Surrey, Canada
Biography:
Our family made the dangerous decision to escape Vietnam as one of the boat people when I was a child. We boarded a small, half-covered vessel with other families and were eventually picked up by a Hong Kong fishing boat. From there we went to a refugee camp where we were processed, inoculated, housed and educated. Living stacked on top of each other in warehouses next to a military training facility, I do not remember much, as it felt very much like the poverty we had faced at home. It was there that my father was interviewed by representatives of a church in Canada that eventually sponsored us.
Growing up in Canada, isolated in a remote Northern town, my childhood was an experience of being in limbo – I was different and unsure of myself, with a sense of being disconnected, as I had very little in common with the people around me. This feeling persisted until an opportunity to return to my birthplace presented itself in the form of a research grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Going back to Vietnam was powerful. I felt an instant kinship and connection to my country of origin. It was an answer to who I am, but also alien to me – from the language to the skin tones to the way we sat and the food we ate, even to the smells of what I imagined home to be like. Through this exploration of the life I might have led had I not been taken in as a refugee, I discovered how the community that we were born into shapes our origins and how our origins define our identity.
Website: www.lungliu.com
