried to—He’s always wondered about what happened to her exactly. But, you know, there’s always these rumors, especially with boat people. And I did a lot of research about this because I wanted to learn more about what my father went through—I’m sorry. I’m going to try to slow down my talking —about what my father went through. And, you know, those passages were harrowing. They were so harrowing. You know, not only are you fighting nature. It’s like the sea is trying to kill you essentially. You’re fighting the storms. You’re fighting the people on the boat sometimes who, you know, who just want to take advantage of you. You know, there were families like paying all of their money just to take a shot—like a one in a million shot to leave Vietnam. So, it’s true desperation. And one of the other things that, you know—So like one of the other things that these boats would frequently run them into are pirates. Like these boats would occasionally be absconded by like essentially pirates from Cambodia or Thailand. They would come in and they would just, essentially just take a horrible advantage of these people. They would go on. They’d kill all the men. They would rape the women. They would steal any possessions. And they would just leave the boat in flames sometimes. And I remember talking to my father like years—you know, as a child, you know, asking him essentially about his journey and just sort of asking him about what he thinks happened to his sister. And he’s just like “Yeah. Honestly, like she was probably like—Her boat probably got like attacked by pirates and that was that.” Just to think that like that’s something my father has to live with, you know. That’s a thing that, you know, he has to consider about his sister? (fights back tears) Like this girl he loved, you know? It’s tough. And I think about it. And, you know, this woman I don’t know, Nhung, you know, my aunt. I would love nothing more for him, just to have his sister back, you know. I—you know, you can’t give that to your dad. You can’t give everything to your parents, even though they give so much to you, right? (wipes away tears) I’m sorry.

00:31:16HO: I can’t imagine going through that.

00:31:19HO TRAN: No. Yeah, right?

00:31:20HO: Absolutely not.

00:31:21HO TRAN: No. It’s horrible. But it happens every day, you know, Jennifer? It happens every single day. There’s a family going through it right now somewhere in the world, right now. (wipes away tears) And we just let it happen.

00:31:40HO: Was her baby and her husband in the boat too?

00:31:45HO TRAN: Yeah. Some of them—From what I understand, the whole family went. So, the family’s just gone! Like a cousin I’ll never know, you know.

00:31:52HO: Yeah.

00:31:53HO TRAN: An aunt who I’ve never met, an uncle I’ve never met, just gone!

00:32:01HO: Do you know—Did your dad ever meet the baby, the child?

00:32:04HO TRAN: Yeah. I believe he was able to meet like his nephew. I believe it was a boy. I never asked him about, you know, what that was like or anything. I should. But yeah.

00:32:20HO: Do you know the child’s name?

[00:32:21 HO TRAN: No. No, I don’t.

00:32:23HO: Okay. And your aunt’s name was—

00:32:25HO TRAN: Nhung.

00:32:26HO: N-H—

00:32:27HO TRAN: N-H-U-N.

00:32:28HO: U-N. Thank you for sharing that. That’s—yeah.

00:32:34HO TRAN: It’s harrowing.

00:32:35HO: Yeah. Absolutely. Do you know what year she tried to—

00:32:38HO TRAN: I don’t think it was too long after he left. I think he left in ’80, ’80 or ’81. So, she must have left in ’82, ’83. That was sort of the peak period for these people who tried to escape Vietnam essentially, just for the boat people. Where you were just getting like thousands of people each month. Like just trying to make it to one of like Malaysia, or the Philippines, or China, or somebody, somewhere else where they could like find refugee status. (Note: There is a brief cut in the video.)

00:33:18HO: —didn’t go through what your parents went through.

00:33:20HO TRAN: No.

00:33:21HO: But what do you know, or what else do you know about their journeys here? And also, in what ways do you carry that with you, that kind of trauma?

00:33:31HO TRAN: Oh, yeah. No. I think that’s a great question. So, like, so yeah. As we discussed, my father’s journey was like incredibly harrowing. And it’s funny because he had—it was really tough for him. Well, it’s not funny, funny (laughs) but it was incredibly tough for him. And the fact that he did it—he tried to do it multiple times. Like I think it’s a testament to how rough things were for his life in Vietnam. I’m sure it was rough in a million different ways. But it couldn’t have helped that, you know, he had served in the South Vietnamese Army and essentially aiding and abetting with American imperialists. Or, you know this is like language that they used, not my own. But he—it couldn’t have been easy for him. It could not have been easy for his brothers or his sister or his dad. And yeah. So, he tried to escape like a lot of different times—two unsuccessful attempts before, you know, third times a charm. He was able to make it out. And his journey was hard even like afterwards having to like live at the refugee camp for years, not knowing like what was going to happen to him, essentially like where am I going to land up after going through all that? And he did eventually make it to Pittsburgh where, you know, he—in America, he just did like a lot of different odd jobs for a while. He worked as a bartender. He worked as a chef in a Chinese restaurant, you know, washing dishes, that kind of thing. Until, you know, he met my mom and my mom had kind of like I would say on the surface a much easier time about things. My mom was born in 1966, the child of an American soldier and my grandmother who, based on her retelling—she won’t tell me outright, but just between you and me and people that are watching this (waves towards camera, and both he and Ho laugh) and listening to this, my grandmother, my bà ngoại (ba ngoai, maternal grandmother), was a bargirl, which were essentially girls who would go out to bars in places like Sài Gòn (Saigon) and Đà Nẵng (Da Nang), like wherever there was like Americans soldiers posted nearby, and go there and just like flirt, kiss, maybe something more with them to make money, essentially, which is, you know, I think about it. It’s not something I’m ashamed of at all. That I know if I talked to my grandma about it, and I asked her outright about it, she would be humiliated, and she might never talk to me again. Don’t want that! My grandmother loves me like so much, and I love her dearly. And, you know, so it’s funny. Like this idea like this is a topic I could never possibly broach with her. But, you know, I just want to let her know that it is totally fine. Like I would never judge her for having to have done something like that, you know, especially, you know, at a time when things were truly kind of desperate for everyone. Like she had to make money some way and, you know, the way that her friends made a lot of money, the way that she ended up making a lot of money was being a bargirl. Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. And so, the oldest profession for a reason. You know, I’m not a woman. I can’t—I, obviously, couldn’t imagine like the things that she had to go through. But, you know, she used the power that she had, you know, like just to survive. I think that’s something that frankly is like very empowering. Like she was able to wield her sexuality and like her womanhood in order to make money and survive during a very desperate time. And that’s more than a lot of people that she knew could say, like who ended up starving to death or like having their land taken away or whatever else or dying in the war. So, my grandmother was a bargirl at a—I believe it was a bar near Da Nang or if not in the city itself. But that’s where she grew up and she—or not grew up, but she actually grew up in a village hundreds of miles away. I think she was actually like supposed to be wed to a different guy who she didn’t want to like marry at all. Like her parents had arranged a marriage to a man from a nearby village. And she just did not want that. So, her and her friends escaped and, you know, it’s kind of a fun—When you think about it, it’s really kind of like a fun story. They kind of escaped together and they were just young girls. And they were looking to have fun, from what I understand. Like my grandmother wanted to go to the big city and she was just a farm girl trying to live the big city life. And I liked that—I like to think, and I like to hope she did have some fun along the way (laughs). But yeah. I mean—But, you know, that’s all I’ll say. I’m sure things weren’t easy for her as well, you know. Like it’s still prostitution. You’re still doing like just some really tough work. And like having to resort to something like that, you know, I don’t want to take that lightly. Like that was still something that she had to do. It was still trauma, I’m sure, she carries even to this day, into her 80s. And, but yeah. My grandfather, by the way, in the way that my grandmother tells it, was an American soldier who fell in love with her. And they—which is a thing that often happened with bargirls as well, based on my research. They would fall in love with American soldiers like all the time. They would have children with them. They would try to raise families with them. But, you know, tragically he wasn’t interested in like completely starting a family with her, like moving to Vietnam or anything like that, or trying to get her to America. But, he would come back to visit her and her specifically. I remember she, you know, she would tell me stories about how whenever he was stationed nearby, you know, they would go out on dates and stuff. He would take her out on a moped and they would go out and see the country and see the city. Or whatever else. They would go dancing, go drinking, that kind of thing. Eat meals. And yeah. He also had family, though, a family that he, like he was very clear with my grandmother like “I still have a family back home.” And, you know, it’s funny. I think, in times of war, sort of those kinds of things kind of go out the window. Like people, you know, it's easier to accept that kind of thing, you know. It’s war. Things, things are violent. Things are deadly. You don’t know if you’re going to survive the next day. So, you know, why not fall in love, have fun while you can. And he eventually left and by this point my grandmother was pregnant with my mom and she had my mom and was this mixed-race child of this American man. And yeah. My mom had to grow up without a father essentially, without a father, period, her entire life, which was tough for her because I know like—They call them AmerAsians or AmerAsians. Essentially, they’re just mixed-race kids, is what they would call them. Con lai (con lai, person of mixed race) or Mỹ lai (My lai, American of mixed race), they would call these people. And my mom was one of them. She was a My lai or con lai. And because of it, she was like horribly bullied which is something that these kids came up against like all the time, you know. Kids are mean to each other. Kids will bully each other for any little thing. You and I probably know. Like I grew up Tony Ho. That was a silly name. They would make fun of you for any little thing. But especially in Vietnam at that time, if you’re a mixed-race kid, a child of the oppressor, the child of the imperialist, the colonizer, the Americans who tried to come here and change the Vietnamese way of doing things, splitting our country in half, essentially, that to them was like a mark of true traitorous behavior. Like they looked at someone like my grandma and just said “You slept with the enemy, essentially. And you created this child with the enemy.” And they looked at someone like my mom, someone like the rest of the AmerAsian kids, you know, in the country at that time, hundreds of thousands of them, maybe perhaps even millions. And they looked at them as reminders of the violence of something that they did not want to go through, something that tore their country in half. And they took it out on them, you know. My mom was bullied horribly, horribly! Like the stories she tells me. Like it’s horrible. I couldn’t even imagine just being beat up every single day going to school. Being made fun of, you know. They used to do this rhyme with all the AmerAsian kids. I believe it goes like “Mỹ lai, Mỹ lai, mười hai lỗ đít (My lai, My lai, muoi hai lo dit) which means, you know, “AmerAsian, AmerAsian, you have twelve assholes” which is a weird, strange rhyme to bully someone with. (laughs) But they did! Like that’s something my mom heard like all the time growing up. It got so bad like my mom had to drop out of school. She just committed herself to just working on a farm that she lived on. And she was like “yeah. I’m not going to go back. Like I’m just going to—I don’t want to be bullied anymore.” It’s tough. Because like you look at my mom, you can tell she’s a mixed race right off the bat. Curly brown hair, you know, round eyes, double eyelids and everything. Like full lips and her skin was always like darker than everyone else. And she was also tall. Like she just looked different. And so, life was really, really tough for her. And it was also tough for her because like my grandma, my ba ngoai, wasn’t in her life for most of it. My—when my mom was born, my grandmother, she was like “I can’t take care of this kid. There’s no way I can take care of this kid. Like I’m still a bargirl. Like I can’t possibly do this right now.” So, she ended up talking to a family friend, a friend of hers who lived on the farm and worked on the farm, and I believe she owned the farm, and was like “Can you take care of my child? I can’t do this. Just give her a good home and everything.” And so, she did! This woman who ended up being like my, essentially, like my mom’s like other mom that like raised her on the farm, gave her a home, made sure, you know, she ate every day. Gave her a bed. And yeah, my mom was able to have some semblance of—some semblance of normalcy because of this woman. Growing up on this rice paddy. But yeah. Getting to how they got to America. You know, eventually, the United States came to realize that what they did by sending all these young boys over in their teens and some of them like the oldest were probably in their early twenties, over to Vietnam, having a bunch of kids, and then just abandoning them. They’re like “that’s bad.” And so, they—the United States government—made the fair decision to accept any AmerAsian people and give them a track, essentially, to citizenship. My mom was able to take advantage of this. And so, and back then the rules were such that you could bring your family as well, if you could prove that they were your family. And so, my mom and my grandma were able to take advantage of this program in order to essentially just get a plane ticket to America in the late ‘80s. I believe it was like ’88, ’89. Maybe even ’90. But yeah. My mom told me like the night before she went, she threw this big party with her friends, and she said it was like the only time she ever drank (chuckles). And they had some weird like rural Vietnamese stuff to drink. Like they just got a bunch of liquor, and they poured it into a bowl. She told me, I think it was “Yeah. It was very strange. And we would just drink it out of this bowl.” (laughs) With our hands. It’s like that is weird. She was like, “Yeah, yeah. We should try it some time.” I was like, “I don’t know.” (both laugh) Maybe. Maybe my next birthday that’s what we’ll do. But yeah. That’s how they ended up in Pittsburgh essentially. I think they might have had to spend some time in the Philippines just to get the feet underneath them. I know my dad had to do the same thing. Like after the refugee camp in Malaysia, they would send the Vietnamese immigrants to the Philippines where they had schools essentially that helped teach them English, helped teach them very basic things to get by—who’s the President? What a state is. Big cities. That kind of thing. How to order food. How to buy food. Very basic stuff. But yeah. After that my mom flew, landed in Pittsburgh where she was—Like this church helped her and my grandma find an apartment. And they lived in that apartment and my mom was able to find jobs doing tailoring and seamstress, doing it as a seamstress. I think she worked at a mattress factory for her, the first few years when she was in America. But yeah. That’s essentially my mom’s journey. So, like hard, obviously because like she was the child, a mixed-race child, of an American soldier. But also, easy because all she had to do was get a plane ticket. Eventually America was like “You can come to us. Like what we did was messed up.” Being able to recognize like “yeah. That’s our bad.” And yeah. That’s how my ba ngoai, my me, made it here.

