Viet Thanh Nguyen

so I got into the cave and I was really struck by what I saw because there was no blood or bones or anything like that it was just an empty cave but I walked into the cave to the moment where the sunlight met the darkness and I stopped and I couldn't bring myself to go any further and this is what I'm going to read what had it been like

with hundreds of people, the noise and the stench, the dimness and the terror, what was in the void now.

I stood on the side of presence, facing an absence where the past lived, populated with ghosts, real and imagined.

And in that moment, I was afraid.

Then I heard the laughter.

The girls stood at the cave's mouth, profiles outlined by sunlight, making sure the shadows did not touch even their toes.

Turning my back on all that remained unseen behind me, I walked towards their silhouettes.

I think that moment was very striking for me because...

In this cave of horrifying history, at the mouth of it, there were these girls who probably did know what happened in that cave.

They grew up in that area.

But for them, it was the past.

And they were more concerned with whatever it is that 13-year-old girls are concerned with, and rightfully so.

And I thought that was actually a moment of hope that these girls would have a different kind of a future, that they would not have to be shadowed by death and by war

and that they could carve out their own lives, hopefully free in some ways from the past.

Lawrence Wu.

Victor Iveaz.

Well, Dan, first of all, thanks for having me.

With the observations, well, you know, Cubans ended up in Florida, and most of the Vietnamese, or the largest community who fled from Vietnam in 1975, ended up in California.

So we're literally on opposite sides of the coast.

Both communities are dominated by their anti-communist factions.