Have you ever been to the DMV or some other official kind of place and seen immigrant parents with little English proficiency helped out with the paperwork by their school-aged children?  Tung Ly was that kid.  When he was growing up in Tulsa, there were many occasions where he had to help his parents with…

In 1980, Quoc Hoang was born in a refugee camp in a Malaysian jungle.  Two-and-a-half months later, his family found itself in Canada in the dead of winter, totally dislocated from friends and family, and in a city (Toronto) that, at the time, had very few Vietnamese people.   Now Quoc lives in New Orleans…

A true “professional bohemian”, Stephen Collier is a nationally known artist and one of the founders of the Good Children Gallery on St. Claude.   The son of a white father and a Vietnamese mother, Stephen grew up in Natchitoches where he was one of the only Asians for miles around.  Now living and working…

Alison Ecker lives in Hanoi, and joins us with a live report on the strange fate of the motorcycle helmet in Vietnam, and the importance of women’s shoes in shifting gears.

Generally speaking, Vietnamese people – particularly the older generation – don’t go to counselors, they don’t see life coaches, and they sure as hell don’t see shrinks.  It’s not that they don’t have problems (like the rest of us), but for various reasons, they tend to deal with them on their own, and that’s one…