{"id":1760,"date":"2026-05-30T06:02:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T13:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losangelesmovinginsider.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/30\/coming-to-america-rebuilding-his-life-and-family-after-his-countrys-collapse-in-new-memoir\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T06:02:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T13:02:38","slug":"coming-to-america-rebuilding-his-life-and-family-after-his-countrys-collapse-in-new-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losangelesmovinginsider.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/30\/coming-to-america-rebuilding-his-life-and-family-after-his-countrys-collapse-in-new-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming to America, rebuilding his life and family after his country\u2019s collapse, in new memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This isn\u2019t the first time C.L. Hoang has chosen to revisit his early years growing up in Vietnam by putting words to page, but it is the first time he\u2019s made it this specifically personal. At first, he thought he would just get his memories down in an essay, and that turned into another essay and another, until he had enough for a book.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLand of Dreams: An Immigrant\u2019s Journey from War-Torn Vietnam to America,\u201d traces the story of his family\u2019s \u201charrowing flight from our ancestral homeland and our struggle to forge new identities here in the U.S.\u201d and is being released by the University of Tennessee Press on June 9, receiving praise from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, historians, and Publishers Weekly. While he\u2019s previously written a novel, a travelogue, and a collection of short stories focused on Vietnam and life there, it was stumbling across a box of memories that led to this memoir documenting his family\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2021, just as the pandemic began to loosen its grip, I, like everybody else at the time, was cooped up at home and had nothing to do, so I finally willed myself to tackle a long overdue housecleaning. In the process, I stumbled across a few boxes of old correspondence and faded photos that dated back to the \u201970s and the \u201980s, my early years in America. It was like a door to the past had been flung wide open and suddenly I just felt compelled to sit down and capture those recovered memories, my own personal memories and those with my family, in an essay,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought I\u2019d just write it down so I can remember it, and then it grew to be another essay, and the third one, and the fourth one, and then it dawned on me that, \u2018Hey, why don\u2019t I just gather all those essays in chronological order and add some more material to it, and create a longer and continuous narrative?\u2019 In a way, it\u2019s like a personal, comprehensive account of those tumultuous years when monumental change occurred that affected me and my family, and countless others, and that\u2019s how the \u2018Land of Dreams\u2019 was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoang, 69, earned degrees in electrical engineering from Ohio University and UC Berkeley, working as a principal engineer for a number of companies before his retirement. Today, he lives in San Diego\u2019s Carmel Mountain Ranch neighborhood and shares his writing through his website, mulberryfieldsforever.com.<\/p>\n

What was your family\u2019s response to you writing \u201cLand of Dreams\u201d?<\/p>\n

Most Asians are very private people, so it\u2019s easier for me to share stories about other people rather than talk about ourselves. There\u2019s a little bit of resistance, a little bit of reluctance, to talk about ourselves, but I am doing this as kind of a family legacy to the younger generations, to my nieces and nephews. I feel like, at some time down the road, when they grow older, they probably would want to know more about how the family got here, how grandpa and grandma and their parents came to be in the U.S. They were born in the U.S., and maybe they would want to know something about their ethnic and cultural roots. Right now, they\u2019re too busy with their own lives, but I\u2019d like to think that down the road, when they are more mature and they have a little bit more time, they would be curious about it and then the memoir would serve as a guidebook to revisit the past for them.<\/p>\n

How long were you living in Vietnam before leaving?<\/p>\n

I was born in 1956, so I grew up through the \u201860s and early \u201870s in Saigon, the capital of Vietnam. That\u2019s where my family was from, so I was there through the high point of the Vietnam War, the Tet Offensive, and then the Easter Offensive in 1972. I was there for all that, and I was witness to everything that happened all around us, and also to some of the things that happened to some of my classmates with the draft and things like that. In 1974, I graduated from high school and an opportunity occurred that allowed me to come to the U.S. to study, and I got a deferral from military service to come study in the U.S., with the expectation of going back when I\u2019m done. But, six months after I came to the U.S., what was then South Vietnam collapsed and fell to the communists from the north, and suddenly everything changed. That\u2019s when my story of adaptation and survival in the U.S. began.<\/p>\n

