Roots in New Soil—Building Vietnamese-American Life in Texas with Alexander Bailey and Breahna Luera-Peck

Hello and welcome back to Amplifying Identities, a podcast that explores stories from the U.S.–Mexico borderlands and beyond. We're your hosts, Bailey and Breahna. We’re both graduate students at UTSA, and this semester 9Fall 2025) we’ve been working with Dr. Priscilla Martinez in our oral history methods course to build a whole season of episodes using the incredible oral history collections from Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History.As a class we’ve explored some of the big historical questions that connect our communities across the borderlands, uncovered people’s individual narratives and experiences, and constructed episodes to inform you, our audience. Today’s episode is titled “Roots in New Soil: Building Vietnamese-American Life in Texas,” and we’re exploring the journey of Vietnamese refugees who arrived in Texas after the fall of Saigon in 1975: their migration, the communities that helped them get here, and the ways they built new identities through family, faith, and food. And for the first half of this episode, I’ll be walking us through the historical and political context surrounding the refugee crisis and the arrival of Vietnamese families to the United States—especially to Texas. Then Bailey will pick up the second half to look at how people rebuilt their lives once they got here. So sit back as we amplify these stories—layering personal memories with historical research—to understand how a community took root in Texas soil.Check our our episode website at https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/onvW0RDkj3MUa to learn more about Bailey and Breahna's project. Like and Subscribe to Amplifying Identities Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on Instagram at @AmpIdPod for all the latest updates and behind the scenes content!