 Welcome to another episode of In the Studio. I'm your host today, Alex Silva. And I'm here with Chi Smith, who is the author of her memoir, Tiger Lily, about her experiences leaving Vietnam and coming to the United States and living here and growing up here. And now she's here with us to tell us all about her experience. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Alex. So just a quick, it's Tiger Fish. Oh, fish. I'm sorry. I knew I would mess up somehow. That's OK. It's all right. Sorry about that. No, that's OK. It's a pleasure to be here. I get nervous. It's all right. It's all good. So you left Vietnam in 1975. This is the end of the Vietnamese War. And what you were telling me you left Danang as a child. So just to give you context of what the book is about, we left Danang March 28th of 1975. And it took us five weeks to leave Danang to get all the way down to Saigon, where we flew out under the protection of the US Embassy. And that was April 25th, which is five days before the fall of Saigon. And then we landed in Guam first. And then from Guam, it took about a week to do the immigration, immunization, and all that. And then we were flown to San Diego and Camp Pendleton. We were the first wave to Guam at the Air Force Base, their Amazon Air Force Base. And then we were the first wave to Camp Pendleton when they were just pitching up the tents and getting things ready for the refugees, thousands incoming refugees. So that's a quick timeline. And so after a few months, eventually you wound up in Fresno, California. And this is where you then became an American and started learning how to acclimatize and acculturize to American culture. So what was difficult about that? I mean, obviously, you cover this as a big portion of the book growing up in America, culture shock. So just start from the beginning. I was 13. So I was coming of age and having to straddle between two cultures. At home, my family is very traditional, Vietnamese. My dad, obviously, he was the colonel. So he was very regimented, very disciplined. He had been a soldier. Yes. And his life was always been a soldier. And when we left, he was the colonel of the South Vietnamese army. So our family brought us up to be very disciplined and traditional. So having to navigate and retain our Vietnameseness not only in the family, but in the community, in a Vietnamese community, albeit there's only a handful of Vietnamese families back then in Fresno. So we have to make sure that we followed the traditions in the family and then within the Vietnamese community. So that's the Vietnamese side. And then, of course, when I went to school, I have to make sure that I can fit in being a 13-year-old. Everyone, I would think, that wants to not stand out. And so I have to make sure that, what was it OK to do as a student? How do I treat my peers? How do I make friends? How do I treat my teachers? Because these rules have been changed, and it's not the same. So it's a lot of, I would say earlier, I talked about code switching. I was doing that before I knew that there was such a phenomenon. So switching between two cultures and making sure that I behave within those parameters so that the Vietnamese communities wouldn't say that we're too Americanized, that we're losing our roots, and make sure that we're respectful to our parents. And then when we were at school, I internalized a lot of the racism and the hatred and the bullying from the kids who I went to school with. And it just basically just kind of internalized it and not deal with it head on most people. So having learned the language, and I remember looking up many words, I mean, most words. I would sit down with my chemistry lessons or biology, and I looked up a whole bunch of words. So we worked extra hard. We meaning my family having to go into new school. And we worked hard to just to fit in and to advance in our education. And we suppressed a lot of things. Like we didn't deal with our grief. We just dropped here in America. We're so grateful. You had to leave people behind when you left. Yeah, and our identity, social, cultural, all of our identity, what made who we were before we left. Now, this is a new life. So I had survival skills. So I couldn't, I was so grateful to be here that I didn't have time to say, you know, this is so bad that this and that. No, we were very grateful to be here. So there's that. So acculturation is difficult. But then there's other layers, you know, having to, how do we deal with it in a way? How did I deal in a way that I was OK and be accepted by my peers at school and be accepted by my parents? And at that time, the word refugee was something I didn't want to have anything to do with. I just put aside. You just wanted to fit in and be an American just like everyone else. Right, right. So I know you talk in the book a lot about different observations. It's very clear in reading the book that you were very observant about human behavior, both when you were in Vietnam and here in the states and the different ways the other students would behave and the way people dressed and spoke. You noticed that the students at your first school weren't taking their education very seriously. And that was something that was sort of a shock for you because you always were very studious. And of course, your family emphasized education. And then as you moved up, you got to a better school. But it was still difficult, right? Right. So really, I wanted to share my observations in that even though, at first blush, it seemed like there's different races and different ethnic groups. And we looked different. We eat different food. We sound differently. Really, when you peel all of the superficial layers out, we share a lot of the same human experience, the universal human experience. By that, I mean the coming of age experience is the same with you and I. In fact, my husband and I, we lived separate lives but parallelized because he lived in America and I live in Vietnam. We watched the same US TV shows that the GIs brought over. We listened to the same music. The only difference is that he understood what was going on and I didn't. But we now talk about