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What I love about Carmel Mountain Ranch\u2026<\/h4>\n

When I first moved here, it was considered the outskirts of San Diego because\u00a0it\u00a0was a new neighborhood, but\u00a0it has grown to be a central part of San Diego.\u00a0Where I live, I love the fact that I\u00a0can\u00a0access the highways,\u00a0the access\u00a0to shopping is convenient, but the little pocket where I\u2019m living is actually very nice and quiet, separated from all the hustle and bustle, so I really like that.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

How would you describe your childhood in Saigon?<\/p>\n

We were a typical family in South Vietnam, so it was a difficult time with the uncertainty of war. You never knew what was going to happen next month or next year. We also lived in the city, so we were also impacted by the societal changes with the arrival of Americans and the allied soldiers from the free world helping us fight the communists and stuff, so it was a time of dynamic change and great uncertainty. In a way, it became so much a part of life-a society at war-that we sort of accepted it and lived with it. So, I grew up having a fairly normal childhood, except for those interruptions. Because it was a daily occurrence, I grew up used to kind of knowing, instinctively, that that\u2019s how we had to live. This is how we survived, how we lived, so we made the most of it by still going to school and doing things that kids do growing up. My parents also tried to make it as normal as they could for us. It didn\u2019t really start to impact us kids until we got into high school. That\u2019s when we realized that the war was ongoing and everybody would have to do their part in defending the country. There was a draft and if you didn\u2019t do so well in school, you would be drafted. Education is a privilege, it\u2019s not a right, so if you haven\u2019t earned that privilege by doing well, then you better be helping out with other things, mainly with the military service. So, I started to see some of my friends worrying about the draft and actually getting drafted. The war finally penetrated into the safe haven of school for us toward the end of high school, and that\u2019s when I realized that it was for real.<\/p>\n

Can you walk us through some of what happened that led to the decision to leave Vietnam?<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Speaking for myself, never in my wildest dreams did I envision a day when there was no South Vietnam. As naive kids, in our late teens in high school, we thought that life was tough, the war was going on, but we were fighting off communism. We would be the last frontier to fight off communism for the rest of the world, and we would always be here because we were needed for that function. We never thought of a day when South Vietnam would completely disappear and would totally fall to the communists. So, there was no plan whatsoever about should we leave now. What there was, is that we were able to observe firsthand the technological advances that the Westerners of the free world had, and here we were a young country emerging from the colonial days and trying to catch up.<\/p>\n

We knew that we didn\u2019t have enough resources to educate everybody in the country, so at the time with the incoming Americans and some humanitarian aid groups from Germany, from France, there were a lot of scholarships to encourage young Vietnamese students to go out and study because we would need all those engineers, doctors, nurses, commerce, and all those new skills to survive in the modern world. If there was an opportunity to go outside and learn and bring back that expertise, it was highly encouraged.<\/p>\n

My oldest sister was attending college at Ohio University on a scholarship, and she encouraged me and helped me to join her there, which I was thrilled to do. It was just this plan to go study so that we can bring all that new knowledge, all those new skills back to Vietnam. After we finished our educations, there was no idea that there would be a day when the communists would take over. It never occurred to me, at least. So, after I came to the U.S. in November of \u201874, six months later things started unraveling so fast. It was a total shock to me. My sister and I, along with other Vietnamese students in the U.S. at the time, had no idea that that would happen because the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. It was proclaimed to be a ceasefire, an honorable peace, and the U.S. would stand by their allies in South Vietnam. Then came Watergate and the political pressure from the anti-war sentiment in the U.S., and it was like the whole situation just cratered and that\u2019s what caused so much shock and trauma for us.<\/p>\n

Can you, can you help people understand what your conversations were like with each other at that time? What did you all do? Were you able to get in touch with your parents back in Vietnam?<\/p>\n

