A personal journal

Tuan Tran's Journal

A Vietnamese-American Experience

Overcome anger through kindness,
wickedness through goodness,
selfishness through charity,
and falsehood through truthfulness.

— The Buddha, Dhammapada 223

The Story of a Boat Refugee

Tuan Tran escaped Vietnam by boat at fourteen in 1975, and has kept this website since 2001. This website is a collection of personal reflections on meditation, identity, immigration, history, and the human search for understanding. Drawing from lived experience shaped by war, cultural transition, and contemplative practice, these writings explore awareness, belonging, and meaning in an increasingly complex world.

This work is offered simply as a reflection. If it is of use to anyone who encounters it, then that is enough.

Topics on this website

Memoir Vietnam War Childhood Growing up in Saigon, the fall of South Vietnam, and fleeing as a boat refugee at age 14. Memoir Refugee Experience A teenage refugee's arrival in America — assimilation, racism, loss of identity, and awakening. Journey Coming Home Returning to Ho Chi Minh City in 2001 — a Viet Kieu's confrontation with the homeland. Education Teaching in Vietnam A Viet Kieu educator's experience — discrimination, identity, and the classroom. Practice Meditation Reflections on mindfulness, Vipassanā, and contemplative life. Practice Tai Chi The art of moving meditation and inner stillness. Health Diabetes Lifestyle Managing diabetes safely through diet, medication, and awareness. Essays My Other Writings On civil rights, civil disobedience, and voting. History Then the Americans Came Excerpted from the book Then the Americans Came by Martha Hess. History Bertrand Russell Tribunal Historical documentation of the international war crimes inquiry. Poetry Songbirds Still Sing 40 haiku by Tuan Tran. Poetry Archive The Collected Haiku The complete haiku archive, 219 poems. Poetry Selected Poems A guided path through the collection, with the Addendum. Chapbook The Breath Continues 29 Addendum haiku with sumi-e illustrations. Memoir The Road Home A Memoir in Haibun by Tuan Tran.

About this website

I started this website in August 2001, at age forty-one, just before going back to Vietnam to volunteer for a year. The memoir pages were written then and remain largely as I first wrote them. Coming Home and the poetry archive have grown over the years, and The Road Home was added in 2026. The early versions can still be seen at the Internet Archive.