Stumbled upon this after hearing the Pho episode on NPR. As an Asian-American, the bicultural perspective is one that reasonates strongly. Excellent production and well-crafted. Not sure when or if a second season is due, but happy to wait patiently. I highly recommend this podcast!

Update: Still Waiting for more content from Thanh, every few months I go back and listen to season one. I like that Thanh brings up topics that all of us Vietnamese American living in America faces through the decades since the Vietnam War. What I love about this podcast is Thanh. Her presentation and delivery of her ideas through the format of this show is fantastic. Here’s to hoping for plenty of future episodes to come.

Looking forward to season 2. Great to hear perspectives of Vietnamese Americans.

Really gets to the heart of the immigrant experience. I recall my own elder family members and their experiences with the ties (and efforts to assist) their Easter European relatives. This podcast shows both the particular and the universal aspects of life for immigrants to our country.

Great stories and amazing sound work. Wonderful production.

👍👍

A small glimpse into a unknown & fascinating Culture. Well presented. I am a Vietnam vet. Please bring back the podcast.

I’m a 1.5 generation Vietnamese-American, and have always felt there hasn’t been a forum for our perspective, and voice, to be heard. Thank you Thanh for making this podcast possible, and through your personal stories and experience, I’m able and I hope many more Vietnamese-Americans, can start a dialogue with our families and our communities. To start healing and moving forward together.

I heard the Pho episode while listening to NPR One a few weeks ago. The title of the episode caught my attention, because it is one of my favorite meals. I immediately downloaded the Podcast and heard all of the episodes. I am an ethnic Chinese who was born in Saigon. My family came to the United States exactly 39 years today (2/9). I am thankful to my parents every day for their courage to leave Saigon with four young daughters and their extended family in 1978 in hopes of starting a new life. My Dad was 38 and my Mom was 32, with four daughters all under the age of 7. My parents have sacrificed so much to give my four sisters (my youngest sister was born in the US) a great life. We truly are living the American dream all thanks to their love and perseverance. Although we can never repay them for their sacrifice, we do our best to show our gratitude by giving them the life that they missed out on to give us the life we had. They are retired and enjoy spending time with their 5 daughters and sons-in-law and 7 grandchildren! Please keep the great stories coming. Thank you for sharing your stories and experiences. I look forward to the next season!

Thanh is such a great storyteller and she helped me to learn more about my Vietnamese background as I am, too, a Vietnamese American refugee. The episodes get me emotional and gives me so much more awareness. I’m more appreciative of my life now. Thank you and I look forward to the next season!

But also very worthwhile for any immigrants, children of immigrants, or anyone curious about the immigrant experince and how weird it can be. Most of the episodes are brief but pack in a lot of great storytelling. It's almost therapeutic to listen to as a Viet (born and raised US) who grew up feeling caught between two cultures.

As a 1.5 generation Vietnamese immigrant (born in Vietnam but raised in America), I can say that the state of being a first or second generation immigrant is filled with contradictions: loving your adopted country while feeling profound sadness and nostalgia for the land of your ancestors, living with quotidian luxuries such as running water and a full dinner table while wholly aware that your parents lived through starvation and violence, feeling a lonely desperation to fit in with your American friends while at the same time unwilling and unwanting to spurn your family’s culture. Thanh Tan does a beautiful job of illustrating and dissecting these contradictions. Her episodes are self-examining, illuminating, and sometimes even cathartic. They make me laugh, cry, think, and ultimately marvel at human resilience.

Thanh is a good writer,story teller. Every episode is full and rich. Well worth a listen each time. Thanks Thanh!

Thanh is a wonderful, compelling storyteller. She’s captured and relates so many fascinating stories about the immigrant and children-of-immigrants experience. It’s rooted in the specifics of the Vietnamese American experience, adding welcome new perspectives to narrative journalism. And it has heart and lessons that we can all enjoy and appreciate.

