Reeducation Camp Autobiography

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I was born in Vietnam, a small country in Asia. My family was ordinary and similar to the two millions of Vietnamese refugees, who have fled the country after the Vietnam War. My country is known for its rice fields, its beef noodle soup called “Pho,” the civil war between North and South, but Vietnam has four thousand years of History. It has always been a small country colonized by larger nations, such as France, or China. Yet, the inhabitants have fought to keep their territory. Thus, my family has inherit the courage and determination of our ancestors, and during the Vietnam War, these notions were as strong as ever. Indeed, my father was captured and imprisoned in the so-called “Reeducation Camp” for eight years long. So, my mother has to work to feed her four children (I wasn’t born at that time yet), and her mother-in-law. It was only after my father was released that they managed to escape the Communist regime by boat, and their faith was just as any other “Boat People” lost in the Pacific Ocean. My parents and sibling have been separated into three countries, France, Switzerland, and Vietnam. In fact, my mother stayed in Vietnam with me at that time, as “back up”, in case my father and siblings couldn’t reach a safe place. Then, my father sponsored his wife and youngest …show more content…

Therefore, they have a lot of prejudices towards the Northern Vietnamese, who are mostly Communist. However, not all Vietnamese from the North are Communist. Some of them are Catholic, hence anti-communist (they fled oppression from the North into the South in 1957). When I was younger, I did not understand this difference. So, I also had a strong prejudice towards Northern people until I befriended with several Catholic Northern people. One would think that people from different ethnicities discriminate each other the most, but, in fact, people from the same ethnicity can have a lots of prejudices and

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