00:47:17HO: Wow. That’s quite a story! Can you—I want to—I have so many follow up questions.

00:47:26HO TRAN: Of course. No, no. Take your time.

00:47:27HO: So, this other grandmother, the woman who was your mom’s other mother—

00:47:31HO TRAN: Yeah.

00:47:32HO: —That’s not the woman who came to the U.S. with your mom.

00:47:32HO TRAN: Nope. She, I think, she—Well, she wasn’t blood related to my mom. So, there wasn’t any way that she could have if she wanted to. But I also don’t think she wanted to. She had a farm. Like she had a farm. She had a life. Like she had her own kids and family to worry about there. They weren’t, they certainly weren’t coming to the United States. They were just going to stay, still be there, and still work the farm life and everything. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to meet her before she died. Yeah. My parents they took me and my brother to Vietnam when we were very, very young. I believe I was just five, and he was maybe three. And they just wanted to go back to their country, their home just to see how things were. (chuckles) And so, yeah. I had the opportunity to go to like the farm where my mom was raised and to see how and what that was like and meet the woman who essentially raised my mom. Obviously, being a kid, I didn’t have an appreciation for any of it at the time. It’s something that I desperately want to do which is to go back to Vietnam and see all these places with my parents, you know. Yeah. And just to revisit all these sort of touchstones and stories that they’ve told me over the course of my life about, you know, where they grew up. Like I want to see the apartment where my father grew up. I would like to see the trash heap where he used to dig for food (laughs) sometimes, and snacks, with his friends. I would like to see the river where my mom said that she and her friends would bathe naked and like go skinny dipping, and stuff like that. I’d love to see all these places with them there, you know. But, yeah. That’s all to say she didn’t leave. That woman didn’t leave. She stayed there.

00:49:17HO: Okay. Do you know her name?

00:49:19HO TRAN: No. I don’t know her name. I’ve been told it. I know her name. Like I’m sure if I call my mom, right now, she’d tell me her name. And I’d be like “Oh yeah, of course.” (throws up his hands) But yeah. (Note: her name was Huỳnh Thị Sẩm (Huynh Thi Sam).)

00:49:29HO: Okay. Just curious. Based on your observation, what’s the relationship between your mom and your grandmother. Like—

00:49:37HO TRAN: My ba ngoai?

HO: Yeah.

00:49:38HO TRAN: Yeah. My actual grandmother? So, it’s strange. It’s—Because like growing up, my grandma essentially also helped raise me like during the summers when my parents were working and, you know, we couldn’t—we had the restaurant like all of the time. My grandmother lived in an apartment like right next door. And so, my brother and I would often be there watching T.V., playing around, putzing around. And grandma would be there. And she—My ba ngoai is like the sweetest woman I know. She is, she is about as tall as this camera stand, here. (points straight ahead towards the camera with his left hand) Like she is short. She wears the thick, Coke bottle glasses, and she always looks up at me (both laugh. Tony looks up to the ceiling, imitating his grandmother) like whenever I see her, I’m like “Hey, ba ngoai.” It’s like “Aw, Dong”. Like “hello.” Like “How are you?” She’s the sweetest woman. She’s always like quick to laugh at something that me and my brother do. She’s always quick to ask us how we are doing. If I visit her, she’s doing the classic grandma stuff like trying to put food into me, trying to make me a pot of tea, trying to make sure that I’m as comfortable as possible. Sweet, sweet woman. But to hear my mom talk about my grandmother sometimes, like I understand that there was a side to my grandmother that I do not see. Like the way—And it’s something that I’ve seen when I’ve seen them interact with each other like where they’ll—They’re—You can tell, like “Oh wait. They’re still like mom and daughter.” They’ll still butt heads and like argue with each other. And my mom has told me stories before about how my grandmother, like while she was growing up, was very, very abusive to her, very abusive. Like just hitting her and just beating her, which is insane to me because I look at this woman and like it looks like a strong breeze could topple her over. But like to think that there was a side to her where she was very tough, or she was very—could be very almost malicious, like with my mother specifically, you know. It’s surprising to me. And, you know, even today like their relationship is a lot better, obviously. Like because, you know, ba ngoai’s still her mom. She still loves her mom. But I—my mom will even tell me today, like “Your ba ngoai, like she’s driving me up the wall right now. Like you’ll never understand, Dong, like how mean she used to be and like how vicious she used to be. Like you think you had it bad? Like let me tell you about grandma. Let me tell you about ba ngoai.” Their relationship, I would say, is like, it’s a tense one. The same sort of tension I think—I don’t know. You’ll probably see it with a lot of like gen–intergenerational Vietnamese families where I just like—everyone was just kind of like really tough on each other. But especially, you know, with my grandma and my mom. It could not have been easy for her, right? Raising the mixed-race child in Vietnam at that time. So, I’m sure a lot of it had to do with that, and just taking out her frustrations and everything and her anger like out on my mom, undeservedly, of course. Like this isn’t to make excuses for her. But just to offer up an explanation about, you know, why she might have been like that. But it’s weird, you know. Like I can’t gel it in my mind like this woman I know growing up and used to make me like rice and eggs, like whenever my brother and I were hungry and the woman who raised, who actually raised, my mother, you know.

00:53:19HO: Yeah. Yeah. That kind of abuse really does seem prevalent in Vietnamese, in Asian families, which I don’t think they, like Vietnamese-Vietnamese people, would characterize it as abuse.

00:53:38HO TRAN: No.

00:53:39HO: It’s just more normal behavior.

00:53:41HO TRAN: Yeah. It definitely is. And, I mean, it was something that like my cousins and like I like we experienced to a certain extent. Not nearly that bad. Maybe my cousins (laughing). But maybe, but like not my brother and I. We were still like; I wouldn’t say spanked. Like my brother—My parents used to, you know, they would get like a wooden spoon or something, and smack us on the hand if we did something bad. I remember like the main form of punishment like she would—like if I hurt my brother or something. Like maybe I punched him or roughhoused him a little bit too hard. He came to her crying, you know. We would have had to like stand in front of her, explain ourselves, like fold our hands and explain ourselves in Vietnamese about what happened. And then, you know, then it was time to dole out punishment based on what she thought. She—her main thing was like “Okay. Go grab some chopsticks.” And then that’s when we knew, like oh no! That’s bad. And so, we would have to grab chopsticks and it was typically like one or two, depending on how big we were (chuckles). And yeah. She would just sort of like hold out your hand and she would like whack our hands if like I punched my brother, like “Which hand hurt your brother?” (makes a motion of whacking something with his right arm) “Whaack!” that kind of thing. But, you know, that doesn’t compare to like some of the things that I’ve seen from like my cousin, Viet. He had it really bad. Like I don’t think they ever hit the girls and if they did, I didn’t see it. If they did, it was probably something like what my brother and I went through. But like my cousin Viet was kind of a troublemaker growing up. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a black sheep, because I love Viet and like the whole family loves him. But they—He was diagnosed with like ADD like pretty early in his life, and it’s tough. Because like I don’t think they knew how to deal with it. They just had no—They couldn’t conceptualize about what that means, you know. Even though it certainly existed in their time. They just like dealt with it the way they knew how to deal with it, which is like by punishing him like severely, like physically. We remember like coming home and Viet being, doing something bad and I would just be like in their living room, playing like with toys or something. And like my Bac Chinh would come in and like just angry as hell and just screaming at Viet for something, like “Why did you do this? What did you do?” And like him just physically taking off his belt and he’d be like, “Come here.” And I was like “Oh my God.” That’s crazy. And just like I realize that. It’s like “Oh, it can—it could be really bad.” Just to hear stories from like second-generation or first-generation Vietnamese kids about like some of the stuff they went through, just casual abuse, you know, just super casual, just like. And I think in our parents’ minds, they didn’t realize like that it was bad. Like it was—Like this is not a thing we do here in America and for very good reason. Like you’re actively traumatizing everyone. Like this is horrible. And yeah. That’s all to say that yeah, that sort of idea where it’s like “This is just a normal thing that we do.” It’s very, very prevalent in Vietnamese and Asian cultures.

00:56:49HO: Yeah.

00:56:50HO TRAN: Yeah.

00:56:51HO: Yeah. So, I want to talk about identity, and specifically—This is something that I think about a lot.

00:57:06HO TRAN: Yeah.

00:57:08HO: Who gets to call themselves Vietnamese American? Like what if—How would you—What does it mean to be Vietnamese American? Or Vietnamese? Or American?

00:57:19HO TRAN: Yeah. That’s a deceptively hard question (rubs his forehead with his right hand).

00:57:21HO: Yeah. (chuckles)

00:57:22HO TRAN: Like it’s just like, well, obviously, I’m Vietnamese American. But yeah. Who—That’s a great question. (stares up at ceiling) I’ll put it this way. I wouldn’t call myself—I don’t know if I’d call myself Vietnamese, you know? Like I don’t know if like if I’m there. Like I know Vietnamese like a four-year-old toddler knows Vietnamese. It’s very bad. It’s part of the reason I mispronounce my own last name (laughs) like “Tran,” “Trần,” like it’s just I don’t—my grasp of Vietnamese is very tenuous. But like it’s still such a indelible part of my identity. I grew up like Vietnamese, surrounded by it. Like food, like the food was like—I literally grew up in a Vietnamese restaurant. I think—yeah. It’s tough. Like I—You can call yourself Vietnamese American, I suppose, if you grew up with Vietnamese parents and, you know, they pass on that sense of identity to you in one way or another. But yeah. I mean like I’ve thought about this. If I have kids, for example, if I have kids with someone who’s white, do I get to call that kid Vietnamese American? I would hope so. Because like I would hope that I could engrain enough of that part of my identity into them, where they could feel comfortable being called Vietnamese American. But, you know, at a certain point, like where do you lose that sense of Vietnamese-ness, essentially, where you’re just American? But then again, you know, who gets to call themselves American? Like for a long time, I felt like couldn’t necessarily call myself an American American. To be American, you had to be white. You had to have blue eyes. Your parents had to be married and not divorced, like have a steady job. You had to have a pool and a dog. Like that was to me, like then you could call yourself American. Those people were normal in my eyes. Like that was American. That was something to aspire to. And I couldn’t feel comfortable calling myself that. But also, like I don’t—yeah. Like I said, I don’t necessarily feel comfortable calling myself Vietnamese either because, you know, also growing up I wasn’t ever quite Vietnamese enough for like my parents or my uncles and aunts or the rest of the Vietnamese community in Sioux City. Because I didn’t know the language, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t sing the songs that they sang in karaoke, you know. I didn’t watch Paris by Night. And I didn’t do all these things like where—I also look different, you know. Like they didn’t necessarily consider me Vietnamese. They were like “Oh yeah. That guy’s American.” So, it’s weird. That’s all to say, though, I very much consider myself Vietnamese American. At this point, like I—I’ll tell you this. You get to a point where the identity—you realize like in order to figure out your identity, you know, it’s not something you’re born into. It’s something that you choose, and you take. Like I’m Vietnamese American, because I’m actively trying to be Vietnamese. Like I feel my Vietnamese in my bones. And it’s something that like I’m doing. It’s an action. I claim that identity, you know. You can’t let society look at you and put you into these boxes. You have to take it for yourself. And to me, I claim Vietnamese American. That is my identity and when you realize that it’s something that you want, it’s something that you want to claim, then it’s yours. Otherwise, you know, they’re just words. (chuckles) They’re just meaningless labels, you know. But I feel Vietnamese American because I live it, you know. I want it. I aspire to it. It’s something that I try to—I think about constantly, that I’m made aware of constantly. If I—And that’s how I know that it is mine to take. Yeah.

