Ever notice the colour of the flags at a Vietnamese restaurant? Well, we're tired of binaries

Sydney Morning Herald

30-04-2025

When the spacecraft carrying scientist and rights activist Amanda Nguyen pierced through the Earth's atmosphere last month, the Vietnamese diaspora held its collective breath. In Houston, political refugees who had fled postwar Vietnam clutched their chests as the rocket ascended. In Hanoi, government officials applauded their nation's first woman in space. And in Melbourne, I – a peacetime migrant from Vietnam – found myself unexpectedly weeping at the sight of that rocket trail: a perfect diagonal stitch across the sky, sewing together what history had torn apart.
Nguyen – a civil rights advocate, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and daughter of Vietnamese refugees – made history as the first Southeast Asian and first Vietnamese woman to travel into space. Her scientific experiment, carried aboard a Blue Origin mission, was conducted in collaboration with Vietnam's National Space Centre.
As her capsule orbited, an extraordinary diplomatic choreography unfolded. In Hanoi, the US ambassador hosted Vietnam's first cosmonaut Phạm Tuân to watch Amanda's launch. In Texas, Vietnam's ambassador greeted her return, bearing a congratulatory letter from Vietnam's president. The same government her parents fled now celebrated her achievement.
Fifty years ago, Amanda's parents were among the thousands who scrambled onto overcrowded boats, fleeing a country reshaped by political transition. Each year on April 30, while Vietnam celebrates Liberation Day – the reunification of North and South – diaspora communities gather under yellow flags to mourn what many call Black April or National Resentment Day – the fall of Saigon.
This duality lives in our bones: in the way elders still hoard plastic bags like wartime rations, in the hesitation when hearing a Northern accent. Many raised their children with warnings about returning to Vietnam, creating what sociologists call 'inherited disconnection' – where second-generation kids know more about their parents' trauma than their ancestral homeland itself.
I've seen this play out in Footscray nail salons and Springvale phở shops, where young Vietnamese-Australians speak of a homeland frozen in 1975. A friend once confessed her non-Vietnamese colleague had been to Vietnam more often than she had. 'How do you mourn a place you've never known?' she asked.
Then came Amanda's Instagram post after landing: 'How do you find belonging when the foundation of your identity is rooted in a legacy of conflict?' Her answer – người Mỹ gốc Việt (an American with Vietnamese roots) – echoed inside me, the way I explain to Aussie friends.
We, who grew up after the war, live in this liminal space. Like Amanda, we code-switch between worlds: explaining bánh mì to Aussie friends while fielding our refugee relatives' warnings about 'communist influence'. We're tired of the binaries – of being asked to choose between celebration and mourning, between the red flag and the yellow.