Adrift At Sea by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and Tuan Ho

Adrift At Sea tells the story of Van Ho's older brother Tuan and his escape from communist Vietnam in 1981. Van's story was told in a later book, Too Young to Escape also authored by acclaimed Brantford author, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.

Tuan's journey begins a year after his father had escaped Vietnam with Tuan's older sister Linh. Tuan arrives home from school one day and is told by his mother that they are leaving that night but she warns him not to tell anyone.Tuan remembers his father's last words to him, "Be brave, Tuan."

Later that night Tuan along with his sisters Lan, Loan and his mother as well as his Aunt Nghia and two of her children slip out of their house and into a truck that takes them to the ocean. Their race to a waiting boat is a terrifying one, as bullets fly past them. Tuan becomes briefly separated from his mother, but they are soon all reunited, after changes to three boats. Their boat heads out to sea, with  sixty people crammed into  it. When the motor breaks down, Tuan and his mother and sisters, along with his aunt and her two daughters are adrift in a leaky boat. Unlike many others, they are the lucky ones, eventually rescued by an American aircraft carrier.

Discussion

Adrift At Sea presents true story of a little boy's harrowing flight from his homeland. With the end of the Vietnam War between America and the north Vietnamese communists in 1975, the country became completely ruled by a communist government. Conditions  rapidly deteriorated both socially and economically in the years following the war. Life was so terrible that thousands of Vietnamese began fleeing their country. The only way to do this was by sea, often in small, leaky boats that made the journey even more perilous. Tuan Ho's family was in an especially precarious situation because his father had worked for the Americans as a translator.  As a result Tuan's father had fled the country a year earlier taking with him his eldest daughter.

Map of Southeast Asia showing Vietnam (pink)

To write Adrift At Sea, Skrypuch interviewed Tuan Ho, now a physiotherapist with a flourishing practice in Toronto, about his experiences as a six-year-old. To keep Tuan's story authentic, Skrypuch decided to use the picture book format and to tell the story in the voice of a young boy. The picture book format uses less text and relies more on illustrations to fill in the story details.  In this way, young children could better relate to Tuan's experiences.

Award-winning artist and illustrator Brian Deines' vibrant artwork brings to life Tuan's story. Deine's illustrations are oil paint on canvas and have an impressionistic character at times. Done in rich colours, these beautiful illustrations add depth to Skrypchuk's recounting of Tuan's escape from Vietnam. Deine's artwork captures the many emotions Tuan and his family experienced as the fled for their lives. The picture book is completed with a section at the back containing family photographs, a description of life in post-war communist Vietnam, the struggles Vietnamese refugees faced in fleeing their country and an account of Tuan's family's ordeal.

Adrift At Sea is a remarkable picture book, well crafted and a must for parents, teachers, homeschoolers and anyone interested in helping young Canadians understand the plight of refugees and their remarkable courage, determination and resilience in the struggle to be both safe and free.

Map credit: https://asiasociety.org/education/introduction-southeast-asia

Book Details:

Adrift At Sea by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and Tuan Ho
Toronto: Pajama Press Inc.           2016

Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War/ One Step at a Time by Marsha Forchuck Skrypuch

Marsha Skrypuch has written two short books for young readers that tell the story of eight year old Son Thi Anh Tuyet, a Vietnamese orphan who was adopted by a family from Brantford, Ontario. Living in an orphanage in Saigon, in 1975, Tuyet  had been crippled by polio when younger and was suffering from psychological trauma as a result of  her experiences during the Vietnam War.

With the fall of South Vietnam and its capital city, Saigon, to the North Vietnamese communists, the West began to evacuate children and babies from orphanages all over the city. Tuyet was one of fifty-seven babies and children airlifted out of Saigon and flown to Toronto Canada. This flight, on April 13, 1975, was the last to arrive in Canada. The children on this flight were not yet adopted. Last Airlift goes on to describe Tuyet's experience, leaving Vietnam and her new life with John and Dorothy Morris who adopted her into their family. Marsha Skrypuch intended to write Tuyet's story as a novel. Tuyet initially couldn't remember much of her early childhood, but as her memories resurfaced, Ms. Skrypuch decided to tell Tuyet's story instead.