01:01:37HO: That’s a great answer. Thank you.

01:01:39HO TRAN: Yeah. No. Of course. I mean it’s a—I don’t know. Like I’m sure you’ve thought about it like plenty of—like do I—can I call myself this? Like especially since I don’t know the language and—

01:01:49HO: I mean that’s like probably my most important question, honestly. Because that’s what I ask myself all the time. So, I want to hear what my peers think too, so—

01:01:55HO TRAN: Yeah. What everyone else thinks.

01:01:56HO: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

01:01:58HO TRAN: I’d love to hear your answer to that.

01:02:00HO: Sure. We can talk about that later. (chuckles)

01:02:01HO TRAN: Yeah, yeah. We can talk about that later, yeah. (takes a sip from his water bottle)

01:02:03HO: Um, how do—This is also maybe going to be a tough question.

01:02:11HO TRAN: No. Please.

01:02:12HO: How do people outside the Vietnamese American community see you?

01:02:19HO TRAN: So, like—

01:02:22HO: So, like other American people. Whether they’re white or Latino — x—whatever else. Yeah.

01:02:26HO TRAN: Oh sure. It’s funny because like you only know so much of a person by just looking at them. And like people look at me, they don’t clock as Vietnamese right off the bat. You know, they don’t say “That guy’s Vietnamese American or that guy is a mix.” Like depending on who I’m talking to, it’s all very contextual. If I’m in a place like the Little Village or Pilsen, somewhere where it’s very Hispanic heavy, inevitably something that will happen to me is that somebody will come up to me and say something to me in Spanish because they think I’m Hispanic as well. (chuckles) Like that happens constantly and I’m always getting like directions asked of me like and stuff like that. Like “Oh, I’m sorry.” Like “Lo siento. No hablo Español.” And—But also, you know, white people will come up to me and, you know, I’ve talked about this a lot but like one of the main things that I feel like myself, you, any other Asian American person, especially mixed race people though, there’s a question we get asked all the time which is like “What are you?” Essentially, like what are you? Like what are you? And I get that kind of stuff even today, you know. And you see it form in their eyes. They’re not going to ask you it right away. Like they’ll be like “Hi,” you know, “My name is X-Y-Z. Like what’s your name?” Etc., etc. And then, eventually, it’s like “So, what are you? Like what are you? What’s your racial makeup, you know? Where are your parents from?” That kind of thing. And it’s weird being mixed race. It just makes everything a little bit more ambiguous for people. People don’t know what you are right off the bat. (laughs) It’s funny, the assumptions that people will make of you. Like people assume that like, you know, I’m Viet—Filipino, or like Hawaiian or something else. It's weird. And it’s something that like I don’t necessarily notice anymore. But there was a point where, you know, I’ll walk into a room, and I’ll be like “I’m the only like person of color here.” Like I—And I look way different than everyone else. Or, you know, and like it just feels—And I know everyone like immediately they look at me and they’re wondering. Like that’s the first question like “Oh. What’s that guy?” Like “What is he?” As if I wasn’t human, as if I was this alien species. And, you know, especially growing up in a place in the Midwest, like Sioux City, Iowa where it’s mostly white people. Like going to—you know, we went to church every Sunday and I was always very aware that we were the only Vietnamese family in our particular parish. Like all the Vietnamese people went to Vietnamese mass. We would always go to like the American mass (chuckles) because like me and my brother spoke English, so we wanted to listen to mass in English. And just knowing that people were always sort of like eyes on us, wondering like “What’s their story? Like what’s going on there?” And knowing right off the bat that we were different. I think that does something to you, when you grow up, you know. Being so made aware just of how different you are, you know. It’s always like in your face like right there (holds up his right hand near the right side of his face) wherever you go. And it honestly like resulted in a lot of like self-hatred. But it wasn’t necessarily I realized was self-hatred until like years later. Where I would do this thing where I would always preempt people’s jokes and people’s ideas of me like right off the bat and make fun of myself. Because, you know, like I would be the first one to make a crack about how Asians are bad at driving. Or like how I was bad at driving. Or how I was good at math. I was horrible at math. But I would still joke about it, you know. I would preempt it and, you know, that was a way that I realize like I could defend against the possibility that they would try to other-ize me. If I could beat them to it first, then they couldn’t hurt me with it. If I could hurt myself first (chuckles) like they couldn’t harm me with it. It’s weird, you know, like you can’t shoot me. I already shot myself. It’s a crazy way to think but it was a coping mechanism for me. And I didn’t realize it was like self-hatred until like years and years later. And reflecting back I was like “Wow!” Like I remember I watched a video of myself like just essentially like making a bunch of Asian jokes. And I was like in high school at the time. And I was watching this video and I remember just cringing and just being like “Why did I say all that?” And, you know, looking back now like the reason I did all that was because I was so made aware of it. Growing up I was so made aware of how different I was. And so, taking ownership of hatred, taking ownership of other-izing myself and like making fun of myself and, you know, making all these Asian jokes. Like I could say like “Oh, it’s okay if they do it. I do it. Like, it’s–it’s fine.” And really it wasn’t. Like I was just harming myself in a different way. Like I was just letting these things and these ideas harm me in a different way. It’s funny because like at a certain point like people weren’t thinking that anymore, you know. People weren’t like actively other-izing me, but in my mind they were. Because that’s what I had grown up accustomed to. And it’s weird. I should hope that, you know, we’ve come to a place in society where we wouldn’t necessarily do that to someone. But I can’t say that we have. (chuckles) Like if I ever have a kid, God willing, like they—I would hope that they grow up in a world that where they didn’t feel the need to do that. Because it sucks. (chuckles) It totally sucks. It sucks. It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to look back on. Like I wish I didn’t do that. It’s nuts. I should have been way more proud of who I was and confident in who I was. But I wasn’t. Yeah.

01:08:14HO: It was your learning process, growth.

01:08:16HO TRAN: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

01:08:22HO: So, you said that you’re actively leaning into your identity as a Vietnamese person —Vietnamese American person. So, do you have a strong community of peers then?

01:08:33HO TRAN: No. And that’s embarrassing for me. (laughs) I wish—I was thinking about this. It’s so funny you mention that. Because I was thinking about this. Like I walk my dog a lot because it’s an easy way for me to like take a break from work. And I thought about like how I just don’t have a lot of Vietnamese friends. I have friends who are like people of color, of course. Like my best friend is a Hispanic guy, like but no real like Vietnamese friend that I interface with consistently. Other than Randy (Kim). Like Randy’s great. Like we’ll go out and grab a meal. But like someone I see every weekend or like every week to grab drinks with, just to talk and chew the shit, I don’t have that. And it’s something that like I think I kind of actively avoided for a while. Even in college like I was involved in like things like the Vietnamese Student Association. And I helped form a Asian American fraternity on campus, or a chapter I should say, Pi Alpha Phi. And that was cool because it allowed me to interact with all these other Vietnamese American kids, all these other Asian American kids, second generation. Like we all knew the score. And whenever I did hang out with them, it felt very comforting knowing that like these guys know what it was like growing up the way we did. No one else does. Like we know though. That was cool! But I would also find myself sort of like rejecting it occasionally, being, like opting to be less involved with them than I probably could have, opting not to form as close friendships as I could have. Because I think in my mind I was like “That’s boring. That’s something I already grew up with. Like I already know what it’s like to be Vietnamese. Like I want the exotic thing. I want white friends (chuckles) and like Hispanic friends and Black friends. Like I want these other things.” And, you know, places like the University of Iowa, very easy to make white friends. Like if you want to make white friends, go to college. Go to a public university in America. So, a lot of my friends, my core friend groups, you know, they ended up being mostly white kids. Even today like it’s mostly the kids I hang out with most, other than Miguel and Randy, is probably they’re just white people. My partner is a white person. And it’s something that like looking back now, you know, I regret deeply. I—Because whenever I hang out with someone like Randy, whenever I am lucky enough to be in a place where it’s a lot of other Asian people, it’s great! Like it’s just like “Oh, I’m back home, baby!” Like we know what—And it’s not even like we’re talking about Vietnamese things constantly. We’re not! We’re hanging out. We’re just eating dinner, having drinks. But you feel more comfortable because you know what—that they’ve been through sort of the same thing that you did. Like they know what it’s like to have dinners that your white friends might not have eaten. They know what it’s like to maybe have grown up in an abusive household, to speak Vietnamese as your first language, you know. They know the preciousness of karaoke at a party. They know what it’s like to nhậu (nhau, to drink and socialize) with your dad’s friends. It’s great, you know. And it’s something that like I really, really crave now and something that like I am—I want to actively work towards, making more Vietnamese friends, you know. I don’t know how.

01:12:03HO: That was going to be my next question. How would you do that? (laughs)

01:12:05HO TRAN: Yeah, shhh. I don’t know how. Like form a club, I guess, and just walk around Argyle. Ask people like “Hey. You want to hang out?” (both laugh) But, you know, it’s hard enough like making friends in your thirties, period. Regardless of whether or not they’re Vietnamese. But, you know, I really think what it is like is like I already know plenty of Vietnamese people. I think the idea now is just to reach out to them and just to talk to them and be like “Hey, you want to grab drinks? You want to grab coffee?” Like “hey, I’m going to be in your city. Like you want to hang out?” I think that’s really the only way I can do it now. (chuckles) I’ve thought about like one thing I’ve thought about because I really want to get better at speaking Vietnamese, especially as my parents get older. I’m like I realize like so much of our communication is just horribly limited because of my level of Vietnamese understanding. And so, I want to get better at Vietnamese, especially if I plan on going back to Vietnam. And I was thinking “Oh, maybe I should just like make like a meet—” Because the ability to speak any language, you know, relies on the fact that you need to speak it consistently and be immersed in it. And I was like “There’s nothing quite like that here in Chicago.” And I was like “I should do that, though. Like I should like make a Meetup group where like if there’s any other people who just essentially just want to speak Vietnamese at each other, bad Vietnamese at each other, or good Vietnamese at each other, like we can do that together.” So, that was one idea that I had, where it’s like “Oh, I should make up like a little Vietnamese club.” (chuckles) I think that would be fun!

01:13:28HO: I should introduce you to my brother.

01:13:30HO TRAN: Oh yeah? I’d love that.

01:13:31HO: (laughs) He speaks Vietnamese, not super well. But he really tries.

01:13:38HO TRAN: Good for him!

01:13:39HO: And when he doesn’t know a word, he’ll ask. So—

01:13:40HO TRAN: Good for him. Hey, I’m the exact same way.

01:13:43HO: Yeah, that’s great! That’s great. So, you are trying, then.

