Leaving Vietnam

Leaving Vietnam is the compelling autobiography of Minh Thanh Nguyen, whose childhood and adolescence coincided with the Vietname War and the Communist takeover after the fall of Saigon. Nguyen grew up in a war zone where he and his friends threw unexploded shells on open fires, just for fun. They later joined gangs that waylaid drunken American soldiers leaving them with nothing on but their dogtags. Despite all this turmoil, life had its moments of seeming normalcy. As a teenager, Nguyen became a Shaolin Kung Fu kickboxer, learned to repair and race perfromance motorcycles, fell in love. But the war was never far. Nguyen and his friends wer drafted and some, like his friend Trung, died fro a war in which they wanted no part.

Nguyen became oobsessed with the idea of escape. In 1980 he made a final, wrenching decision to leave his family and native country. Under rifle fire from border guards, Nguyen and thirteen other terrified Vietamese fled by night on a tiny fishing boat, risking death by capture, starvation, or drowning, in the hope of a better life across the sea.

Leaving Vietnamis a brutally honest and engrossing account of a very human life. Reading this book, we come to believe in the necessity of purpose, love, and hope, even in the midst of war.