The second book, One Step At A Time, tells about Tuyet's struggle to have her leg, damaged and weakened by polio mended so that she would be able to walk again. Tuyet's surgery took place at the newly opened McMaster University Hospital in Hamilton, ON in 1975. At this time, parents could not stay with their children, and there were no translation services available to a newcomer to Canada,  like Tuyet. Skrypuch effectively captures Tuyet's confusion and fear at being left alone in a hospital for a procedure she didn't understand.
Eventually Tuyet begins to adapt to her new home and family, largely due to having regained the ability to be mobile and also due to the loving care of the Morris family.

Tuyet's early attachment to John Morris is truly endearing. One family picture with Tuyet's arm draped over her father's knee suggests that Tuyet immediately formed a close bond with the man who was the first father she had ever known. Tuyet was very blessed to have been adopted into such a loving family. Her two younger sisters treated her with kindness and repeatedly reassure her. They introduced her to the strange, new customs of her adopted country, Canada.

These two books will serve as a gentle introduction for younger children to an event known as the Fall of Saigon and also the Vietnam War. Skrypuch's books can also be used as the jumping point for children learning about the Vietnamese refugees who came to Canada in the mid-1970's.

Book Details:
Last Airlift. A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way
Pajama Press

Ru: a novel by Kim Thuy

"...My parents often remind my brothers and me that they won't have any money for us to inherit, but I think they've already passed on to us the wealth of their memories, allowing us to grasp the beauty of a flowering wisteria, the delicacy of a word, the power of wonder. Even more, they've given us feet for walking to our dreams, to infinity...."

Ru is autobiographical, a collection of stories based somewhat on  Kim Thuy's life; from a small child living in a well to do family in Saigon, to a refugee in a camp in Malaysia, to a new life in Canada. Told in the voice of Nguyen An Tinh, each page presents a memory from childhood or adulthood or a recounting of some event experienced by someone who touched the narrator's life.

Nguyen An Tinh tells the story of her family, from their life in Vietnam during the war, their escape on a boat to a refugee camp in Malaysia, and their new life in Granby, Quebec. Born in Saigon, during the Tet offensive, Nguyen's family was well off, living in a large home, until the Communists overran the southern half of the country, and came to occupy her family's home. The contents were inventoried and eventually removed. Nguyen's family escaped Vietnam on an overcrowded boat that landed in Malaysia, where they spent time in a refugee camp, awaiting immigration to a new life in Canada.

Some vignettes portray the realities of life in South Vietnam for a large family; the numbering of siblings and relations, the devotion and respect of the younger generation towards their elders, and the merging of Chinese and Vietnamese families.

Other memories reveal the horrors of the Vietnam war; both personal tragedies and the tragedies other Vietnamese experienced. There are the abandoned children of American GI's, the occupation of the family home by members of the Communist government; the heroics of neighbour Anh Phi and his mother, who found Nguyen's family's lost diamonds so they could pay their passage out of Vietnam.

Flashbacks reveal a childhood in Granby, Quebec where her mother sent her to a military garrison of cadets to master the English language, where a friend Johanne took her to movies, and where she and her family learned the ways of a different culture in a land made beautiful by never-before-seen snow.

Interposed with all of these are present reflections of Nguyen's life as the mother of two boys, Pascal and Henri and her struggle to cope with Henri's autism.

Ru juxtaposes past with present, moving seamlessly between the two, often linking the vignettes with a word or idea. The voice of Nguyen is muted but still manages to convey the horror of war, the dislocation and loss of a way of life, and the struggles to begin again in a strange new land.. In this way Ru is not just a telling of Kim Thuy's experiences but also has relevance to other "boat people" who escaped Vietnam.