01:13:45HO TRAN: Yeah, I’m trying. Yeah.

01:13:49HO: So, okay, this is maybe my last question on identity. But (sighs) how does your family see you, that you’re aware.

01:13:58HO TRAN: That’s a good question. I can tell you this. My family is very, very proud of me. And that’s not even like, oh, like me bragging. Like I know they’re actively like very, very proud of me and the work that I do. Sometimes, it seems like it’s not enough. But they’ve made me very aware of that fact. And I’m eternally grateful for it. They like that I’m writing. They like that I’m doing something with my English degree. They like that I’m also actively trying to tell our story, the story of my family. Like, I’m here, right now. I’m doing my best to do that. And, you know, like the reason I know that my family’s proud of me now is mainly because of what I did to try to find my grandfather. That, I think, that really did it for them. I suppose I should tell the story of that. But yeah. Going back to the story of my mom. She grew up mixed-race. Didn’t know who her grandfather was. I would always ask my mom if she remembered anything about him. And I had said that like, you know, he left and that she grew up without him. But she was actually able to meet him once. Like he was able to come back one time and meet her and gave her gifts and everything. But she remembers so little about that.

01:15:22HO: How old was she?

01:15:24HO TRAN: She was very young, I think three, maybe four. Like super young. But she remembers a tall man. Like that’s all she remembers, an American uniform. And he even gave her his dog tags, just for her to hold onto because there’s a daughter he has in Vietnam, this country where he was fighting. So, he should leave her something. So, he left her that. But, you know, after Saigon fell, after the North Vietnamese Army won and took over, a lot of rumors started flying around the villages in rural Vietnam, in the cities as well, that these Việt Cộng (Viet Cong, North Vietnamese military) they were rapists. They were going to come over. They were going to eat all the babies or kill all the babies. They were going to murder anyone who had anything to do with the American soldiers. They were going to do horrible stuff, essentially. Like they made them seem like this was the end. So, you know, one of the things that like my grandma had to do for my mom was like she took any memento that she had from my grandfather and just like burned it, burned it all. And the dog tags that like her father gave her they threw into the river where she used to swim naked with her friends. And it’d just be lost forever. And they also shaved my mom’s head. Because she had really curly hair when she was young. They shaved it completely, and just to try and hide any, any amount of fact, anything that might indicate that she was a child of an American soldier. Obviously, rumors were just rumors. Like they weren’t nearly that vicious. They were bad, obviously. Like people were taken to reeducation camps. And they established new economic zones where they forced people from the city to try to grow food where food couldn’t be grown. And incidentally that’s where my grandfather died. He was my dad’s dad. That’s where he died. Because they forced them out of his like apartment in Saigon and made him just like work a dirt farm until like he just got sick and died.

01:17:24HO: Oh my God.

01:17:25HO TRAN: Yeah. That’s really tough. It’s super, super tough. But that’s all to say they weren’t going around like killing babies or anything like that, as far as I know. They certainly didn’t kill my mom. Because she’s still here, obviously. And yeah. So, you know, growing up like my mom had no connection to her father. I would always ask her as much as I can. I would ask my grandma, as well. Ba ngoai would always tell me that she would be very vague with the details. She wouldn’t tell me his race, his name or anything like that. She was like “He was a tall guy. He had a beard. He was very handsome.” And I was like “That’s great! I would like to know more, though.” She would never let me know more. And it wasn’t until, ooof, gosh, 2015 or 2016. I had just moved to the city. I was in a job that I didn’t quite like, and I just needed a distraction from it. And I had watched a TV show called Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard anthropologist who is like also a permanent fixture on my vision board. And the show is all about him like helping people connect with their identities and their ancestry through genealogy. And they would use tests from like 23AndMe, and Ancestry DNA, to accomplish these goals. And I was like, “Oh. That’s—I can do that now.” It’s weird, you know, growing up, that sort of technology wasn’t quite there yet, sophisticated enough for us to do that. But now it was. Like I was finally at a point where like “Oh, this is like feasible. I can find my grandfather.” It was always a thing we talked about, like we would love to find grandfather. And, you know, growing up, as I grew up, I know my mom really struggled with the fact that she didn’t know who her father was. And it was something that my brother and I had talked about wanting to do all the time. Like we should find this guy. We should find this guy for Mom. Because Mom, like it sucks for her that she doesn’t have a dad. You know, it’s something that she reminded us all the time. Like if we’re ever mad at bo for any reason, like if we were ever made at my dad for any reason, she was like “At least you have a father. Like at least you have a man who like is there for you, providing for you. Like it’s something that I didn’t have.” And I was like “Yeah. She’s right.” And that’s all to say that technology had caught up. For 200 bucks, I could send, I could get a DNA testing kit sent to my apartment, my crappy studio apartment that I was living in at the time. Spit into a vial. Send it back. And a few weeks later, I would have results about what I was. So, that’s exactly what I did, you know. I was able to get this DNA testing kit. Sent the results. And I remember the day I got the results. I was in a meeting at work and just—I got the ping on my phone, and I remember reading the emails like “Your results are in from 23andMe.” And I remember just being like eyes wide and just, just immediately just like “I need to get back at my desk as soon as possible, so I can pull up these, the questions to—the answers to a question that had plagued me my entire life.” Literally my whole life until that point. I didn’t know what I was. I knew I was Vietnamese. I knew my grandfather was an American soldier. But what else is, what else am I? Like there’s got to be more. And it was important to me because, you know, so much of who you are in this country is based off of your racial makeup. Being able to say like, “Oh. I’m 25% Irish and 75% German.” Or like “My grandparents came over here from the Ukraine. And that’s make me Ukrainian and a little bit Russian.” That was cool! Like hearing all my friends talk about like where they came and where their family came from and everything, I was always so jealous of that. Something that just simply was not afforded to me as a mixed-race person. Other Vietnamese people, they knew they were Vietnamese. That’s huge for them. Like they know that they came from Vietnam, maybe China. Like, you know, like they knew where they came from. I didn’t. So, to say that I was like really anticipating this thing would be like the understatement of the century. Finally, though, the meeting ended. I went back to my desk, pulled up the email as quickly as possible. I clicked on the link and it just laid it out for me. And I remember it was like almost anticlimactic, like just seeing like the results just laid out in plain English, this like, just these graphs saying that I was mostly Vietnamese, of course, like 70% Vietnamese. And then there’s something like 12% African American and like 10% European. (makes a gesture like his mind was blown with his hands) Like never in a million years would I have thought that like “Oh. Oh! Like he was Black, this guy. He was Black and a little bit European, like so many Black people are.” He was Black. I had an African American grandfather. That’s who he was. And not only that, but like the DNA testing site 23andMe also connected me with cousins. I had cousins. Like people who I had never met before. We share blood. Somewhere down the line, we have a grandparent, like, that we share together. It’s crazy. And it was a lot of Black people. It was a lot of these African American people who could trace their lineages back to slave ships. As such, I could do that too. All of a sudden, like which is inconceivable to me. And now this is a part of my identity, you know. Like this is something I have to carry with me, now. And like now I have to give to my brother and my mom. And this is something they have to carry with them. The fact that we come from slaves, like that’s nuts! We are the product of just, we are the product of disenfranchisement, you know? Of hundreds of years, centuries worth of just trauma and pain. On top of the trauma and pain that we already had as Vietnamese people. So, it was nuts for me, to say the least. And I realized that like this is something I needed to dig into more, because it didn’t tell me who my grandfather was right off the bat. So, I realized that, you know, I had to really undertake this journey in order to try to find him. From that, you know, it was 2015 at the time. So, I started a blog, a website, Saigon to Sioux City, (https://saigontosiouxcity.com/) where I essentially just tried to find my grandfather. And I just used that blog as a way to keep everything updated. People started following it. It hit a chord with people. And like that was, that meant a lot to me. Especially at that time. Because I was doing something I truly did not love. I was like the associate editor for some Pay-to-Play industry magazines. It was so lame. It was just like soul sucking. A job I eventually got fired from. And I remember after I got fired, I was like, “I’m just going to, just devote myself more to writing the stuff I want to write.” Which incidentally also had to do with like identity and my family on this blog. But, you know, going through this journey, I told my mom about what I was doing and she was like, “Why are you doing that?” And I was like “Because I want to find grandfather.” She was like “You think you can even do this?” I was like “Yeah. I can.” She was like “It’s okay if you can’t. Like it’s the past.” And I was like “No. Like I got to do this. I’m doing this for us.” And—

01:24:35HO: Can I, can I interrupt?

01:24:36HO TRAN: Yeah. Of course!

01:24:37HO: Do you really—Do you think there was more to what she was thinking and feeling about this journey for you?

01:24:43HO TRAN: Oooh. Yeah. No. That’s a very great question. Because, yes, there was a lot more. Because, you know, it’s something that my mom was very aware of as a AmerAsian. She had heard stories before of like AmerAsian kids reconnecting or finding their fathers. And having their fathers just completely reject them, which is a nightmare. Which would be the worst case scenario. Worse than death. Like having this image of a man like your entire life, and not even just this man, but this relationship with him that can’t exist, that you won’t so badly but cannot—it just doesn’t exist. And to finally meet this person that you’ve built up in your mind, and to have them completely reject you? It’s horrible. Like it’s having your heart ripped out. Like it sucks. And I think for my mom, as much as she wanted to find her dad and meet this man who she had built up in her own mind for her entire life, there was also a part of her who didn’t want to risk it. Who wanted to play it safe. If he doesn’t know, she can’t be hurt. She doesn’t know who this guy is, you know. He can’t reject her, which is totally fair. But, you know, and I understood that as much for her. But I also understood like she wanted this. But also, you know, in a way, more importantly, I wanted it. It was my identity too. It’s not just her. (laughs) I wanted to know. I had to know. And so, I just kept doing it. I just like threw myself to it. I got a lot of help, too. My partner’s mother, her name is Elizabeth Hazelton, she was really big into genealogy and ancestry. And she really helped me through, like, pretty much the entire process. She helped me build my family trees. And helped me give advice to reach out to different cousins and what not. But we just kept on running into walls. Like we just couldn’t find exactly who this guy was. And, you know, it’s tough when you’re just trying to find one person. Because, you know, it’s a needle in a haystack, you know. The way you—the way this happens is like you identify like one person you know you’re related to. Like I know that this man is my great-great-great grandfather. Like you need to find another person who’s related to him. You need to find another person who’s built a family tree who’s related to him. And that person might be related to—directly related to my grandfather. But they’re likely not. So, you have to find another person who we share that same grandparent with. And just essentially, it’s a process of like triangulation. You’re trying to pinpoint like this one dude. It’s like finding a needle in a stack of needles. It’s just—It seemed impossible. And one thing I realized, though, over the course of that whole journey was the importance of patience. Like you just have to be very patient on everything. Like it can be very frustrating. You’re going to want to quit. But you just have to just wait. And patience eventually paid off. Like I finally—I took a different DNA test from different DNA testing company because that’s what they say. They say if you want to increase your chances, you know, you have to check out all the databases. And that meant checking out DNA tests from 23andMe, and Ancestry DNA, and Family Tree DNA, which is the one where I eventually found the man who led to who my grandfather was. And I remember I took this test. and I got the results back and they were like “You’re related to this man by a lot. By so much that he’s likely your uncle, or something close to your uncle.” I was like “Holy crap! This is crazy!” And I saw that he had just taken a test, too. So, he was also like doing—on his own journey. And it was like very coincidental. And his name is Keith Brown, or Clifton Brown. Clifton, that’s who it is. Clifton Brown. And he’s a guy who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And I reached out to him, and I emailed him essentially everything that I’ve told you. Like “Hey, my name’s Tony. I’m looking for a man who might be my grandfather, who served in the Vietnam war. Do you know who this—Do you know anyone of this description?” It’s like “Ah yeah. It’s my brother.” I was like “Holy crap.” He emailed me back and it’s like “Yeah, it’s my brother. And I’m your uncle.” And I’m like “Holy crap! That’s nuts!” He was like this heavy set, like African American guy. And he had this huge smile on his face, in the picture that he provided for the profile picture. And I remember just staring at Clifton’s picture. And I’m like “I’m related. This is my uncle right here. This is—That’s crazy—That’s my mom’s—Well, like this is my mom’s uncle. This is my great uncle.” And I’m like “This is crazy! This is—It’s finally happening.” He’s like “Yeah. It’s my brother Keith. And Keith is dead. Keith died in 2013.” And I was like “Fuck.” Right?

