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Remembering Water: A Memoir of Departure and Return
When eight-year-old Tuấn escaped Vietnam on a boat with his family, his parents told him he was just taking a different route to visit his grandfather in the Mekong delta. Twenty-one years after the departure, he returns to a country much altered. Remembering Water is a memoir of that departure as well as his family's subsequent returns. The book alternates between Tuấn's childhood memories, his year spent in the refugee camps, and reflections on his current life in Saigon.
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
294 pages, Paperback
Published April 8, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 15, 2023
Tuan, your brother Will is a friend of mine and one day he mentioned that you wrote a memoir. I was eager to read it and I’m glad I did! Knowing your family’s history has taught me so much! The book is well written and I will recommend it to others!
February 11, 2025
This book was written by my new colleague, and reading it was such a lovely way to get to know him through his family’s story. The structure and language are so beautifully crafted, and the storytelling kept me hooked, always curious about what would happen next. I felt like I got to know not only the people in Tuan’s life but also the places, all stitched together through layered memories. The role of memory was resonant and even a little playful—there’s something so enjoyable about recognizing an experience in someone else’s story, even when the details are entirely their own.
The way Tuan’s personality and vulnerability come through makes it feel so personal and engaging. You can sense his need for praise and belonging, his quiet shame over small, mostly inconsequential foolish choices, and his deep reflectiveness as he works through his past and present, trying to shape his own identity. This tension between self-perception and external reality feels especially poignant, as he navigates not just personal history but the larger cultural and familial forces that have shaped him.
It’s clear he pushed through a lot of barriers to interview his parents, and you can tell how much he gained from their perspectives. I was also really struck by the way he uses language to connect his inner hopes and fears to the places and experiences he describes—like when he imagines the applause on his first airplane landing was for him. That moment, so small yet so deeply revealing, encapsulates the book’s larger themes of longing, displacement, and self-understanding. This feels even more impressive when the writing process itself becomes part of the memoir, almost like breaking the fourth wall, showing his humility in investigating his own family and past. Remembering Water isn’t just about personal memory—it’s about how memory itself shapes identity, belonging, and the way we see the world. And that recurring theme of water is so breathtaking. I loved the mirror experiences of Tuan’s earliest memory in which he tries to mimic his father diving into the river and the escape by sea interlude in which his father insists on an open sea swim to relieve the passengers of the harrowing experiences of the stormy and claustrophobic conditions. These moments make water feel like more than just a setting, and a symbol of survival, transformation, and the fluid nature of memory itself.
The way Tuan’s personality and vulnerability come through makes it feel so personal and engaging. You can sense his need for praise and belonging, his quiet shame over small, mostly inconsequential foolish choices, and his deep reflectiveness as he works through his past and present, trying to shape his own identity. This tension between self-perception and external reality feels especially poignant, as he navigates not just personal history but the larger cultural and familial forces that have shaped him.
It’s clear he pushed through a lot of barriers to interview his parents, and you can tell how much he gained from their perspectives. I was also really struck by the way he uses language to connect his inner hopes and fears to the places and experiences he describes—like when he imagines the applause on his first airplane landing was for him. That moment, so small yet so deeply revealing, encapsulates the book’s larger themes of longing, displacement, and self-understanding. This feels even more impressive when the writing process itself becomes part of the memoir, almost like breaking the fourth wall, showing his humility in investigating his own family and past. Remembering Water isn’t just about personal memory—it’s about how memory itself shapes identity, belonging, and the way we see the world. And that recurring theme of water is so breathtaking. I loved the mirror experiences of Tuan’s earliest memory in which he tries to mimic his father diving into the river and the escape by sea interlude in which his father insists on an open sea swim to relieve the passengers of the harrowing experiences of the stormy and claustrophobic conditions. These moments make water feel like more than just a setting, and a symbol of survival, transformation, and the fluid nature of memory itself.
March 23, 2026
With uncommon emotional impact (at least for me), and uncommon beauty of language in its writing, Remembering Water is a moving account of the author’s life vis-à-vis his fractured family in America and Vietnam. It is also a wonderful ode to Saigon and to Vietnam generally, at the same time that it’s a detailed and wistful remembrance of the past and a complicated expression of lament for so many things that have been lost.
Near the book’s end, the author comments on the “usefulness” of nostalgia, that it’s important to remember what came before all the change that Saigon and Vietnam have undergone. This is how I feel, too, for I’ve been coming and going to some of the same places he describes in this book for 32 years and counting, and after reading it I’m left feeling nostalgic again for my early experiences there, which have been erased over the course of time, except for the memories that old friends of mine in Vietnam share and that in some ways the author of this book does, too.
