Scope and Contents

The collection consists of printed webpages from the website tuantran.org documenting the life and reflections of Tuan Tran. The materials include personal essays, a memoir in haibun format (The Road Home), poetry collections, historical analyses of the Vietnam War, and reader correspondence. The collection provides a comprehensive view of the Vietnamese refugee experience, the challenges of reintegration into Vietnam, and the intersection of meditation practice with daily life.

tuantran.org

I. Introduction & Navigation

1. Index/Home Page
2. Site Map


II. Memoir & Personal History

1. Childhood (Saigon to Escape)
2. Life in the USA (Refugee Experience, Assimilation, Racism)
3. Coming Home (Return to Vietnam in 2001)
4. The Road Home (Complete Haibun Memoir)


III. Education & Teaching
1. Teaching in Vietnam (Discrimination & Methodology)
2. Then the Americans Came (Excerpt from Martha Hess)
3. Bertrand Russell Tribunal (War Crimes Inquiry)


IV. Practice & Health
1. Meditation (Reflections on Mindfulness)
2. Tai Chi (Moving Meditation)
3. Diabetes Lifestyle (Management & Awareness)


V. Writings & Poetry
1. My Other Writings (Civil Rights & Voting)
2. Songbirds Still Sing (Selected Haiku)
3. The Collected Haiku (Full Archive)


VI. Community & Correspondence
1. Comments (Reader Responses & Critical Dialogue)

Biographical / Historical

Tuan Tran was born 1 June 1960 in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Republic of Vietnam. He grew up in Saigon during the final years of the Vietnam War. On 30 April 1975, at the age of 14, he fled the city as part of the mass evacuation following the Fall of Saigon. He escaped by boat, enduring a perilous journey through the South China Sea, and was subsequently processed in a refugee camp before being resettled in the United States. He arrived in Olympia, WA, where he was taken in by a foster family. He graduated from Capital High School (1978), Western Washington University (1983), and Evergreen State College (1988), where he completed the Teacher Education Program. He has worked as an educator in the United States and later returned to Vietnam to teach English and American Literature. His career has been marked by a focus on cross-cultural understanding and the challenges faced by "Viet Kieu" (Overseas Vietnamese) returning to their homeland. He is the author of The Road Home, a memoir in haibun form (prose combined with haiku) documenting his journey from a teenage refugee to a contemplative writer. His website, tuantran.org, serves as an archive of his personal reflections on war, displacement, identity, and the search for peace. The site includes memoirs, essays on civil rights and history, and a collection of over 120 haiku poems exploring themes of impermanence and memory. His work offers a first-person perspective on the Vietnamese-American experience, bridging the gap between the trauma of the war and the complexities of life in exile. His writings address themes of racial discrimination, the colonial inferiority complex, and the psychological journey of returning to a homeland that has changed in his absence. The material provided therein represents a comprehensive record of his life and work as preserved at the Vietnam Center and Archive.