01:29:54HO: Yeah.

01:29:55HO TRAN: And it’s funny when I think about it. Like I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t sad to find out that this man was dead. I was angry. (laughs) I was pissed. I was angry at the fact that—for a lot of reasons. But I was angry at the fact that I didn’t do this journey earlier. He died in 2013. DNA tests were available back then. I could have tried. I was also angry at the fact that he died. I felt like he did that to me. I was like “How dare you. Like after all we went through, now you’re just gone. What the hell!” That I couldn’t give my mom the moment where she met her father. Something that I had inadvertently built up in my own head which is I think the moment where I came to realize and empathize with my mom about why we don’t necessarily want these things. And yeah. Died in 2013. Did a little bit of digging after he died of heart disease, and buried in a plot somewhere in Leggett, Texas outside of Houston. And he was dead! And now I had this bombshell though. I had this information that my mom wanted for a long time. But it didn’t even—Like I didn’t even think about this idea that he might have been dead. So, not only do I have to break the news to her that I found her father, but he was dead. I had to tell her that her father was gone. I, you know—And this kind of goes back to like the whole thing with my dad and his sister. But like he doesn’t know what happened to his sister. She could be alive. And in that small way, it’s kind of a mercy for him. She’s probably dead. But like there’s the chance, the off chance, that Cô Nhung (Co Nhung, aunt Nhung) and her kid, her husband are still alive. They’re living a good life. And that’s good for him. That helps my father get by. But now I know that I can’t give that to my mom. I can’t give her even that glimmer of hope anymore. Like I have to take that away from her. That’s like—I knew I had to tell her, of course. Because you can’t just hide something like this, you know. I feel like Vietnamese families we keep too much secrets from each other sometimes. As open as we can be, forthcoming with each other, like there’s also a lot of secrets. And I wasn’t going to keep this one from my mom. So, I knew I had to tell her. This happened. I even remember it happened October, or maybe it was November, 2017. And I didn’t know how I was going to tell her. I knew I probably should have just called her up and told her immediately that I found it out. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too scared. I was just like—It didn’t feel right, you know. Like I felt like—It’s going to sound dumb, but I felt like I had to make a moment for her. (laughs) Like how do you—You can’t just like have it be like such a banal thing, like after decades of not knowing who this man was. And so, I sat on the information for a long time. It’s funny because I told people. I told Mrs. H., Elizabeth Hazelton. I told my partner, obviously. I told my friends that this had happened. But I didn’t tell my mom. And eventually it got to January. And my parents were going to come visit to celebrate my birthday and also my mom’s birthday. So, we were just going to have a twin birthday. And I was like “You know what? This seems like the time. Like this just seems like the most epic birthday gift. It’s going to be better than any Hermes bag that I could buy her, you know? And the lotion set from Bath and Body Works that I can get her, a candle. I’m going to give her her dad. It’s gonna work because it's her birthday. When she was born, brought into this world from this man she never knew. And it’s also my birthday, and she brought me into this world with a piece of my identity that I didn’t know. Like this is poetry. This makes sense.” So, I remember they came over. They came to visit, and I had printed off a picture of him. And I put it in a nice little frame. I was able to find a picture of my grandfather, Keith Brown, from his obituary website. And I remember looking at that picture and just thinking, “I’m really related to this man. But I don’t see it.” He didn’t quite look like me, but like I was like “This guy could have been my grandfather. He could have been a dude that I saw on the weekends, like all my friends saw with their grandfather. Like what could that have been like? You know?” I think, that just added to the anger some more. It’s like “You took this from me.” (laughs) Like “You jerk! You took that sense of normalcy from me.” But I framed it up. I wrapped it for my mom. In my head, like they were just coming to visit for the weekend. In my head, it was like “I should just give it to her right off the bat. Like I can’t sit on this all weekend. It’s going to kill me.” But I couldn’t do it. I remember she came. My girlfriend was like “Are you going to do it?” And I’m like “No. Not yet. Like it’s not the right time.” Finally, like the whole weekend went by. It was fun, like it was—They came by, you know. We went out to restaurants. We ate and everything. And then finally it was like the last night. We were going to do cake and ice cream, like blow out the candles for our joint birthday cake. And it was going to be a fun time in our apartment. And we would exchange gifts. I was like “That’s going to be now or never.” Because they were like leaving the next morning. I remember my mom blew out her candles and everything. We sang Happy Birthday. It was fun. And we were giving out gifts and I was like “Hey. I have kind of a big gift for you.” And she was like “Oh! This is exciting. I hope it’s a new car.” I was like “Not quite.” And I handed her this small package. And she was like “I thought you said it was big!” I was like “Well, go ahead and open it.” She opened it, saw it was a frame. And she looked at it. It was just a picture of a Black guy. She doesn’t know him from Adam. Like she doesn’t know who this guy is. She was like “Who is this?” She thought it was a joke. And I was like “That’s him.” I was like—She was like “Who?” And I was like “That’s him. That’s your father. That’s ông nội (ong noi, paternal grandfather). That’s my grandfather.” And I remember like she was like “What??? No.” And I was like “Yes. Look.” She like looked down at the picture. And I wasn’t sure how she was going to react. And right off the bat, it was like this moment where I felt it was suspended in time. It was like everything just paused around me. And I was just waiting for her to like, to say anything. And finally, she just—tears. She started crying. Just heaving. Just crying like she could not believe it. And I started crying. My girlfriend started crying. My father, he was just like when he gets nervous, he just smiles. (makes a funny smiling face and Ho laughs) He was like “Holy crap!” It was crazy. Pulled out his phone and started filming everything. He was like “What?” And, but, and she looked at me like just through tears. And she was like—First thing she asked: “Is he alive?” And I was like “No. No. Sorry.” Man, I cried even more. “He died in 2013.” But there he was. I guess, you know, I explained to her how I found him. Who he was. How she had an uncle that we can meet. And it was great. And like it was a very cathartic moment. Like we sat there for nearly like—We sat there for hours, just talking through things. And it was very nice. And being able to just talk through, you know— She talked to me about like how bad it was not having a dad growing up. How she was bullied. All the stuff she used to tell me. We were just going over it again. And talking about like my own struggles with my identity and everything that I went through.

01:38:12And yeah. From that, I was able to finally make like the big announcement about it and let everyone know on social media. I remember I got calls as if I had like won a prize or something. Like people were calling me. Like old friends, old bosses that I hadn’t talked to in years, teachers. They would send me messages and they were like “Congratulations!” Like because they had seen—They were following my work and they had seen how hard I had worked for this and how much it meant to me. And yeah. Eventually I was able to use that story. I pitched the story to, I think it was Huffington Post and they published an essay about it. And weirdly enough, it kind of like really helped like my career and what I do now, which is as a professional writer and editor. And yeah. And from there, like I remember after that whole thing happened, after I got published like it was a big thing for my father. He was so proud of me. He called me. He didn’t say necessarily he was proud of me. But my mom told me later. So, you know, this is how I know. I was like “That’s so sweet!” She was like “Dong. Like your dad wants to know, wants you to send a link to that, to what you wrote.” I was like “Why?” and she was like “Oh, he’s going to translate it. He’s going to translate the whole thing so he can share it with his friends.” And I was like “Holy shit. Like that is so sweet.” Like my father would never tell me—He never told me he loved me, growing up. You know, he’d never said that to me or my brother. And I was like “Oh. That’s so—That is so fucking nice. Like that is exactly why I’m going to use that to carry me through the next few years.” And I remember like a few days after my mom left, I remember before we took her to the airport and everything, I was like “Are you going to tell ba ngoai?” Because that was a whole ‘nother thing. Like we had finally found this man that she also was wondering about. And she was like “yeah. I’ll tell her. I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry. I’ll let her know.” And I got a phone call a few days later. I was walking my dog with my partner. We were at the dog beach here in Chicago. And beautiful sunny day. I remember I got a phone call. It was from ba ngoai. I always pick up the phone when ba ngoai calls. She doesn’t call that much. So, when she does, it was like a call. I figured it was because my mom told her. So, I picked up the phone and she immediately, she was like “Dong! I’m so happy. You did it!” Like she’s letting me know like right off the bat, like how happy she was with what I did. How proud she was of me. And it was so funny because like she had seemed to have hinted like “You figured it out, my secret!” (laughs) Like in, you know, not so many words, but like she was like “Oh, you figured it out! Like the thing I was hiding from all of you.” Like it was like a silly, like a fun secret she was doing. And I was like “Yeah. I figured it out, grandma.” And I remember. I’ll never forget that phone call because it meant so much to me. And she was like “We’re so proud of you.” You know. (starts to tear up) To hear her say that, you know, I think, you know, as a Vietnamese person, as a Vietnamese American kid, you grow up not hearing that enough. You know? You don’t hear that from your family, do you? You don’t hear that. You hear “That’s what’s expected. That’s what is expected of you.” You know? You’re supposed to get a job. You’re supposed to do well. You’re supposed to be successful. You don’t hear “I’m proud of you” at all. And if you do, it’s not enough. (wipes tears from his eyes with a napkin). It’s never enough. And to hear my grandma say that, to say like “You did it. You did this thing, like this crazy thing that seemed impossible to us. We are so proud of you.” That’s—To answer your question, that’s how my family views me. (both laugh) They’re proud of me. And that’s all I could ever ask for. Sorry about that (laughs).

01:42:16HO: No. Don’t be sorry. Thank you for sharing.

01:42:19HO TRAN: Yeah.

01:42:20HO: Wow, that’s amazing.

01:42:21HO TRAN: Yeah.

01:42:24HO: I don’t even know what “I’m proud of you” sounds like in Vietnamese. (laughs)

01:42:27HO TRAN: Yeah! I’ve never, I’ve never, yeah. Exactly. It’s—I don’t even know the words. I couldn’t tell you. (laughs)

01:42:38HO: Probably Google Translate wouldn’t even know.

01:42:39HO TRAN: Yeah. Exactly. Like “Sorry. No, no results here.” (both laugh)

01:42:42HO: Yeah!

01:42:44HO TRAN: Oh, gosh.

01:42:52HO: So, then, talking about identity, I guess that wasn’t my last question. Because now that you know that you are Black, how has that—how has your—I guess, how has that changed you? If it has.