A highly recommended work.
Near the book’s end, the author comments on the “usefulness” of nostalgia, that it’s important to remember what came before all the change that Saigon and Vietnam have undergone. This is how I feel, too, for I’ve been coming and going to some of the same places he describes in this book for 32 years and counting, and after reading it I’m left feeling nostalgic again for my early experiences there, which have been erased over the course of time, except for the memories that old friends of mine in Vietnam share and that in some ways the author of this book does, too.
A highly recommended work.
July 11, 2023
This memoir really touched my heart. A member of a diaspora myself, I really connected to Phan's musings on identity, the relationship between diaspora, culture and geography and the fleeting transience of belonging. As the memoir dances between Phan's memories of Saigon and escaping it by boat as a child and his descriptions of navigating Saigon in its current iteration, he poses pertinent questions about cities in flux while providing the reader with an insightful glimpse into the nuances of daily life in modern Saigon. Phan portrays the struggles of his family and parents in post war Vietnam and America with such a skillful deftness that you won't even realize how closely you are connecting with each character's story. A very worthwhile read.
August 12, 2024
Time shifts forward and backward fluidly in this memoir, with water connecting the past to present. Phan reminds us repeatedly that memory can be fallible, that the Saigon of his childhood is tinted by rose colored glasses, but he writes with such poignancy that I want to believe that all versions of Vietnam he shows us are real. This book is a love story to Vietnam and the complex relationship between the people who escaped and their "home". Even if you have never been, the nostalgia Phan describes of places we've left and hope to return to are intimately familiar. Beautifully written.
PS I am obligated by a decade of friendship to say: please feature Will more prominently in your next book.
PS I am obligated by a decade of friendship to say: please feature Will more prominently in your next book.
December 2, 2023
p good! def recommend for viet americans especially. i liked that it taught me more about the history of the boat people. also, as a vietnamese american who recently spent a significant amount of time in vietnam and noticed many of the changes to the country’s culture, development, economics, etc that the author mentioned, i resonated a lot with the author’s feelings of being shocked and confused 😨😨😨 likeeeee….what’s gonna happen to vietnam? it’s so different now than even a decade ago. anyways the country’s “advancement” is crazy i low key don’t like it….don’t ask me why tho
July 9, 2023
As with most of my five star reviews, I am struggling to put my feelings into coherent thoughts. This is a memoir about the author's departure from Vietnam as well as meanderings (see ưhat I did there?) on an ever changing Saigon.
Seriously though, the author truly made me think about Saigon in a new way, and so I think that anyone who has travelled or is going to travel to Vietnam would enjoy this perspective.
Seriously though, the author truly made me think about Saigon in a new way, and so I think that anyone who has travelled or is going to travel to Vietnam would enjoy this perspective.
February 16, 2025
Through the metaphor of water, Phan explores memory, place, and progress. The author’s remembrance of his family’s escape from Vietnam overlayed with his returning to Saigon reveal how poignantly development erodes what we hold dear. Both touching and humorous, this memoir narrates not only the aftermath of the fall of Vietnam, but the effect of being a refugee on children and adults. The final scene is one that I will see in my mind’s eye for some time.
October 21, 2024
I really appreciate Tuan’s ability to combine the personal and the national, the past and the present, humor and pain, the literary and the colloquial. He has an uncanny ability to bring setting to life—be it natural beauty or steel city. It was such a privilege to join him on this journey through his versions of Saigon and of himself.
June 16, 2025
Startlingly poetic, sad, and authentic in every way. It is as much a memoir of an incredible time in history as it is of a child growing up, his own pains and struggles intertwined with that of the city and country he loves.
March 4, 2026
very flowery writing about a saigon lost
but then part 3 was added. didn’t seem to fit the writing and tone of the first 2 parts
i did like the reflections on modern saigon
but then part 3 was added. didn’t seem to fit the writing and tone of the first 2 parts
i did like the reflections on modern saigon
September 20, 2023
This terrific debut memoir is not only beautiful writing, but has something to say. The vignettes range vary a bit in style, with many of them centering around the author's family fleeing Saigon, living in refugee camps and eventually settling in the US. It is the return to Saigon in adulthood that sets the book apart, bringing a fresh narrative to a well-covered topic and portraying modern Vietnam and its furious growth in all its nuance. It offers great insight on the Asian-American experience as well as life in modern Asia.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews