by Vicky Nguyen
First published 2025
NBC News correspondent Vicky Nguyen recounts her family's perilous flight from communist Vietnam in 1975 among the desperate "boat people" crossing the South China Sea. After surviving pirate attacks and months in a Malaysian refugee camp, her family reached America only to face a new challenge: learning how to be American. Nguyen describes growing up with Vietnamese parents who struggled to bridge cultural divides, leading to childhood misadventures from nearly attacking a neighborhood racist with a butter knife to sneaking Cosmo magazines to learn about sex. Her parents taught her resilience with their "Why not us?" attitude, preparing her to combat stereotyping throughout her journalism career and deflect questions like "Aren't you Connie Chung?" Nguyen reveals her path to television news, salary negotiations in a competitive field, starting a family, and balancing career ambitions with being a dutiful daughter. This transparent account mixes humor with nostalgia to celebrate the messy bonds that hold families together across cultural transitions.
Genres: family, autobiography, social-issues, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, personal-development, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, nostalgic, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Malaysia, South China Sea, United States, Vietnam
Period: 1975
319 pages · Kindle Edition · Simon & Schuster