Jolie Phuong Hoang

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

Jolie Hoang grew up as one of ten children, part of a loving, prosperous Vietnamese family. All that changed when the communists took over in 1975; the family was harassed and 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. The father and his youngest daughter drowned during the disastrous third attempt. Alternately 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 two continents and fifty years. It serves as both an intimate story of one family, and a testament to the collective experience of hundreds of thousands of boat people and millions of refugees.