Author Kim Thuy discusses Ru in this short interview:


Originally published in French and winner of the Governor General's Award, Ru is a poetic read that will stir the hearts of readers, especially those of us who remember the arrival of the "boat people" in our communities almost forty years ago.

Book Details:
Ru by Kim Thuy
Random House Canada       2009
141 pp.

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

"Every new year Mother visits

the I Ching Teller of Fate.

This year he predicts

our lives will twist inside out."

Ten year old Kim Ha lives with her family in war-torn Saigon, South Vietnam. Her family includes her older brothers Quang, 21 - an engineering student, and Vu who is 18, as well as younger brother, Khoi who is 4, and her mother. Her father, a Vietnamese navy officer, was captured nine years ago while on a mission. Ha's family continue to hope he is alive and will return some day. It is 1975, what will eventually be the final year of the Vietnam War, and for Ha this means celebrating her birthday and waiting for the delicious papayas to ripen. Little does she know how dramatically her life will soon change.

At first, despite her father's absence, the war seems to have little effect on the family. When war finally does come to Saigon, Ha, along with her family make the decision to leave their beloved country and flee via boat. Crammed onto a navy vessel along with thousands of other Vietnamese who do not desire to live under communist rule, they are rescued by the American navy. Their boat is towed to Guam where they are placed in a refugee camp. Eventually the family is sent to South Florida and are sponsored by a man and his wife from Alabama. Despite the good intentions of the couple from Alabama, the transition from Asian culture into what is essentially the American Bible Belt proves to be intensely confusing and painful for everyone.

For Ha, the transition proves to be almost impossible until one day she meets Miss Washington, a neighbour who agrees to tutor Ha and her family in English. However, learning English only adds to Ha's pain because she now understands the insults made by her American classmates. Eventually, as Ha grows to trust Miss Washington, she confides that she has been hiding at school, eating lunch in the bathroom and is being bullied by her classmates. Efforts to make things better only worsen the situation. But, as Ha and her family begin to acquire more language skills, the transition to their new life begins to go more slowly.

Discussion

In her novel, Inside Out & Back Again, Thanhha Lai poignantly captures the essence of what it was truly like for an refugee from Vietnam in 1975. This was a time when the world was a much smaller place and a profound lack of cultural understanding permeated the well-intentioned help offered to Asian refugees in America (and Canada). The prejudice that Ha and her family experience are due not only to racial intolerance but also to ignorance. Settling immigrants in an area of America with very different customs and beliefs, and especially in a part of America known for its staunch biblical beliefs, made integrating into American society much more difficult. In Canada, many Vietnamese refugees settled in Montreal, Quebec, where they at least had the familiarity of the French language.

Some of the intolerance may also have been due to the anger and pain Americans especially felt in the aftermath of losing the Vietnam War. Many Americans were angry at their government and military for the country's involvement in a guerrilla war they couldn't possibly win. Still others were angry at the Vietnamese people, whom they saw as being ungrateful towards the sacrifice made by American soldiers.

In eloquent and moving free verse, Thanhha Lai chronicles Ha's journey from February 11, 1975 until January 31, 1976. The novel's simple poems allow the reader, through the voice of Ha, to experience the raw emotions of hope, loss, and fear, thus making the character very realistic. One such poem captures the joy Ha feels about papayas.

Two More Papayas

I see them first.

Two green thumbs

that will grow into

orange-yellow delights

smelling of summer.

Middle sweet

between a mango and a pear

Soft as a yam

gliding down

after three easy,

thrilling chews. 

April 5

It's hard not to feel a deep empathy towards Ha, whose entire life has been turned inside out. Beside being in a new and strange country, she must also come to terms with the loss of her beloved father, and cope with the frustration of repeating a grade because she is struggling to learn in a new language.

Inside Out & Back Again provides young readers the opportunity to explore the situation immigrants face when coming to a new country. It also provides an opportunity to discuss the Vietnam War, an almost forgotten conflict that consumed America and Asia during the 1960's and early 1970's.

Book Details:
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai
New York: Harper Collins 2011
262 pp.