01:43:09HO TRAN: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question. It’s one I’m still kind of asking myself. You know, like it kind of goes back to your question about how I’m trying to take back my Vietnamese-ness or how I’m trying to make more friends who are Vietnamese. This is a space in my identity I fully do not—I can’t—I don’t feel comfortable calling—I can’t say that I’m, I’m Black. I can say I’m related to a Black man. I have—I can trace my ancestry back to specific plantations in Texas. That’s cool. I mean, not cool, cool. But like that is a thing I can do. And I think that’s a very notable and quite frankly awesome thing I can do. I can–I can trace back to Americans born in America. I can trace back to Africans born in Africa. But I can’t say that I’m Black. I can’t say that. Blackness is it’s own thing. It’s its own culture. (sirens in the background) And it’s something that I’ve been trying to learn more about, obviously, because this is my family. Like inevitably like I’m related people who are Black. My uncle, my uncle Clifton, he’s Black. You know, I have aunts who are Black. I’m–I’m not. (chuckles) Like I’m just not at all. I don’t think I ever will be. It’s not a culture I grew up in. These weren’t people I ever like were able to associate with or hang out with. And I think partly through design, you know it’s the true irony, and I think it’s something I tell people all the time. Vietnamese people do not confront their own prejudices enough and their own racism enough. We talk all the time, for good reason, about the struggles that Asian Americans go through in this country to get by, the prejudices and racism that we face. But we, in turn, turn that on every other ethnicity, especially when it comes to Black people and Hispanic people. Horribly racist against them. And it was something, you know, growing up I heard it in my family, and I heard it with other Vietnamese people all the time, like “Watch out for Black people. Don’t hire Hispanic people. Or like da-da-da-da-da.” All these prejudices that you would hear anywhere else, regarding these people. And I’ve heard it from my parents. I’ve heard it from grandmother. And to find out the true irony is that it’s in our blood is hilarious. It’s partly funny but it’s also like partly like it gives me more impetus and drive to have a conversation about it, to like “You know, we got to talk to our elders and we got to confront this in our own community.” Because we’re not perfect. We’re—A lot of us can be horribly racist and horribly bigoted against other people for the same reasons that people are horribly racist and bigoted towards us. And it’s BS. It doesn’t make any sense. And yet, you know here we are. But yeah. My Blackness or my Black—Blackness, you know, my background, my ethnicity, it’s something that I’m still navigating. I’m still confronting. I’d love to learn more about it, you know. Like I’d love to learn more about the history of what my ancestors went through. But can I claim it? No. I don’t think I want to. It’s something that is a part of me, though. And I’ll always recognize that. It’s a part of me. It’s a part of my family. It’s a part of my grandfather. And, you know, that’s something I can be aware of and I accept that.

01:46:56HO: Have you had conversations with elders about this kind of racism that we hold?

01:47:04HO TRAN: Yeah. I—Especially around, yeah, around the time of like George Floyd, when that happened in 2020, like I think it was like the first time I really had a conversation about it with my mom. And just telling her just straight up like “Look at what they’re doing to people out there. Look at what they’re doing to us. That’s like—George Floyd like that could have been grandfather. That could have been someone—That could have been my uncle. That could have been someone you know. Like that’s what they’re doing to us.” And I think she kind of struggled with it. She was just sort of—We had a lot of arguments. It was probably like some of the most tense bit between my mom and I that it’s ever been. Because it’s so plain to me that this is something that they should care about. They should be aware of and passionate about. This idea that as people of color, we’re always going to kind of get the short end of the stick here in this country. That people are already, when we walk into a room, they’re already going to be aware of us and have, you know, ideas about who we are and what we’re trying to do. And to see that my parents don’t understand that. It’s maddening. It’s like how do you not? How do you not? Like you came into this country. I’ve watched you struggle with it. I’ve watched people be racist to you. Like how are you not confronting this right now? I haven’t really talked to my grandma about it. We fairly stay apolitical and that’s fine by me. I don’t think I want to talk necessarily to discern my grandma’s thoughts on these sort of things. Though I really should. I really should talk to her more. But I think these are conversations that are important to have. We need to talk about it more. Especially like, you know, Vietnamese people truly are like, can be very, very conservative. You go to a place like Orange County, like you’ll see it, you know. When you go to a place like Sioux City, you’ll see it. These are—At our core, we can be a very conservative community in everything. You know, from race relations to issues like gay marriage, abortion, extremely conservative. And, you know, the irony is (chuckles) we’re immigrants. Like conservatives hate us. Why do we hate other immigrants for doing the exact same thing that we’re trying to do, that we did? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely maddening. That’s all to say, it’s a conversation I think is very important to have and that we all need to confront constantly, like with our own families.

01:49:36HO: Yeah. I agree. It is really important to have that conversation and also incredibly difficult. Like you said with your ba ngoai. Like—I can’t imagine having that conversation.

01:49:46HO TRAN: I can’t talk to my bà ngoại about that! Like it might—then the pain thing is that it might ruin something about her for me. And I don’t want my vision of ba ngoai. Ba ngoai is ba ngoai to me. I don’t want to hear that she actually might actually have horribly racist and problematic thoughts.

01:50:01HO: Yeah. Right.

01:50:02HO TRAN: Yeah. But also, you know, what, yeah, what—Can I even convince her at this day and age? Then again, like we probably should. Like we have to. Like what—Because if we don’t, you know, like then it persists. Like these thoughts, the problems that they have. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s tough, Jenn. (chuckles)

01:50:27HO: Yeah. It’s not easy.

01:50:29HO TRAN: Yeah.

01:50:32HO: So, going back to your parents’ journey, migration, I guess.

01:50:42HO TRAN: Yeah.

01:50:44HO: Do you feel like that’s your story in a sense? Or how do you carry that story with you, if at all.

01:50:51HO TRAN: Yeah. That’s a good question.

01:50:54HO: And including any kind of trauma, emotional baggage.

01:50:58HO TRAN: It’s strange because, you know, as a writer I’m always trying to share the stories of my family in any way that I can. But I always come up to a point where I’m like “should I be sharing this? Like this seems like I want to share it. But like does my mom or dad? Like do my uncles and aunts? Does my brother?” But it’s my story, too. And, I mean, it’s something that I’m sure like you’re aware of, I would assume as a Vietnamese person. But like growing up my mom was always like “Don’t tell people this X-Y-Z fact about our family. Don’t talk about this.” Like, “we can’t let people know about this.” Sometimes it would be incredibly banal. Sometimes it would be important. I couldn’t tell anyone about it. But I—There’s a culture of secrecy in the Vietnamese community that I think persists now to this day. Like it’s a culture of like “Don’t talk about this.” And part of it is strategic, you know. Like for someone like my mom, it was always like people would judge us if they know this thing about our family. And appearances are so important to her and like the Vietnamese community, at least in Sioux City, where it’s just like we couldn’t let people on at all about what was actually going on in our house, you know. But yeah. It's hard. (chuckles) To think about like—To try to move past that as a writer where so much of my work is just sharing my thoughts on things and my experiences in my life. And it’s hard, frankly, like sitting here sharing some of these things, like I have to preempt myself (raises his left hand to his temple, and makes a twisting motion) like “should I share this?” And it’s sort of like “Eh, no.” It’s like “Ignore that. Turn that off for now.” Like—Because I think this work is more important if I am just upfront and just like let people know everything. But that is fighting against everything in me, you know what I mean? Like everything that I was taught growing up about like how much I should share with people, which is nothing (chuckles), how much I should let on about what goes on in my family and my community. It’s tough. It is really tough. And as a writer, as a communicator, as a storyteller, it’s tough to do that. But the work is important. Like I have to tell people. That’s all to say that the things that my parents went through, it’s their story. Of course, it’s their story. But it’s my story too. It’s, indelibly, it’s my story. Like you can’t rip their stories away from me. Like they’re mine, you know. It’s part of the reason I do what I do now as a writer. I love storytelling. I love the idea that I can come—I can claim this, these stories that were handed to me from my parents. They’re mine, now. After my parents die, after my grandmother dies, their stories are mine. And because there’s no one else there’s going to be. And if I don’t tell them, they’re going to die with me. And I can’t let that happen. I cannot let that happen, you know. This is why I think something like this is so, you know, damn important. It’s just like we can’t let these stories die. They need to persist somehow. Because it’s not any one person’s story, it’s our story. We’re Vietnamese. Like this is us! You know? We are Vietnamese people. We are Vietnamese Americans, and this is collectively our own thing. No one else can claim it. This is ours and this is ours for what to do with it. And if we don’t keep on telling the stories, if we don’t let people know what happened to us, then it dies with us. And that’s the real tragedy, right? That’s the ugliest thing that could possibly happen.

01:54:48HO: Yeah. I agree.

01:54:49HO TRAN: Yeah. A tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound. I don’t think so. Like if you don’t tell—If a story happens, and you don’t tell it, it doesn’t exist. And the idea that like someone could die, someone could live a life as full and rich as my parents, my grandma’s, or mine, and they die, and no one is there to remember it. That’s the scariest thing in the world to me. It’s the scariest thing. And we can’t let that happen to our community. No. You know?

01:55:17HO: Yeah.

01:55:20HO TRAN: This is the most important thing I’m doing today. (laughs) It’s the most important I’ll do for the rest of the year, for sure. Yeah.

01:55:27HO: Thank you. So, that’s a good segue into talking about your career. I wanted to ask you about your career as a writer and what lead you here. And also, what are the most fulfilling aspects of your career and what would you like to change or see different in the future?

01:55:47HO TRAN: Yeah! That’s a good—

01:55:48HO: It’s a long question.

01:55:49HO TRAN: Yeah, no, no. It’s a fun question. I mean, like my career as a writer, like I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I remember like my dad telling me and brother bedtime stories. And like I think like that was like the absolute genesis of like my passion to just like tell a good story, you know. Just listening to my father, like me with bated breath. It’s just like “Like what happens next?” you know, I love that. I love telling stories. I love hearing stories. And I remember being young and gosh, I must have been maybe ten, maybe nine. We—My aunt had saw me in the restaurant. I was just like messing around (gestures as if writing with his right hand) like I think just like, you know, when you’re young, you’re just trying to figure out what stories are like as a writer. When you’re a young writer, you don’t necessarily know like “once upon a time, da-da-da-da-da.” You don’t know, you don’t necessarily know how to make a narrative arc yet. So, you’re just sort of like doing what you can. I remember sitting there, just a pen and paper, just trying to write like a story. I think it was like honestly like a Harry Potter knockoff. (laughs) Like just directly a Harry Potter knockoff. Just doing my own little fan fiction before fan fiction was really a thing. And my aunt asked me like “Oh! What are you doing?” And I remember telling her, I was like “Oh! Like I’m writing a story.” She was like “Oh, why are you doing that?” It’s just such a—like “Oh. That’s fine. Like why are you doing that, though?” I was like “Oh, you know, I think I really want to be a writer one day. I think I want to be an author.” And she was like “You don’t want to do that.” (laughs and tilts his head back) It’s just like dang! “Why?” She was like “Oh, there might not be money in it.” And I was just like “No. No. I think I can do it.” I pulled out one of my Harry Potter books. “These books seem to sell pretty well.” And she was like “Okay. If that’s what you really want, you can do it. As long as you’re happy.” (laughs) Even then, being that young and hearing those words, I was like “She doesn’t mean that. Like she knows. She doesn’t actually believe in like my mission, my ultimate goal to be a writer.” And that’s something I heard a lot when I was a kid, from like my parents and like my grandma, always questioning. Like I remember when I chose my English major, they were all like “Why? Why are you doing that?” And we had talked before about how I was also a film major. I double majored, constantly, throughout college. The one constant, though, I knew was English. Like I knew I wanted to be a writer. I knew I wanted to figure it out somehow. So, I kept English. And growing up though, my parents, the Vietnamese community, no one really believed in that goal. Heck, like even in school, like teachers would just sort of tell me sometimes, like “Oh! That’s good but, you know, always have something in your back pocket. Like maybe you should also do pre-med.” (laughs) Right. Pre-med or pre-law. And I was like “That sounds boring. I’m just going to try to do the best I can with the writing thing.” But, you know, I remember I reached high school and I reached a point where it was just like all right, maybe writing is a thing, like it isn’t going to be like the best thing for me. Maybe I should focus on something else. And I remember like I flirted with the idea of like maybe I should start studying a little bit more and I should pursue like pre-veterinary. Because I like animals. So, like that would be fun. Or maybe architecture because I also had a creative mind for design. And it wasn’t until I took a class my senior year of high school. I was in English honors and we had written, it was like an essay, a personal essay. It was like this whole series of personal essays we had to write. And I remember I wrote a story that was essentially the story of—a story about my brother and I growing up in the restaurant. And it was a story about how one day my—This is dark. It’s completely like a tangent. But my parents brought home like this chicken duck because Vietnamese families then they would trade livestock, essentially, with each other. And they would sometimes raise them in like their apartments and their houses. But they brought me a chicken. They brought my brother and I like a chicken duck, just to raise as pets. And we, I remember we had them in like a cardboard box. And we watched as they grew up, chicken duck grew up and everything. And this story was about like me and my brother like raising them. But essentially at the end what happened my parents just slaughtered them. (laughs) Like we ate them for dinner. A totally, total immigrant thing to do. It was like—And obviously my brother and I were very upset. But the essay was about that. I remember it was just kind of like because the personal essay was like “Oh, just write a story about your childhood.” That was what I wrote. I remember as the teacher was handing back everyone their essays with a grade on it, she handed out the essays to everyone, like giving them their essays with feedback and everything. But she didn’t give me back mine. And I remember like she kind of had like a smile on her face. I’ll never forget it. But like she went up to the podium and she took my essay. She put it down and she just started reading for everyone. And I felt—I was like “What’s going on here?” And she read the whole thing. And people loved it. Like at the end, everyone clapped. And I was like “Oh! This is completely unexpected.” Like I did not expect that at all. And I remember afterwards, after class, she asked me to stay behind. And I was like “Hey, thanks for doing that! That was weird. I didn’t expect that.” She was like “No. It was a great story.” And like she looked me in the eye. She was like “Have you ever thought about doing this for a living?” And I remember being in high school, being a senior, fully planning to do something else with my life, completely ignoring like the dreams that I had of being like a professional writer. And at that moment, like listening to her, Mrs. Sitzmann, I’ll never forget her. If I ever publish a book, like she’s going to be the person I dedicate it to.

