Three Funerals for My Father: Love, Loss and Escape from Vietnam

by Jolie Phuong Hoang

Overview

Shortlisted for the 2022 Hamilton Literary Awards

What would you risk to save your children?

Jolie Phuong Hoang grew up as one of ten children, part of a loving, prosperous Vietnamese family. All that changed after the communists took over in 1975. Identified as a potential “bad element,” the family lived in constant fear of being sent to the dreaded new economic zone.

Desperate to ensure the family’s safety and to provide a future for his children, Jolie’s father arranged three separate escapes. The first was a failure that cost most of their fortune, but the second was successful—six of his children reached Indonesia and ultimately settled in Canada. He and his youngest daughter drowned during the disastrous third attempt. Told from the author’s perspective and that of her father’s ghost, Three Funerals for My Father is a poignant story of love, grief and resilience that spans three countries and fifty years.

In an era when anti-Asian racism is on the rise and the issue of human migration is front-page news, Three Funerals for My Father provides a vivid and timely first-hand account of what it is like to risk everything for a chance at freedom. It is at once an intimate story of one family, a testament to the collective experience of the “boat people” who escaped communist Vietnam, and a plea on behalf of the millions of refugees currently seeking asylum across the globe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781990160059
Publisher:	Tidewater Press
Publication date:	10/02/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

As a teenager, Jolie P. Hoang escaped from Vietnam with her siblings. Arriving in Canada in 1984, she finished high school and trained in mathematics, all the while retaining her love of writing. Her work has been recognized by the North Street Book Prize (Winner, Literary Fiction, 2020), the San Francisco Book Festival (Honourable Mention, 2020) and the Surrey International Writers Festival (Finalist, 2020). A college professor of mathematics, Jolie lives with her daughters in Fonthill, Ontario.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 My First Funeral

Chapter 2 June Sisters

Chapter 3 The Tiger

Chapter 4 A Bowl of Soup

Chapter 5 War

Chapter 6 The Land of Mimosas

Chapter 7 Peace and Fire

Chapter 8 The Rooster

Chapter 9 The Oil Lamp

Chapter 10 The Rice Chest

Chapter 11 A Postcard from Germany

Chapter 12 Feast for the Dead

Chapter 13 Rough Waters

Chapter 14 Trại Mát

Chapter 15 Vượt Biên

Chapter 16 The Đề Lô

Chapter 17 What If

Chapter 18 The Bodhisattva of Compassion

Chapter 19 MH2284

Chapter 20 Inflection Point

Chapter 21 Euler’s Identity

Chapter 22 The Land of the West

Chapter 23 Anchorless

Chapter 24 The Tears of Heaven

Chapter 25 The Butterflies

Chapter 26 My Second Funeral

Chapter 27 Parallel Worlds

Chapter 28 Pig Brains

Chapter 29 Legacy

Chapter 30 The Net of Fate

Chapter 31 My Third Funeral

Author’s Note and Acknowledgements