Viet Thanh Nguyen

I'm nine years old.

I have no idea what to do with this information.

So I just continue watching the cartoons.

And my brother, who is crying, says, why aren't you crying?

What's wrong with you?

And I thought there was indeed something wrong with me.

And I bore that for the rest of my life to think that...

Anyway, so my parents had flesh wounds.

The robber had shot them, but thankfully they were not injured too badly.

And within a couple of days, they were back at work, and we never spoke of that incident again.

And that pretty much characterized our existence as refugees.

You just had to keep on moving forward.

And if something bad happened to you, you have to remember something worse happened to somebody else.

So that's what I'm saying.

You know, for those of us who are refugees, everybody I know went through some horrible experience.

So most of us as refugees hardly ever talked about what we went through because we realized everybody in our community had gone through something similar or something much, much worse.

worse and when i was 16 yes the the gunman followed my parents home from the store broke into the house put a pointed gun at all of our faces thankfully we were not shot and thankfully he was probably an amateur because what he did was he said get down on your knees and my father and i being the brave men that we were got down on our knees

And my mother just dashed right past this guy right out into the street screaming.

And we lived on a very busy street.

So everybody saw the gunman turn around, just stepped outside to go after her.