Susan Tran: Canada Is Racist

Susan Tran is a Vietnamese Canadian who was kidnapped from her mother in Vietnam at the age of two. But she never knew that she even had a mother because her abductor was her own father, intent on keeping her abduction a secret. After immigrating to Canada, Susan discovered that her mother’s strength and resilience was the foundation for her own self empowerment. Which now allows her to fully embrace her own family and culture, and also empowers her to confront Canada’s special brand of deep seated racism head on without reservation.FROM THE EPISODE:  During that time my dad actually tried to escape Vietnam twice without us and he was going to leave us behind. And he got caught twice and got sent back. The third time, this is when my mom kind of had it, right, and she had taken me back and my dad being the proud Vietnamese man he was was just not going to have it. So he, uh, I was playing in the backyard and he kidnapped me from the backyard.I was two and a half. My dad really wanted to stick it to my mom and that’s the reason why he kidnapped me. Because he could not fathom a woman telling him what he could do. I absolutely remember none of it and I have a pretty good memory. I can remember as far back vividly as age 5, but anything before that. sometimes I have to wonder if it was so traumatic that I somehow locked that away. And my mom has all these wonderful memories of me when I was a child and I can’t remember a thing.I actually came here with nine of my uncles. It was eight of my uncles and two friends, but we’re Vietnamese. Everyone is your uncle. Everyone is your aunt. I am pretty sure that they had couriers during this time to bring people along, you know, agents who’d say, “Hey I got a way to get you out of Vietnam, right, you just have to pay me this and I’ll get you across” but you know everyone knows that’s a gamble.I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the scene where there’s a helicopter coming down on the embassy and everyone is trying to get on that plane? That was it. That was the last time, right, anything after you’re on your own.And we had to crawl through, like, open sewers and the jungle, and like this is all things that my dad had told me and it was not a short short trip. You’re eating bugs, trying to stay alive, trying to escape, trying to get to the water. Where we got on a boat and we floated with a bunch of other people. Really not knowing where you’re floating. And you know, these aren’t boats that are modern by any sense. Sometimes they’re rafts, right and there is, you know, a hundred people on them and there’s no food cause we can’t carry any food hardly with us. So you’ve got people that are dying around you and they’re sick, right, there’s not much. You have to make some hard decisions.And thankfully we got to Thailand and we’re admitted to a refugee camp there. I believe that was in July of 1981 and we were there for two months and anybody who’s ever been in a refugee camp can tell you it’s the worst place possible. It’s not even roughing it, there’s nothing, and there’s nothing to go around because there’s so many people there.What you do in the refugee camps is they go around, they say ok where would you like to go and my dad said he would really like to go to Japan but Japan was I think something like six months away and that’s a maybe if they’re going to take you. But they’re like we have a plane that’s leaving in two weeks and it’s going to Canada.They gave my dad two choices: Prince Rupert or Vancouver, and I’m very thankful he chose Vancouver. I think my life would be completely different otherwise.  [END EPISODE TRANSCRIPT]Produced, directed, reported, edited, and sound designed by Luz Fleming. Production Assistant: Davis Lloyd. Executive Producer: Jacob Bronstein. Music by Luz Fleming and James Ash. Theme Music: Andy Cotton & Luz Fleming. Art & Design: Andy Outis.Find more information on this episode including related images visit: yardtales.live/home/susan© 2021 Icy Grape. Questions, comments, yard tales? Email: [email protected]