Cat Nguyen
A memoir of the author’s family’s endeavours to flee South Vietnam through Khmer Rouge territory, life in Thailand refugee camps and their struggle to survive in Australia.
The next morning he said he’d found it hard to sleep and when he did the nightmares came. The steam from the instant coffee in the Bankstown City Council mug rose as he spoke. My father looked old. I felt shame and remorse. I had turned the interview into an intellectual fact-finding exercise that assaulted him like an icy 10-page hospital questionnaire in English.
My mother told me she would answer any questions. “Dad is fragile. He is a lot weaker than you think.” So through fragments of stories that my mother and relatives told over time, I was able to piece together a jigsaw collection of my family history. Incomplete, but just enough”…..