02:01:41HO: Mrs?

02:01:42HO TRAN: Mrs. Sitzmann. Patricia Sitzmann. Yeah.

02:01:44HO: S-I-T—

02:01:46HO TRAN: Z-M-A-N.

02:01:48HO: N. Thank you.

02:01:49HO TRAN: I think two N’s at the end. But yeah. She said “Have you ever thought about doing this for a living?” I was like “You know, I have but like I—not really serious.” And she was like “You should think about doing it seriously. You have talent. You can do this.” It’s the first time in my life that anyone told me that I could do writing and it was huge for me. That changed the course of my life. That changed everything. From then on, I was like “Okay. I’m going to pursue the English degree. I’m going to try to do creative writing focus. I’m going to go to a school specifically for creative writing, you know. University of Iowa has a great writing program, like the best in the world.” I was going to go there. I was going to do it. And yeah. That’s sort of like how I ended up being a writer. I remember after college it was kind of tough to find work. Eventually, I landed copywriting gigs. Like I remember like the most important thing for me, I realize, was like I can’t do anything else. If I do anything else, I might just do that thing forever. Like if I ended up doing like graphic design, like to try to support my writing career, I knew I would just end up being a graphic designer. I was like if I was going to make it, I was going to have to just find ways to write and make money. And so, yeah. After college, I found copywriting gigs and content writing gigs. Eventually, I found like my first fulltime job paying $30,000 a year in an office in River North here in Chicago, working as an associate editor for these pay-to-play magazines. And it was—I mean, you know, I was super grateful at the time because, you know, first real job, going into an office and everything. I’m not being paid a lot, but like still like I was grateful to have insurance, especially to have something that I could pay my rent and bills with. But it was horrible. It was a really tough job. Because I was not passionate about the stuff we were writing about. I just didn’t care at all. And it reflected in my work, obviously, because they fired me a year later (laughs). And it ended up being—Like I remember I got fired. I just felt like shit for myself, even though I hated that job. I didn’t want to go back. It was still losing a job. It still felt bad to be rejected, right? I remember I called my parents and my dad did something really nice for me. He was like “Oh, you got fired! Congratulations!” He just—He told me he congratulated me. I was like “Why are you congratulating me?” He was like “Oh, you can do something else now.” He was like—Because he knew I didn’t like that job. Like and he knew like—Because, you know, like one thing my parents—you know, as much as they want me to make money and like find a career that I liked and everything, one thing my mom always reminded me growing up and even to this day, she just wants me and my brother to be happy. Which is a huge mercy, I think. Like they don’t necessarily tell you they’re proud of you, but my mom always reminded me. It was only my mom. Like my dad would never say that. She just wanted my brother and I to be happy. She was like “Whatever you do, if you like it, keep doing it.” She was—She knew I didn’t like that job, so she was like, “Good. You don’t have a job anymore? Good. You’ll find something else. It’s not a big deal.” And I’ll never forget that. That really helped me like in a really tough time. But yeah. From there, I just—I tried to find other writing gigs. I eventually landed a very good job paying like considerably more money doing content marketing for a personal finance influencer named Ramit Sethi. He actually has a Netflix show now, I Will Teach You to be Rich. I think the show is called How to be Rich. I worked content marketing for Ramit for two years before I was like “I don’t actually want to be a marketer.” (laughs) Like this is fun. This is a good job. I’m learning a lot. But what I realized during this time, as I had this job, I was able to publish an essay in Huffington Post. And I realized then like this is what I want to do. Like I want to tell my family’s story. I want to be able to tell other people’s stories. What I realized, like I want to be a writer but not—I don’t want to sell anything. I just want to be a writer. I want to be able to tell a good story. And so, I quit that job and I really devoted myself to try to do freelancing fulltime, essentially getting published in places like The Huffington Post. And being able to tell my story. Incidentally, you know, my background with genealogy and ancestry was able to land me a job as a science writer, as a science journalist at a place called Futurism.com. And that’s where I worked about a year before I was able to—actually, I got a phone call from a man who’s now my boss, my managing editor, Neel Patel at The Daily Beast. And he essentially told me like, “Hey. We saw your work. We like your work. And you should apply for this deputy editor job that we have open.” And so, I did. And yeah. That’s pretty much where I ended up now. Like I remember writing out the cover letter and resume for them and essentially telling them the story of finding my grandfather, finding my identity and how this emergent piece of technology and science was able to get me there. And that’s how my interest in sort of like this realm started. And yeah. I was able to get this gig, and now like I’m doing the thing that I’ve always wanted to do like pretty much my entire life every day, which is awesome. Like it’s amazing. I’m interviewing people. I’m talking to them. I’m telling their stories. I’m telling—I’m breaking news about science and technology which is not necessarily a field that I thought I was going to get into when I started all this. But it’s one that I love doing now. But it also affords me the opportunity to write about other things and like to pitch to other places and tell stories, you know? I was able to pitch some stories to Diacritics, the Diasporic Vietnamese—I don’t remember what the “A” is, but an association and network run by Eric Nguyễn (Eric Nguyen) and Việt Thanh Nguyễn (Viet Thanh Nguyen). (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, dvan.org.) And yeah. No, it’s great! It’s all to say that like I’m doing the thing that I wanted to do, like after many years, proving my aunt wrong, which feels nice. (chuckles)

02:08:06HO: Have you followed up with her and said “I told you so?” (laughs)

02:08:09HO TRAN: I have not but I know she’s proud of me too. She’s very happy about like where I landed up. Because like she’s on Facebook and everything. So, sometimes I’ll share articles and I’ll think about it. Like I’ll think like “I hope Cô Thủy (Co Thuy, aunt Thuy) sees this. I hope she sees this right now.”

02:08:25HO: That’s awesome.

02:08:26HO TRAN: Yeah.

02:08:28HO: Do you have any projects on the horizon? Like with writing or anything else?

02:08:31HO TRAN: Yes. I am working on a book. I’m working on a memoir specifically. This time, right around this time last year, I was able to have a man named Christopher Schilling, I think it’s Schilling. I should pronounce his name better. He reached out to me, and he said like “Hey. I stumbled upon your website on Twitter, and I went through your blog, and I got to say I’m a big fan of your work. My name’s Chris. I am a literary agent. And I was wondering if like you’ve been represented. If you’re not, let’s get a conversation going. Let’s talk.” And I was like “Holy shit! That’s awesome.” I remember reading the email out loud to my partner. Like we were both driving to Iowa. And I was like “Yo! You won’t believe what I just saw.” And I just like read it aloud to her and we freaked out for a while. It was awesome, because we’re both writers and this is something we’ve always wanted to do. And, you know, I’ve always wanted to publish a book. I mean, like it’s the reason I became a writer in the first place. And like I knew it was going to take work and it was going to be hard. And so, it was always something I kind of put off. And I knew I wanted to tell the story of finding my grandfather. But I just couldn’t get the gumption to just sort of put everything together and actually do it. So, to have Chris reach out to me in a nice bit of serendipity and say that like “Hey, I saw this blog, this thing that you were working on very hard for years, to find your grandfather. And now it’s going to pay off because I’m going to try to help you get a book deal.” I was like “That’s awesome!” So, now that was a year ago. I’m still working on that book. But I’m getting closer to finishing it. And hopefully within the next month or so, I’ll be able to have that on its way to him. But that’s probably the biggest thing I have on the horizon. It’s tough, Jennifer. It is like, it is so intimidating. It feels like I’m trying to climb a mountain, you know. And I don’t know how to climb a mountain. But I’m trying. Because, you know, it’s a big deal. I have to—It goes back to this idea that like is this my story to tell? You know? Like because I’m not—with this book, with this memoir, I’m not only telling my story. It’s the story of my family. And I have to do it right. That’s a lot of pressure. Like I feel the weight of that every time I sit down and write it. I feel the weight of it now as I recount this to you. But that’s probably the biggest thing I have on the horizon. It’s a big thing. Yeah.

02:11:00HO: And are your parents aware of this?

02:11:02HO TRAN: Yeah. I told them about it. And they were like “Oh, that’s awesome! That’s so cool.” But I don’t think they’ll be really aware of it until, you know, they have the book in their hands, and they can see it, you know? Yeah. I think that will be a big deal for them.

02:11:17HO: That’s really cool!

02:11:18HO TRAN: Yeah! I’m excited about it. Yeah. It should be cool.

02:11:22HO: Is there any—Are there any other projects that you want to talk about?

02:11:25HO TRAN: Let me think about that. Nothing right now. I’m actually trying to do less projects. As I focus in on this memoir, I’m realizing I’m doing way too much, both with my fulltime job which I love doing. I’m not going to do less with that. But like I’m also freelancing. Like I’m still freelancing for like different marketing clients, just trying to make money. And also pitching stories to other publications. Like I realize as much as I love doing that like I don’t have all the time in the world. There’s only so much focus I have and energy in the day and I got to put it where things are important. And that means the memoir, and my work, my fulltime job. And so, I’m trying to do less projects. Yeah.

02:12:13HO: How are you doing like with your energy—

02:12:17HO TRAN: Overall? Or like right now.

02:12:18HO: —right now. Like as we’re talking.

02:12:19HO TRAN: I’m good, yeah. This is fun.

02:12:21HO: You’re good?

02:12:22HO TRAN: Yeah. Are you good?

02:12:23HO: I’m good, yeah.

HO TRAN: Okay, good.

02:12:24HO: Okay. I want to go back to your uncle Clifton, if you don’t mind.

02:12:28HO TRAN: Yeah, of course.

02:12:29HO: Have you met him?