and reminisce about the TV shows and the music. But besides that, honestly, we come of age having the same angst, having the same concern. So I want to point out and appeal to my readers that we all share more commonalities and attributes. This is a universal human experience like I talked about. Then there are differences and now more than ever, I want to appeal to people in general and my readers that hatred and racism hurt more than it helps. I mean, it never helps. And there's a lot of misidentity of people and they think, oh, they don't look the same or they don't sound the same. So we have this tendency towards them with hatred. The focus on those differences. But actually, I have a friend who was born in America and she moved around with her father because her father moved around a lot and so she has a Brazilian accent. So they hated on her thinking that she's not from here and told her to go back to where she was born in America. So there's a lot of misidentity and so I just want to appeal to folks, just take a breather. We all pretty much, we all have family we love and as refugees and immigrants, we took a lot of jobs and nobody wanted. We're not here. We weren't here. And you all worked very hard. Your brothers and sisters all had full-time jobs to help support the family. Yeah, so my father was a colonel and when he came to America, the church we sponsored us offered him a job as a janitor. So he went from being a colonel to being a janitor, but we were so blissfully happy because we had our lives, we had each other. And we knew that it was a temporary situation. We knew that with education, we would advance and we want to contribute to society. And I think with immigrants and refugees, from my understanding, we worked very hard because we had this loyalty to our new home country. So you said you started the book as a personal project for your family in 1992, actually. Correct. Even though it was only published this year. So, correct. Please talk a little bit about the gestation of the book. Absolutely, absolutely. So my husband and I moved to Clarksburg in 1992 for a new job. Clarksburg, California. Yeah, Clarksburg, California. My daughter was two and at the time, I thought it would be a good time because I'm looking at the new generation. I thought my kids ought to know where it came from. They ought to know their heritage. They ought to know what it was like for Chi, the data life of Chi's life back home and how did we or our family came to America. So I started writing it and it was done about five years, but it sat on my computer because it's a deeply personal story. So it was only meant for our family and the future generations. But then, you know, so it sat there and then in 2011, starting with the Syrian refugee crisis, it started to bubble up. All these feelings of my feeling like this is my moral obligation. Now that I made it in safely, it's not okay. In my opinion, just turn my back and say I got in safe. Too bad so sad for you. I feel that compelling reason to share my story. And so I started to work on it and edited and doing all of the different process for polishing. And but it just gotten really to the crescendo of it all is the beginning of this year when the first executive order came out. And that was unequivocally my reason that I'm going to publish and I'm gonna publish on the deadline that I set for myself. So I did it not, originally it was only for my family, but then I published it for the world because even though it's a deeply personal story deserve, it deserves, it is now no longer my story. It needs to be shared to the community. And I urge others, you know, refugees and immigrants to share their stories because as hard as it was for me, it's just really a drop in the bucket. I didn't suffer like a lot of other people have suffered. And I know there's millions of stories out there that need to be told because that should be our National Archives, that should be our oral history because history books, let's face it, they don't really reflect different angles and different perspectives of all the immigrants and all the refugees that came to America. So I hope that, you know, and I talked to high school students as well. And I encourage them to write their stories, to write the parent stories because the world needs to know, it's a deeply personal, but we deserve, America deserve to hear these unique stories because then- All the stories that make up are- Yeah, and that would promote more understanding. I think that insecurity and all the hatred might be coming from not knowing the other side. If you start to cut dialogue and just listen, not actively listening, then we'll be good. And that's one of the reasons, yeah. Well, I definitely, I read the book and I definitely reflected a lot. It made me think it was a very easy read and it had all sorts of positive emotions, sadness, everything, I thought it was great. And I'm glad you could come and talk to us about it. Where can people go to find out more about the book and your various appearances? You know, I know you're promoting- So here in Davis, you can go to the Avid Reader. They carry my book. I love to support the indie bookstore. And- Do you have a website? I have a website. It's www.ChiBeingChi.com That's C-H-I-BeingChi. Yeah, C-H-I-BeingChi.com. And it's actually also inside the book. You know, where it says- In there. You know, if you find errors, write me. So it's also in here. So if you want to, right there. But I also have it on Amazon because- That's the big one. That's the big one. But I also have it at other bookstores like Avid Reader in Sacramento and various other ones. And are you planning to follow a sequel? Because I know there's more to this story. So what I can say is I am working on a book. Okay. Yeah. And it would be to compliment or supplement Tigerfish. It is in response to my readers. And- How they've reacted to this story. Yeah, I have a lot of readers that wanted to know more. And so- Okay. Well, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much, Alex. That wraps up another episode of In the Studio. And thanks for joining us. We'll see you in the future.