Carina Hoang’s ‘Boat People’: Short Stories, Long Memories

In 1979, in a wooden boat crowded with almost 400 people, Carina Hoang escaped Vietnam with two of her siblings. She is now a doctoral candidate at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. On July 5, Hoang had a launch of Boat People: Personal Stories of the Vietnamese Exodus at the Library of New South Wales. By editing this book, she aims to put a human face on the 1.5 million people to flee Vietnam, between 1975 and 1996, by seeking refuge in neighboring countries. One-third died en route, at sea or in camps. 

Guest diaCRITIC blogger Boitran Huynh-Beattie—a professor, curator and art historian in Australia—reviews this new collection of stories edited by Vietnamese-American-Australian Carina Hoang. 

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'Boat People' edited by Carina Hoang

On 5 July 2011 in the cold winter of Sydney at 6 pm, an audience of around 80 people came to the book launch at the State Library of New South Wales. They were captivated by the two speechesone told by the editor, Carina Hoang, and the other, Mr. Talbot Bashall, one of the contributors. The book Boat People consists of 31 short stories by Vietnamese boat people, and nine stories by non-Vietnamese staff that work in various refugee camps in South East Asia.

Vietnamese refugee boat | Photo courtesy Talbott Bashall

It is a heavy book, not only by weight (256 pages of 21 x 29 cm) but also by historical, emotional and political accounts. All the refugees’ stories come from their experiences as boat people and describe the assorted encounters of their journey; be it frustration, humiliation, rape, or joy, hope and resilience. Stories by non-Vietnamese convey a widened context to the international public response regarding the boat people issue that emerged in the late 1970s and up to the 1990s.

1982 Desk Diary of a Refugee Camp in Hong Kong

The book is very elegantly designed, in which narratives and images are intermingled that communicates from the heart. The second last story is about Nhan Thi Mong Ha, a young girl who died at the age of fifteen and was buried on Kuku Island in Indonesia. Due to unexpected circumstances, her family could not go back to the Island in a planned trip, but her mother wrote the deceased daughter a letter and asked Carina Hoang to burn it at the graveside. When I reached the end of this story, my curiosity led me to an attached envelope. Inside was a copy of the letter in Vietnamese that after reading I could not hold back my tears.

Boat People is a well-researched book and interestingly informative. Hundreds of photographs from personal sources and from archives of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees are included. Mr. Talbot Bashall, for instance, who was the senior administrator of the Refugee Control Centre in Hong Kong, kept detailed diaries about his years in that post, and took thousands of photographs, some of which appear in Boat People.

Carina Hoang, editor of 'Boat People'

Carina Hoang is the book’s editor, who escaped by boat with her two younger siblings when she was 16 years old. After settling in the US, she resumed her studies and graduated with an MBA. She then embarked on another journey when she returned to Kuku Island, to search for the remains of her cousin. When she posted photographs of some graves she came across on her website, http://carinahoang.com/, many people in the Vietnamese Diaspora contacted her, and requested that she accompany them back to Kuku Island to visit the graves of their relatives, mainly people who survived the high seas but succumbed to disease and malnutrition. Carina Hoang also led the Vietnam Archive Boat People group on their first visit to Kuku Island, and is currently completing her PhD at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, where she resides with her husband and daughter.

The foreword for Boat People was written by former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser (1975-1983), whose government was instrumental in accepting Vietnamese boat people into Australia in the second half of the 1970s.

This self-published book Boat People has been very well received and was chosen as “The Pick of the Week” by The Sydney Morning Herald on May 2011. Carina Hoang was interviewed by the Australian National Broadcast Radio and by George Negus on Channel 10. She was invited to deliver speeches at the Refugees Day in Melbourne and other Australian capital cities in June. Upon the requests, Boat People will be translated into Vietnamese by the end of 2011.

Publicity and interviews can be found here:

A national radio interview with Carina Hoang

An interview with ABC Radio National

ABC Radio On-Air Highlights

Voice of America News


— Dr. Boitran Huynh-Beattie has worked with the Australian National University, Melbourne University, and the University of Wollongong on different projects related to Vietnam’s Diaspora since 2005.


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3 COMMENTS

  1. The Geneva convention about refugee on July 28, 1951 confirmed: refugee couldn’t return to where they fled to find freedom and safe, even though contact to its embassy. A case of Carina Hoang Oanh to be warned, she claimed refugee status, but she has returned safe to Vietnam many times and she also has done the good business.
    Her book” the boat people” has been getting the strong react against into the Vietnamese community overseas. In 2011, she launched the book at Nguoi Viet’s news hall, California, a capital of Vietnamese refugee, many guests shouted and boycott. The reason’s her book just told about the journey on sea with pirate, but she has not tell the main cause of refugee’s disaster, likely a judge upgrades the witness to be key of case, but the prime suspect ignored.
    The UN and UNHCR have made the critical mistake about refugee, so the asylum seeker have used the mankind to find the good place to live. There is about 4 million Vietnamese claimed refugee status after Vietnam war ended on April 30, 1975. Now, there is so many Vietnamese refugee transformed themselves to asylum seeker, they have returned safe to where they fled to find freedom. The refugee who recognize the freedom is priceless, but asylum seeker is not, then in Vietnamese community overeas, there is the drug trafic, cannabis plant spreading from North America, Europe to Australia. It is the consequence of the wrong refugee approval.
    The most Vietnamese refugee who do business in Vietnam were castigated the assset after earning profit, the cases of Nguyen Trung Truc ( australia), Trinh Vinh Binh ( Holland), Tran Truong ( US)… but there is some rare refugees are such as Carina Hoang Oanh and Nancy Bui ( US) who succeeded business without problem. Who are they?.
    Carina Hoang Oanh also lied on the SBS radio, Vietnamese language program in N.S.W, She claimed to be selected as the special representative of UNHCR in Australia, I feel upset, because an asylum seeker likes her, who couldn’t behave me and more than 200,000 refugee in Australia to UNHCR. So I wrote comment on UN, UNHCR facebook. It is about 6 months, VOA ( radio in US)in Vietnamese language program, UNHCR confirmed, they have never elect a Vietnamese female for this position.
    Her book is not her story, she collected many boat people stories, likely a says of Vietnamese people:” borrowing pig head to cook soup”. The people story may not value or sometimes met the exaggeration, so her book could be checked.
    I am a boat people, former member of ARVN, an Ex-lieut and POW after Vietnam war ended. I spent 6 years into the 9 hell of reeducation camps. My situation likes father of Carina Hoang Oanh, so her book couldn’t convince me and my trust. I am author of three books published in US, I have enough knowledge and expert about refugee and asylum seeker.
    My mother, 88 years old, she lived in Vietnam, I tried to get her to Australia as just visitor visa, but Vietcong government prevented, because I have never return to where I escaped to find freedom. But Carina Hoang Oanh who has came back safe many times and successful business, she is not refugee as Geneva convention 1951. Carina Hoang Oanh revealed to the Vietnam.net ( website of Vietcong), she met a high rank Vietcong offial, Mr. Tran Quang Hoan, vice chairperson of Vietcong commission for overseas duty ( this authority links to espionage). Those reason, I don’t trust her book and also her personality.
    Hoa Minh Truong.
    ( author of 3 books published by a global publisher in New York)

  2. This article was concise but very fascinating! I will look for the book in my local library. There’s another wonderful article about a Vietnamese refugee in the October 22, 1985 issue of Awake! magazine, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Here is their address if you’d like to write them: PO Box 280, Ingleburn, NSW 1890.

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