Sometimes, just when you’re about to leave, you see the past in a new way. For My-Linh Le, she was about to fly to Europe when she thought of her mom. Le is 30, about the same age her mom was when she got on a boat to leave Vietnam.
“There was no food and no water and people were dying left and right,” Le remembers her mom telling her. “And every time somebody died, they were just thrown overboard.”
Le wasn’t born yet. Her mom was divorced and had two young daughters at the time, but only one of them got on the boat with her.
“The older one was kicking and screaming and it was a risky thing because you know, she’s sneaking off into a boat,” Le says, and her mom was forced to leave her daughter behind.
Stories like these trickled out during Le’s childhood in San Jose. It was always hush hush. So Le doesn’t remember that much. What she remembers about her parents was how angry they were.
[For more on this story by April Dembosky, go to https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017...raits-and-tragedies/]
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