PebHmong Discussion Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: theking on April 28, 2023, 06:12:20 PM
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Half a century later, the ghost of South Vietnam still haunts my family
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My mother passed away when I was 14 – a defining moment in my life that shaped the trajectory of the woman I've become. After I graduated college, I attempted to piece together her story by visiting places she had lived and grew up, including Vietnam and Cambodia. I also spent time with her family members in France, Switzerland and Louisiana, and became acquainted with her younger brother in Saigon.
Because I never heard stories directly from her, I sought them out to paint a vivid picture of the woman whom I knew in only one role – my mother, Evelyne Yubonn Gonoux. I discovered through family members that my mother was "vivacious" and "alive"; an avid Ping-Pong player in Cambodia, where she was born and raised as a third-generation Cambodian of Vietnamese descent; and a medical doctor in Vietnam. These descriptions felt like such a stark contrast to my mother who didn’t work or drive, and whose life felt defined by the meals she prepared for us in small towns where I was raised in Tennessee, Illinois and Indiana.
Throughout my global quest to find her, however, I overlooked another family member – my father, Nghia Vo. Nearly 50 years later, the memory of South Vietnam and the lasting trauma of its fall to North Vietnam's communist regime still haunts my family.