Overview

When young Hao Tran left Vietnam in 1974 to study abroad, he had no idea it would be 20 years before he could return, or how much his native land would change in his absence. These are the stories of his exile, his return journeys, and his reconnections with long-lost family and friends, with a new Vietnam, and with himself.

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9781945955426

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"On April 30, 1975, Hao Tran's life changed irrevocably. He writes, ""In one day, I and the refugees became citizens of no country."" Hao is a Việt Kiều, a Vietnamese living overseas, whose journey takes him to Australia and the United States, unable to return to his home country for twenty years. These stories illustrate the hope and complexity of lives after the war, longing for family back home, and the resilience of the human spirit. With a poet's attention to detail and nuance, Hao writes with tenderness and warmth. This is a deeply moving and powerful view into a remarkable life. --Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate Author of Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire Hao Tran belongs to a generation of Vietnamese Americans we are not supposed to know about. He left before 1975, before everything changed. His stories recount the knife's edge of war-time adolescence and the bargains young men had to cut with their fate. His journey is one that stretches across Australia, the United States, and Vietnam. It is a journey of sacrifice and guilt, of and chronic ache and small joys, of ongoing departures and endless homecomings. His stories unearth the bind in which so many Vietnamese war immigrants and refugees now find themselves-legs sturdy and set on land yet always yearning for the water. It is a miracle and gift to have his words and his writing. --Lilly U. Nguyen, writer, scholar, and editor Awards from TinHouse, PEN Emerging Writers, and the Fulbright International Institute Skinny Woman with a Straw Hat is a memoir of exquisite grace and sensitivity. We follow Hao Tran, a self-described ""Việt Kiều,"" when the dust settled, returned as a visitor. In prose that is both poignant and personal, we follow Hao's unfolding as a poor Vietnamese kid through his journey to college in Australia, where he'd won a full scholarship just months before the Fall of Sai Gon. Suddenly, he was a young man without a country, and cut off from his family and friends. This book is about the journey back, literally and figuratively. We're moved to tears when we watch Hao meeting his mother again after 20 years, reconnecting with his Ba (father), and his brothers and old friends. We watch him tour his native land during several trips back, note the changes as he does, smell the motorbike exhaust and taste the hot chili sauce. We watch as Hao makes peace with the challenges of being separated from his family and homeland, and the choices that is required of him. This is the universal story of a refugee making a new life while reconnecting with the one he left behind. Hao's writing is gentle and accessible, and the stories he tells are little gems that in the end add up to a jewel of a book that will move your heart and touch your soul. It certainly touched mine. --Gary Turchin Author of Through A Broken Window, Best Indie Book Award 2020 Hao Tran's writing is a sacred, reverent honoring of the many lives he has lived -and the ones he has witnessed. In Skinny Woman, he takes us on a gentle journey through the searing pain of the world, his own heartbreak, and the beauty woven through it all. With his artist's soul he takes in and mirrors back things about the world that we would never have seen otherwise. With his courageous heart he inspires us to keep turning toward the worlds he reveals. To read this book is to be instantly humbled and filled with awe. It teaches us what it is to live fully and live on, leaving only goodness in one's wake. --Joy M. Reichart, writer and coach Editor of Please Scream Inside Your Heart-A Soul Writing Anthology"

Author Information

Hao C. Tran left Vietnam as a young man to go to college in Australia and later settled in the United States. Shortly after he left Saigon, the war ended and he couldn't return for 20 years. Since 1994, he has gone back to his homeland a dozen times, and many of his short stories are based on these journeys. Hao's stories are from the perspective of a Việt Kiều, a Vietnamese living overseas. He writes about his own experience as an immigrant, his family, the people he encountered in his travels, and the heart-breaking changes in a post-war Vietnam.

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