He came to Australia as a refugee from Vietnam. Now Kim Huynh has uncovered the story behind his family’s flight.

Young authors are often advised to write about what they know best. Young scholars, on the other hand, are encouraged to write about what others know best, and to keep well away from the pitfalls of the subjective ‘I’. So what are those people who would be writers and scholars to do? “Start and negotiate for yourself,” Kim Huynh says.

It’s sound advice. But where to start writing about Huynh? Should it be with his starry rise from student to scholar, where he now shines as one of the up-and-coming lecturers in political science at ANU? Should it be with his forays into opinion-based journalism, where he has pondered the implications of having an ‘uncool’ Prime Minister and worried about the plight of displaced people in Iraq? Or should it be with the publication of his first book, Where the sea takes us, in which he tells of his family’s flight from post-war Vietnam? Perhaps it’s best to begin with origins, as Huynh does in his family history.

In 1979, Thiet and Van Huynh and their two infant sons fled their troubled homeland to start a new life in Australia. They were among the first wave of ‘boat people’, a term coined to describe the mass exodus of fearful citizens from Communist-controlled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Kim, aged two and the baby of the family, was also the youngest of the 507 people crammed aboard a small wooden boat. Huynh, now 30, says has no real memories of the journey, nor any recollections of the pressures that led to his family’s escape.

“Part of the reason my dad decided to leave while we were so young was that so we would never know,” Huynh says. “He was happy to risk our lives. He knew that we were particularly imperilled by the trip. But he didn’t want us to remember anything about Vietnam: the oppression, the poverty that our family had to suffer. So there was a good reason to go while we were so young. The irony now is that I’ve spent the last few years trying to find out about those things, but mum and dad are very happy about that so it doesn’t matter.”
Huynh began digging into his family’s history when, as an Honours student at ANU, he chose to explore aspects of the personal and the political in his thesis on refugees. He squirms with embarrassment at the memory of his undergraduate prose, confessing that very little of that early writing survives in Where the sea takes us. Although he cringes at that work today, Huynh says it was the first step towards a much more detailed exploration of his personal history. By understanding more about the reasons his family fled Vietnam and resettled in Australia, he was able to create a sense of continuity between his self-confessed fortunate life in Canberra and the cultural turmoil of Southeast Asia.

At the end of the Vietnam War, the United States withdrew its troops after the Paris Peace Accords. The Northern Vietnamese and the Southern Revolutionaries, who shared a communist ideology, took control of Saigon in 1975. Thiet and Van Huynh were devastated by the development. They couldn’t believe that their country had been taken over so quickly and so easily. They believed that America had double-crossed them, after waging a war against North Vietnam and the communists for over a decade. Many southern Vietnamese feared that there was going to be retribution and bloodshed under the communists. The fact that Pol Pot had just taken over in neighbouring Cambodia added to the general sense of tension and dread. Huynh describes it as a “world turned upside down”, in which the future appeared very bleak. This tumultuous context led to his family leaving for Australia, where they found peace and prosperity.

When describing his childhood in Canberra, Huynh says he didn’t feel alienated, despite a few experiences of racial intolerance. “My parents were always working so hard. Dad worked full-time for the electricity authority, and the family also ran a bakery. We didn’t have any time to fraternise with Vietnamese anyway. As a result, my brother and I couldn’t speak much Vietnamese at all between the ages of 10 and 20 or so. We were good at sports, we did well at school and we were reasonably popular. Compared to other Vietnamese kids , we didn’t stick out so much. At least I don’t think we did. But we had a niggling desire to find out about who we are, too, and that’s largely the impetus behind this project.”

Another factor which spurred Huynh’s family history was that, as the youngest son, he was expected to stay at home and care for his parents. When his older brother moved away, the budding political scientist says he felt torn between tradition and his genuine affection for his parents on the one hand, and his desire to get out and see the world on the other. Tradition won out: until very recently, Huynh lived at his family home.

“My brother left as soon as he finished high school. There is a tradition amongst some Vietnamese that the youngest should stay at home and look after the parents. There was a great conflict there, because I’d grown up as a western individualist, but I felt obliged to observe this somewhat eastern tradition. Just before my honours year, I thought, ‘How am I going to make the best out of this? How am I going to turn this in my favour?’ I thought, ‘Rather than complain about this – which I did anyway – I’m going to find out why I feel like this, why I feel torn”.