02:12:30HO TRAN: Yes. We were able to meet him, mmmm, a few years ago. I don’t remember when. I think it might have—It had to be—Let me, let me, let me think about this. Oh gosh. It had to be 2019 or so. As soon as I told my mom, she wanted to meet him. She wanted to meet this man. Like she wanted to meet her uncle. Because, you know, for her this man was like the last connection she has to her father. I wanted to meet him, too. Because we had emailed. He seemed like a very nice guy. Also, a writer. I think he has a book published. He’s a fantasy writer, which is awesome. I love that for him so much. And he—I told him, I was like “Hey. We’re going to be out in Colorado,” because that’s where my brother lived at the time. Still lives there now. “We’re going to be out in Denver. Like do you want to meet up anywhere in Colorado Springs. We’ll make the drive out there and we’ll just meet up with you.” And yeah. He named a restaurant and I remember we all got dressed up for it. Like we’re going to church or meeting the Pope or something. And I remember all of us were so nervous for him. We were just like—my dad probably less so than me and my mom and my brother. My brother, I think he was also nervous for it, but he didn’t let it on. But my mom was like really quiet the whole day and so was I. And we were just like “What’s this guy like? What if he hates us? What if it gets awkward?” That kind of thing. But yeah. We went to this restaurant. We went in and he was there with his wife and his granddaughter. And we got to talking and it was great. It was genuinely very, very cool. Like we were—we ate dinner, eventually, and like the conversation went so well we went grab dinner together afterwards. And it was funny because talking to him I realized that he was also nervous. Like he was like “Yeah.” His wife was like “Clifton’s been nervous all day for this. He, yeah, he’s just a nervous wreck.” And I was like “Yeah, I definitely feel you. We’re there too.” And it’s funny because—And like when they met, I wasn’t sure how they were like going to interact with each other, my mom and Clifton. But it was funny because, you know, they were like they started holding hands and stuff and they would hug each other. And my mom cried. And Clifton cried. And like it was this huge cathartic thing for her and also Clifton. And it was funny, like talking to him, we were trying to learn more about my grandfather. And he let us know that things between him and my grandfather weren’t good. They weren’t good. And the implication seemed to be that my grandfather was kind of an asshole to be completely honest. And he was like “Yeah. We never—We didn’t really talk, like we didn’t really talk. We had the same father but I think Keith”—my grandfather, my ong noi— “I think Keith didn’t like the fact that I had a different mother. And he didn’t want to talk.” I was like “That sucks. I’m sorry about that.” I apologized on behalf of this, my grandfather, this man that I never met. And which, you know, it sucks. Like I wish my grandfather was a nicer guy. But thinking back, I’m like maybe it is for the best that we didn’t have to meet him, you know. This idea that like if he was kind of a mean guy, if he was kind of a jerk, then the idea that he could have possibly rejected my mom or been cruel to my mom, it would have killed me. That would have killed me. And I would have killed him (laughs). I would have been very angry at this man. I would have—That would have been horrible. And so, it was a moment where I was like “Yeah. Maybe it’s best that some things people just never find out. Maybe some secrets are best.” Going back to this idea that Vietnamese people, community love our secrets. But we know who Clifton is now. This very sweet, very generous, very creative man who welcomed this entirely new family in with open arms, you know. Because we didn’t know him until that day, when we finally did. It was amazing! We haven’t met up with him since that day. I’ve been meaning to. But we keep up with each other on social media which is nice. Yeah. I’m glad I could give my mom, at least, that. That I could give her her uncle who didn’t reject her off, right? Not only didn’t reject her, but embraced her, held hands with her, and cried with her. That meant a lot to me. That meant a lot to me to see.

02:17:30HO: That’s lovely.

02:17:31HO TRAN: Yeah.

02:17:32HO: Have you met any other family members?

02:17:34HO TRAN: No. So, my mom has two other sisters out there. She has two sisters out there. And we haven’t been able to connect with them yet. And part of the reason is I was able to connect with one of my mom’s cousins. And who’s—Her mom is my grandfather’s sister. She—And I emailed her back before and was like “So, is there any way you could connect me with your cousins? Like I know it’s kind of like a big thing for them to realize that they have another Vietnamese sister out there. Would that be possible?” And she’s like “Yeah. Let me check with my mom. Yeah. We could probably do that. I would love that.” And she got back to me. Like she emailed me back about a week later. She was just like “Hey. I talked with my mom. She doesn’t think that’s a good idea.” I was like “Oh, yeah. That’s fair.” And it’s a thing, like I’m not upset about necessarily. It would be awesome, of course, to be able to connect my mom to her sisters, her flesh and blood half-sisters. That would be so cool! It would be great to meet my aunts. Like that would be awesome. It would be great to learn more about my grandfather. I would love—That’d probably be the biggest thing for me. Is it worth like them rejecting her, like not wanting anything to do with us and finding that out? I’m not sure if it is. All that to say, I will eventually like one day like get it in me to try to reach out to them like and find out where they live and let them know that their sister is out there. Because, you know, they deserve to know too. This might be something that they want to know, they would want to know. That they’re aware of us. And so, that’s something I’ve got to give to them. It’s something I want to give to my mom. But yeah. One step at a time, you know.

02:19:26HO: Does your mom know of their existence?

02:19:28HO TRAN: Mm-hmm. I told her.

02:19:29HO: Oh, okay.

02:19:30HO TRAN: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Like I’ve told myself there’s nothing I’m going to hide from her regarding this. There’s nothing I should hide from her regarding this. Everything I find out she needs to know about. Because like I said, it’s her story too, you know. It’s her family. It’s her blood. It’d be wrong if I didn’t.

02:19:51HO: Yeah. Okay. And so, you learned about these sisters from Uncle Clifton?

02:19:56HO TRAN: I learned about it from Uncle Clifton. I also knew because my grandmother said that he had another family, right?

02:20:04HO: Oh, I see. Right.

02:20:06HO TRAN: And after I found out who my grandfather was, Keith, I looked into his background. And you can pull up a lot of things about peoples’ backgrounds for like 20 bucks (chuckles) like online. Whole records about where they lived, arrest records, DUIs, stuff like that. You can find out a lot. You can also find out their family. That was how I was able to find out their identities. Like I know their names, not off the top of my head. I’m not that good. But they—And I’ve tried to track them from afar. It makes me feel really creepy sometimes, because these people are still alive. It’s not like going through census records of dead people. Like this is two people who are just actively out there right now. And I know where they used to live and stuff like that. I know where they probably live now, phone numbers, that kind of thing. It’s really weird. But it’s strange because like I have all this information that could connect me with them. I could do it today. I could take some time after this right now, head to a coffee shop, get a cà phê sữa đá (ca phe sua da, Vietnamese iced coffee with milk), sit down and call this woman up. I’m not going to do it though. Because like it’s—I don’t know if I’m ready.

02:21:16HO: Yeah. I understand. So, have you been to—I’m switching gears now. Have you been to Vietnam since you went as a little kid?

02:21:31HO TRAN: No. I want to. It is a thing that I want to do soon. I don’t know if it’s going to happen necessarily this year or next. But I want to do it soon. I want to do it before my grandmother dies for sure. Definitely before my parents die.

02:21:47HO: Do you want to go with them?

02:21:48HO TRAN: I want to go with them. (doorbell rings and he looks to his left). I want to be there with them. I wonder who it is?

02:21:53HO: I think it’s Randy (Kim, whose interview was scheduled after Tony’s). It’s Randy!

02:21:58HO TRAN: Randy!

02:22:04HO: (in the background) Oh, hey Randy!

02:22:06RANDY KIM: Hello, hello. Good to see you!

02:22:08HO: You too! Oh my gosh. It’s cold out there.

02:22:10KIM: I know.

02:22:11HO TRAN: Look what the cat dragged in.

02:22:12KIM: Hi Tony. (says something unintelligible).

02:22:13HO TRAN: (gets up from his chair and walks off camera). How you doin’ brother?

02:22:14KIM: Oh, good.

02:22:17HO: Um, Randy, we’re still filming.

02:22:19KIM: Oh, okay.

02:22:20HO: Will you—Tony, do you want privacy while we continue?

02:22:25HO TRAN: I’m fine. That’s fine. Randy can be here, yeah. He’s heard most of this already. So—

02:22:29KIM: Oh yeah. I’ve—

02:22:30HO: You can sit over here, Randy. Because you don’t want to be in the line of the camera.

02:22:33KIM: Oh, yeah. Sure. How long have you got left?

02:22:40HO: I don’t know. I don’t even know what time it is.

02:22:41KIM: It’s 1:35.

02:22:42HO TRAN: Oh, we’ve been going for a while!

02:22:44HO: Wow!

02:22:45HO TRAN: That really flew by! I don’t know if it flew by for you.

02:22:48KIM: … This is so late. I’m like what have you been doing?

02:22:51HO: Yeah. We really like, yeah, got into it.

02:22:53KIM: Yeah.

02:22:54HO TRAN: That’s awesome!

02:22:55HO: Yeah! Okay. You want to go to Vietnam with your parents and your grandmother.

02:22:58HO TRAN: Yeah. I would love to go back with my parents and ideally my grandma being there too. Because you know it’s just important to be able to go back to a place that sort of raised them. Like it goes back to what we were saying about how important these stories are to our community and to us. For me, you know, being able to go back and to be able to look at all these places that my parents have told stories about and to me exists entirely ephemerally. Like completely, like I’ve never been there. I’ve never—No. I have been there, but I don’t remember it, you know. I want to see what it looks like now. I want to see what it smells like, and I want to taste the food. I want to taste the air. Like I really want to go back. Like it’s very important to me. But, you know, it’s—You’re also planning a big trip with your family and that’s always stressful! I didn’t—Yeah. I finally broached the topic with my mom recently and I told her I was like “I want to go back to Vietnam. We’re doing this soon. We’re going to do this this year or next.” And she was like “Okay. Okay, good. Let’s do it next year. Let’s do it next year for sure. Like this year is probably a little bit too late. But next year for sure.” Hopefully, like it’s easier to travel and tickets are easier and what not. But yeah. So, hopefully, this time next year, you know, like we’ll have been back and I can finally, you know, see all the places that I’ve heard about in these stories.

02:24:26HO: Yeah.

02:24:27HO TRAN: Yeah.

02:24:28HO: That’ll be wonderful!

02:24:29HO TRAN: Yeah. I’m excited. Have you been?

02:24:31HO: No. I’m going in November for the first time. So—

02:24:34HO TRAN: You’re going to let me—Oh no, we talked about this already. And I think you mentioned it the first call that we had together.

02:24:39HO: Did we talk about it? I don’t remember.

02:24:41HO TRAN: I think we might have. Anyway, I’m very excited for you.

02:24:44HO: Yeah. Thank you.

02:24:45HO TRAN: Please let me know how the trip goes.

02:24:46HO: Okay. I want to know about yours too.

02:24:48HO TRAN: Yeah, no, I’ll keep you updated.

02:24:50HO: Yeah. Okay, so that pretty much covers everything I wanted to ask. And I really appreciate you being so like vulnerable and thorough with everything. I know that you have a memoir coming out and there’s going to be—all your stories are going to be in there, I assume. But is there anything else that you want to share about your parents and their background or anything you’ve gone through? Or are there questions I should have asked? Or are there any additional soapboxes or diatribes? (laughs) Or things that you want to share?

02:25:21HO TRAN: Oh no! Uh, one thing that I’d feel silly if I didn’t mention it is my brother. My brother, Nghi, is his Vietnamese name, N-G-H-I. Nghi Ho. Nghi Tran. But he goes by Richard. He’s about two years younger than me, born 1994, Sioux City, Iowa. And he grew up next to me. He knows all the same things that I know. Probably less willing, he wants less to tell these stories. But I don’t blame him for it. He wants to do his own thing. But I love my brother. It’s just I want to get that on record. He was like my best friend growing up. He’s the closest thing that I have to someone who is pretty, who’s essentially just a clone of me, like went through the exact same things that I went through. Went through the exact same struggles that I went through. And he’s great. He lives in Denver, now. Sadly, for him, he doesn’t like it but he lives really close to my parents who moved there after they sold the restaurant. But yeah. He works in IT. And he’s a great guy. He’s just an awesome kid. And yeah. He’ll always be kind of a kid to me which is silly because he’s obviously in his late 20s now. But, yeah, just love my brother.

02:26:47HO: That’s wonderful! I love my brother too. And he’s 37 now. But he’s still my little brother. So—

02:26:51HO TRAN: Okay, yeah. Still the younger brother. Absolutely.

02:26:57HO: Is there anything else that you want to share?

02:27:00HO TRAN: No. Outside of my brother, that’s pretty much—I think we covered it. I think we covered a lot. (laughs)

02:27:04HO: We covered it? Okay. If you’re sure.

02:27:07HO TRAN: Maybe not everything but I feel like we went over a lot. Is there anything else?

02:27:12HO: Anything, any specific childhood memories that really like stick out in your head or any dreams you’ve ever had that you want to share?

02:27:24HO TRAN: Nah. I think anyone watching this in the future pretty much gets a pretty good idea of who I am. (both laugh) If you want to learn more, read the book.

02:27:34HO: All right. Thank you, Tony.

02:27:36HO TRAN: I appreciate you, Jennifer.