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The first feeling was that this was not real, this was a nightmare and the situation would rectify itself. When it did not, and there was no more humanitarian aid coming from America, we were just feeling so helpless. We couldn\u2019t do anything, and at the same time we were panicking for our own families. What was going to happen to them now? We were panicking because we didn\u2019t know what to do for our families, we didn\u2019t know what was going to happen. The U.S. and the free world had really let Vietnam sink and lose to the communists after so many years of trying to fight it off, and we didn\u2019t know where to go, what would happen. The foreign student adviser called us in and said, \u201cWe don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. We advise you to stay put, do not go back.\u201d And at the same time, our families in Vietnam also wrote to us and said, \u201cDo not come back\u201d and \u201cThis is a hopeless situation here. We are trying to get out.\u201d People were feeling trapped and desperate and were trying to get out, so our families would tell us that, \u201cNo matter how you feel, please do not come back because you can help us more by being there. If you come back here, you\u2019re just going to be stuck with us, so please stay put. Do not come back.\u201d The foreign student adviser also said we would probably have to change our status from student visas to something like refugee, so do not leave the U.S. It was a crazy and panicky situation for all of us.<\/p>\n

When I thought back on it, everything had to be rebuilt for us brick by brick. All of the short-term plans, the lifelong goals, were all gone and all changed. Now, we had to try to figure out how to survive, to stay in school for one more month, and then another quarter. Also, finding ways to connect with our families because communication was cut off for quite a while. When the communists came in, the postal service was disrupted and they imposed censure on any correspondence going in and out of South Vietnam, so we were very scared to say anything in our letters. It was very superficial communication, and we didn\u2019t know how to reconnect with them, how to help them because they were so desperate, let alone how to reunite with them. I worked through the work study programs, I worked at the library, at the cafeteria, and in the summer I would go work at any job that I could find, sometimes two jobs at a time. I worked at the department of transportation in the morning and at the gas station across the street in the afternoon. I would just do that for the whole summer hoping to make enough money to pay for the expenses. Luckily, I was able to get a tuition scholarship, as well.<\/p>\n

Who in your family is currently living in the U.S. now?<\/p>\n

Eventually, my whole family came over. My oldest sister and I happened to be studying in the U.S. at the time, and then my other sister was working for an American bank in Saigon, so just before the fall of Saigon, they decided to evacuate the employees, so my other sister was evacuated and resettled in California by the bank. Then, five years later, my younger brothers, who by then were in their late teens, escaped by boat. They were the boat people that risked their lives to get out of Vietnam by boat. They went separately, and we eventually were able to get in touch with them and sponsor them to the U.S. They went through some really dangerous and traumatic experiences to survive that, so we did not dare ask our parents to do that. By then, our parents were the only ones left in Vietnam, and we applied to bring them over through the Orderly Departure Program, which was being worked out between the communists in Vietnam and the U.S. government to let some people come over here to reunite with families in order to alleviate the humanitarian crisis of the boat people, so we applied to bring our parents over, but it took us nine years before they were allowed to leave. All told, it took our family 15 years to slowly reassemble and reunite in the U.S.<\/p>\n

That sounds like it would be a painful process.<\/p>\n

Especially with my brothers, there were times when we did not know what happened to them, and we did not know whether they made it, they were alive, or what. One of my brothers, his boat was attacked by pirates like seven times during the over a stretch of a few days, so we were sitting on pins and needles hoping to hear from them. For my parents, waiting nine long years and they were pretty advanced in age and we did not know whether they could wait out that long period. It was touch-and-go for quite a while.<\/p>\n

\n

When you hear the hostility that surfaces in conversations about immigration, and the implementation of policies toward immigrants, what do you think most people misunderstand about the actual human beings being talked about in conversations and impacted by these policies?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The American story has always been shaped by immigrants, so it\u2019s in our national character to welcome people from far away, who travel from far away in search of freedom and opportunity. Generally speaking, immigration, when it happens in a lawful and orderly fashion, it is the fabric that binds our society, so we will always need that. We will always be a country of immigrants.<\/p>\n