Thank you so much for your podcast. Words cannot describe how much our family loves your podcast. We listen to your podcast together with our two young teen boys during dinner when we can. Your podcast help us and our boys understand our Vietnamese stories. Please keep up the wonderful work, Vo family

Thanh! Thank you for the insightful, funny and inspiring episodes. These stories and themes of identity have been and will continue to be valuable for me, my Vietnamese and even non-Vietnamese American peers, and my nephews who will grow up in America with little to no contact of where their parents came from. Can’t wait to hear what’s to come next season!

Beautiful stories, beautiful voice, beautiful writing

I have been listenig to this podcasts in recent months and have been enjoying it tremendously. I have been living in Vietnam for a couple of years and can imagine the narrators experience coming here to visit and seeing this as an American with some of this cultural background The topics encompass so much of the experience of Vietnamese culture, both as it is experienced in the US and as it exists and has existed in Vietnam.

Incredible storytelling about such an important topic.

In the late 1970s, I was a junior high school student in Edmonds, Washington, when “boat people” began showing up in our community and at my school. They were the first real people I had met from Vietnam, a place that had been on the news and in the conversations of adults my entire life. Than’s family were among these refugees who settled in western Washington, and have helped make it a richer, more vibrant region. I am so glad that, 40 years ago, our communities welcomed these strangers who needed a home, and who have contributed so much.

I always wanted a podcast like this and Thanh Tan really delivered it. She’s an excellent journalist. She looks at multiple sides of an issue while injecting her personal experiences in a way that really resonates. I’m Vietnamese American and find the content so relatable. My favorite episodes are the one about the Beauty Pageant , pho, and the one about Her godsister who was a boat person . This has to be my favorite podcast!

Really interesting podcast!! Love hearing these stories from such a different perspective than mine

I am not Vietnamese, but want to learn from Vietnamese culture and perspective of war. I heard of it trough The New York times. Coming from Nicaragua I identify myself with this complex reality of having two narratives.

There are also plenty of Vietnamese come from north in US currently. One of my friend was from Hanoi, but I never asked him about the flag.

I love this show. I have learned so much. It is gives a well thought out and balanced perspective.

I am an avid podcast listener and I have been on this constant search for a podcast that is dedicated to the Asian American experience. The other Asian American centered podcasts are ok. But this is an amazing well produced thoughtful podcast. And I LOVE IT!

I never realized the impact of being a child of immigrants had on me until recently. This podcast really hits the nail on the head with insightful interviews. Thank you for giving us a voice.

How about not complaining about stories being told by white men about Vietnam when plenty of those white men (that survived) are telling their experience and the experience of their fallen comrades that died who can no longer share their experience. Nobody is stopping any Vietnamese person from talking about it themselves, no need for the whining about white men talking about the war that I'm sure nearly all of them would rather have not fought in. And any white man, or hell, anybody shouldn't be discouraged from telling their experience just because they aren't "second wave" Vietnamese.

Kudos to Thanh Tan. Keep up with the issues concerning our integration into the Melting Pot. Thank you for your community spirit.

Thanh tells a captivating story. Listen to it and it will become clear that she has done serious researching, studying and soul searching. As you listen, you will come to understand her thoughts and feelings...and your own!

Thank you so much for this podcast. As a first generation, viet-American that grew up in the Midwest I always felt so out of place. I still do. This podcast makes me feel like finally my voice, appearance, and story isn’t so odd. Relatable, and finally a connection to other Americans like myself.

I recently returned from living in Vietnam for two years teaching in a school designed, built, and run for the elite of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). The poignancy of your writer's voice and the stories had me in tears.

Wonderful reporting and vignettes on the Vietnamese-American experience - something that I personally know very little about but am so glad to learn from Thanh and her subjects!

For years, I denied my refugee status, I worked hard to be an American and lived the American way trying to forget my refugee past. These episodes highlights the importance of maintaining your history while striving to do our best preserving our heritage and history for future generations. Thank You Thanh!

Thanh is a brilliant host with a passion for the subject matter that is readily apparent in her voice. It's a story worth telling, and one that will be told with great care by her.

Thanh is a POWERFUL storyteller and she highlights an important perspective that's been largely overlooked.