The Vietnamese Boat People podcast and nonprofit was founded in 2018 by Tracey Nguyen Mang, whose family of nine fled Vietnam by boat. Nguyen Mang arrived in America in 1981 when she was three years old. Growing up, she was ashamed by the stigma associated with being a refugee. Her parents rarely spoke about their past, and the pain and losses they endured seemed to silently linger in the backdrop of their lives. Nguyen Mang started the podcast to create a platform that would help capture these stories for families and individuals, to amplify marginalized Asian and refugee voices through the power of storytelling, and to encourage younger generations to embrace and be inspired by their history and heritage.
The podcast features a curated collection of stories of the Vietnamese diaspora sourced and told directly by the community. It focuses on those who fled Vietnam, often by boat, following the Vietnam War in the years 1975-1992. Those that survived the arduous journey were taken to make-shift refugee camps in neighboring countries before being resettled in places like the US.
Vietnamese Boat People is available on major podcast platforms such as Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Stitcher and currently reaches listeners all over the world.
Additional materials are located in the Vietnamese Boat People Records at the NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. A finding aid for the collection is in process.