With my brothers, they were on open seas, one of them for two weeks. Every international ship that went by ignored them because they didn\u2019t want to be saddled with the rescue mission. Then, some of the boats were turned away. Like, they would get to Singapore, and Singapore would give them food and water, and then turn their boats away and send them back out. One of them eventually settled in Thailand, and the other one in Indonesia, and we were happy that they were able to get out of Vietnam, but they knew that the process of sponsoring them over here would take time, and it did. It took a year to process the papers and to be approved, but we were happy to follow that procedure because we knew that, with all the people running out of Vietnam, it would be very disorderly. So, it had to happen according to what the procedure was, so we were happy to wait it out. Same with my parents; we were very anxious to have them over here, but with the red tape on both sides, it took some time, but we were patient enough to wait. I think, with immigration in general, it had to be done in an orderly manner, but the bottom line is we are a nation of immigrants, and immigrants enrich our nation. It\u2019s really the fabric of our society.<\/p>\n

What would you like more people to understand, or to consider, about surviving war and rebuilding a life and identity somewhere completely unfamiliar, strange, foreign?<\/p>\n

Just like anyone making their way through life, I have my share of unpleasant, uncomfortable moments and unfriendly encounters, especially as one who looks and sounds different. I also had been fortunate to encounter and cross paths with many truly kind and generous people who extended a hand when I needed it most, and whose support carried me through the hardest stretches. So, when I wrote it, it\u2019s those people that I choose to remember and celebrate in the memoir, rather than the antagonistic characters that I occasionally encountered along the way. I feel like life is challenging enough already, so I wanted to not spend my time, my energy dwelling on the negative, and I\u2019d rather focus on the many things and the many people that I\u2019m grateful for. I wanted to offer a message of hope and for people who come after me to know that it\u2019s not easy, it will be trying, it will be difficult at times, very traumatic, but there\u2019s hope. There are kind people out there who will help you, so it\u2019s a message of hope and a message of resilience that I want to offer them with my memoir.<\/p>\n

What is the best advice you\u2019ve ever received?<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t come as explicit advice, but through their actions and example I could see how my parents lived and coped. They had very difficult lives and we could see how they coped with it. They never sat us down to tell stories about how hard they had it, but once in a while a story would slip out about when they were young, how they grew up, and how difficult the times were. Yet, I could see through the way they lived and the way they raised us, that was invaluable advice, living advice. Also, before I decided to join my sister in the U.S., he said to think of education not as a right, but as a privilege. That I was privileged enough to get a deferment for my education, but to remember that deferment doesn\u2019t mean exemption. Deferment just means postponement, so I was to go get an education, and come back and do my military service and help the country in other ways, as well.<\/p>\n

What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?<\/p>\n

That I\u2019m actually a very private person. It took me a while to decide to publish this memoir, and I really think that my family\u2019s story is only one tiny ripple in a sea of upheavals. My life is by no means interesting or captivating, but by doing fiction, I could include a lot of real life details to make a compelling story, so to talk about myself and to talk about my family is really not comfortable, and it took me a long time to get over it.<\/p>\n

Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.<\/p>\n

My ideal weekends were when I first moved down here in 1987. I don\u2019t do this anymore, but back then, I would work hard during the week, but I try to save time for myself on the weekend. On the weekends, I remember I would sleep in, wake up late, and then listen to American Top 40 on the radio, and then I would go with my neighbors in the apartment complex to go play tennis. After that, we\u2019d go to lunch and then I would drive down to the beach and just lounge around. Later on, I would go to the ethnic restaurants to have my Vietnamese or Chinese meals. And then, when I first moved down here, I discovered the aquatic center on the bay, and it opened up a whole new world to me. I would go sign up for classes like sailing and surfing, and I thoroughly enjoyed those, and those were the best weekends that I remember. At this age, I don\u2019t do that anymore.<\/p>\n

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Award-winning author C.L. Hoang details his family\u2019s story in his memoir, \u201cLand of Dreams: An Immigrant\u2019s Journey from War-Torn Vietnam to America\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"yoast_head":"\nComing to America, rebuilding his life and family after his country\u2019s collapse, in new memoir - Los Angeles Moving Insider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/losangelesmovinginsider.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/30\/coming-to-america-rebuilding-his-life-and-family-after-his-countrys-collapse-in-new-memoir\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coming to America, rebuilding his life and family after his country\u2019s collapse, in new memoir - Los Angeles Moving Insider\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Award-winning author C.L. 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