Written by: Katie Nguyen
Lucie Trinephi
It wasn't her journey as a refugee that scarred Lucie Trinephi. It was the destination.
Fleeing Vietnam by a military ship was just a memory, whereas punches and jeers from school bullies hurt. So did growing up on a rundown housing estate near Paris. Westernising her name didn't stave off the racist abuse as her family started their lives over again.
"I don't think I was really traumatised by the escape," Trinephi reflected in an interview. "I was more traumatised when I arrived in France. I wanted to go back."
Some 20 years later, she did, at least in her head. Cycling by the sea in Copenhagen, she had a sudden flashback to 1975. The thwack of the rotor blades above Saigon, the tense silence of the adults, and her own curiosity - it all came flooding back.
Now she's channeling these vivid memories into an illustrated book of her personal story. From Maus via Persepolis to Waltz with Bashir, cartoon explorations of identity have proved popular in recent years, adding graphic depth to harrowing stories.
But for Trinephi, the aim is not to pen a bestseller as much as to find peace.
"It's quite a meditative thing to do because I'm free to express myself," she said. "I come from an Asian background where people don't talk about their feelings."
The daughter of a surgeon, Trinephi was seven when she fled Vietnam with her mother and five brothers and sisters, just hours before northern Communist forces seized the southern capital Saigon, expelling American invaders and the civil war.
Her illustrations reconstruct their journey to Europe, via a landing craft carrier bound for the Philippines, which they boarded thanks to an uncle in the South Vietnamese navy.
Crammed inside the cavernous belly of the ship were scores of other families whose relatives had fought against the north's Viet Cong guerrillas, and shared the same fear of reprisals as they seized control of the country.
One frame of her book shows a child falling off the walkway to the ship in the crush to get on. He was never found.
Trinephi remembers long days staring at the sky and exploring the vessel with her sisters, weaving past other refugees and their piles of suitcases. The packets of instant noodles her mother packed were shared among the seven of them. One packet a day, one bite each.
In the Philippines, they boarded a U.S. naval carrier which took them on to Guam and a refugee camp. After a while, they were allowed through the barbed wire to play on the beach. In the evenings they watched films in the open air.
After several weeks in the camp, Trinephi's family left for France to join her father, a doctor, who was already there.
EPIPHANY
In her early twenties, Trinephi's curiosity about her roots started calling her. She went to Hong Kong, where she worked as an interpreter in a Vietnamese refugee camp. By this time, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were on the move in wooden boats, most of them spending months if not years in camps from Malaysia to Australia.
Trinephi's job was to encourage them to return to their homeland. After years of feeling like an outsider, it came naturally.
"In my basic Vietnamese, I was telling them to go home because I had this big identity crisis," she said. "I told them: 'don't think you arrive and you'll get a job and money'."
During the same trip she went back to Vietnam for the first time. But she did not feel as if she belonged, and left more confused than ever. She moved to Denmark to work as a cartoon colourist, and it was there that she experienced her epiphany.
Now living in London, Trinephi is working on a trilogy of graphic narratives. The first volume depicts her escape, the second the history of the war. The last will tell the stories of others who left after it ended, like her uncle who was sent to a Communist re-education camp for 10 years. His wife thought he had vanished forever, but they were eventually reunited in the United States.
"Graphic art is a good way of telling a story," Trinephi said. "And, I have many more stories to tell."
To see Lucie Trinephi's work, click www.vovchic.com
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