Photos left to right: Melanie Nguyen’s dad, Ly Nguyen (right), landed in Houston, Texas, after his arrival in the U.S. from Vietnam. A colorful mural of a Vietnamese woman in Little Saigon in Seattle’s International District.
To mark 50 years since the Fall of Saigon, Stritmatter Law attorney Melanie Nguyen and fellow attorney Joanne Kalas, both former presidents of the Vietnamese American Bar Association of Washington (VABAW), shared a powerful conversation in the June issue of the Washington State Bar Association Bar News.
They reflect on the legacy of war, the silence within refugee families, and how those histories shape their identities and work as lawyers today.
My parents were born in the early 1960s during the escalation of the Vietnam War. My dad was the youngest of eight children and my mom the middle of ten. During that time, having more children meant more bodies to help support the family. So that’s what they did. Both of my parents completed school until the fifth grade and left to start farming. To sum up their teenage years, they grew up in a battle torn country, farming crops for work, surrounded by war and starvation. In the 1970s, many Vietnamese fled their home to escape the conflict. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that my parents boarded a boat with a few family members and immigrated to the United States.
Website developed in accordance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1.
If you encounter any issues while using this site, please contact us: 206.448.1777
