Asian Voices : Vietnamese Stories was a day-long Brainstorming Workshop that surfaced stories, ideas, themes. metaphors and memories of the Exodus-like journey of the Vietnamese people from Vietnam following the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

The day-long workshop began to identify stories and themes of the Vietnamese Immigrant journeys across oceans, through camps around the world and then to a new home in America. The participants in this first Vietnamese story-gathering and storytelling workshop were 21 Vietnamese Americans.

The workshop was led by Asian storytellers Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo (Eth-Noh Tec : “Weaving East and West cultures into new possibilities”). Overall facilitator for the day was Evanston-based storyteller Susan O’Halloran.

This workshop is the first step in what is envisioned as a long-term oral history project that will seek to create products and/or performances about the Vietnam to America journey, and the assimilation pains and joys that still continue into new generations of Vietnamese and Asian Americans.

The March 27 Workshop began to identify and trace some of the amazing and moving stories of a Vietnamese people coming to America. This ongoing project seeks to re-tell these stories, and to re-discover them anew as journeys of deep faith, hope and inspiration for all of us in our time.

Information : asianvoices@racebridges.net

“....The best show I’ve ever seen....The feeling in the room was electric ! When the whole audience danced and sang together at the end, it was an overwhelming feeling of unity....I felt some healing, because the Vietnamese War ripped apart all of us. Something about having the people from the country speak --- brought me some healing. I never thought about what it was like for the other side -- the Japanese people who were on the ground when the bomb hit........I was crying, absolutely weeping as the SVD brothers talked. I’ll never forget the image of putting the hand print in the mud house or lying in the hold of the boat smelling the fish, and not knowing what freedom was, but moving towards it anyway.....I wish everyone could have heard this....Made me proud to be an Asian-American. I felt less invisible. This is such important work you are doing..”

Feedback comments from the audience as they left the JustStories: ASIAN VOICES storytelling concert on March 27.

The Vietnamese Stories Workshop was sponsored by Angels Studio and the Justice & Peace Commission of the Chicago Province of the Society of the Divine Word.