He also needed to get his parents to open up about their past, which would require them to rake over some painful memories. “I negotiated a way in which we could talk most comfortably. It didn’t work if we just sat across from each other, because dad would talk over mum. So I’d go walking and running with mum, and I’d carry a notebook so I could jot down things. Or hang out with dad, while he was working down in the garage, I’d ask him questions. A lot of times at dinner I’d have the notebook under the table. Perhaps my methodology lacked rigour, it was certainly unconventional, but I did my best to be faithful to my parents and their story.”

As well as reconciling his competing loyalties to Vietnamese and Western cultures, Huynh also views the project as a chance to bring together his personal and professional activities. A lecturer in refugee politics, he spends much of his time as an academic thinking and teaching about how displaced people have been treated by ‘host’ cultures.

“There are two big questions for me: how do we find belonging for people, and how do we find truth for people. They’re reflected in my book, but they’re also reflected in my teaching.
“If we can understand the most extreme forms of dislocation and alienation, then maybe we can find some belonging for ourselves too. It’s not just learning about facts, and history and other people – students in these courses should also be able to find some solace or insight for their own lives.”

Huynh believes Australia’s reception of refugees over the last 30 years has involved good and bad aspects. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he describes the nation’s welcome of ‘boat people’ in the late 1970s as a positive development.

“For a long time it was a pejorative term: ‘You’re a boaty, right?’. I go back to my high school, where I used to be one of the only Vietnamese kids. Now there’s a Vietnamese posse, and they’re very proud to call themselves boaties. I’m not saying everyone should go out and use the term boaties or boat people, but I am enamoured by the way a lot of the younger kids are using it with pride and self-affirmation.

“[That period] stands as an example of what Australia can be like: of how generous and welcoming Australians can be with good political leadership. We can take in 90,000 Asians without ever having a history of seeking to take in large numbers of Asians. Overall, it’s been a magnificent success. A success not unlike the intake of refugees after World War II. That’s what we’re capable of in Australia. We don’t have to be fearful of outsiders. We don’t have to view them as contagions or economic cripples.

“I’m very concerned about asylum seekers being criminalized as ‘illegals’ or ‘queue jumpers’. I can understand the political prerogatives behind wanting to do that. But the unintended consequences for the Australian popular psyche and the opportunity costs in terms of hampering who we can be – one of the great compassionate and multicultural nations – make border security policies as we know them very costly. Even more concerning than the human costs, which are terrible to those asylum seekers who so desperately want to call Australia home.”

Father and son
Kim Huynh opens each chapter in his book Where the sea takes us with a dialogue between himself and his parents.

Thiet: How’s the study going, son? Have you given anything to your professors lately? They’re happy with your progress, yes? Have you explained to them that your thesis is about your mother and me? But it’s not really about us, is it? It’s about Vietnamese history and international politics: things that are much more important than our family.
Kim: Don’t worry, Dad. I haven’t been kicked out of university, not yet. I know how important it is for me to finish my PhD and find a good job, how important it is to you anyway.

Thiet: I’m happy to hear that, son. Your mum and I know how hard you’re working. We have total faith in you. If you want my advice though, the politics is the most important part. That’s what’ll help you become a lecturer or even a professor in future. You won’t make as much money as your brother, but you could make a big name for yourself. What you have to realise is that Vietnam has a long history. You know, for much of the twentieth century it was under French rule. Do you know about Geneva in 1954? Then the Americans came and went. Do you know about Guam in 1969? And of course there was communism.

Kim: Dad! I’ve been doing my PhD and teaching politics for two years. I’ve read all about French colonialism, the Vietnam War, the Nixon Doctrine, Maoism and Marxism. There are thousands of books on those topics. I don’t want to talk to you about all that. I want to talk to you about your childhood, what it was like growing up in your village. I want to know about my grandfather and my uncles. How many times do I have to tell you, my research is just as much about our family as it is about anyone, any war or anything else?

Thiet: Alright, alright, you don’t want to listen to your father, that’s your decision. Where do you want to start, then? I’ll tell you whatever I can remember. It’s not that important or interesting though. Nobody wants to know about us, there’s nothing to tell.

^^

ANU Reporter 
Spring 2007