Bridge from Saigon: A Viet-American Memoir of Family and Mind

by Hoangmai H. Pham

As a young Vietnamese refugee, Hoangmai Pham suddenly lost her sense of safety and belonging when her family fled Saigon at the end of the war. But her later success in navigating life in America as a physician and health policy leader at the top of her profession paradoxically triggered a psychological unraveling during middle age. This unusual memoir depicts her struggle in confronting her hidden multiple personalities to heal, luring the reader into parallel slipstreams of discovery--one of family secrets and epic history before and during the Vietnam War, the other of traumas masked behind a child's vivid imagination.

Stories of ghostly ancestors, a fraught return to Vietnam as an adult, and her kaleidoscopic inner characters unfurl in a voice that is at once dreamlike and brutally incisive. Her final triumph crystallizes the immense price that immigrants pay for a chance at a better life, and their resilience in achieving every sense of integration.

Genres: Memoir

247 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2026

Reviews

[Janilyn Kocher · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting story.
PHam’s family escaped South Vietnam just before the country fell to communism.
I enjoyed reading about her family history and her parents the most.
I also liked reading about how she moved back to Vietnam to research her roots.
The author had challenged and struggles but proves what can be accomplished if one is determined enough.
Thanks NetGalley and McFarland for both hard and digital copies.

[Adam Strassberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Pham’s amazing memoir is a courageous exploration of identity, memory, and story, and a compelling tribute to cultural assimilation, preservation and celebration.

As a young child, the author fled with her family from Vietnam to the United States. A childhood in Saigon shifted suddenly to a childhood in Philadelphia and this physical displacement belied a more serious psychological disruption. She coped with her childhood trauma by retreating into a vivid mindscape inhabited by an endearing cast of inner characters. Only much later in midlife–an enormously successful American midlife, as a parent, wife, physician, and public policy expert–only then did she discover she had been living all this time with a dissociative identity disorder.
The memoir interweaves narrations of her ensuing therapy sessions with memories of her childhood, stories from her life, tales of her parents and grandparents, and legends from various ancestors. The resulting tapestry is a tour de force of tremendous holistic beauty.

Bridge from Saigon is an ode to the joy of integrating and celebrating multiple cultures–Vietnamese, Jewish, Scottish, American—and an anthem to the universal human drive to integrate our past lives with our present selves and our future dreams.

[Sara Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bridge from Saigon is a complicated, beautiful refugee story. Geographically, the book takes place in Sài Gòn, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, but its main location is deep inside the author's mind. Pham lives with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder), a mental health condition where a person has two or more interchangeable personalities. Pham's disorder presents very differently than most cases. Hers is a high-functioning version, something her therapist Blue explains during the sessions Pham highlights often in the memoir. For most of Pham's life, her separate personalities stay cocooned in her mind, mostly hidden from the outside world but very present and active within her.

Pham's therapist Blue appears in almost every chapter. The way she interweaves his voice as direct dialogue in the chapter (usually in response to her narrative voice) was so compelling. I enjoyed seeing therapy on the page and the relationship they had.

The structure of the memoir is really cool. I get into a discussion of that in the review on my blog: https://annotatewithsara.com/2026/03/...

[Lindsay DeRollo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Bridge from Saigon: A Viet-American Memoir of Family and Mind" by Hoangmai Pham is an inspiring and brave story that explores powerful themes of identity, memory, family, acceptance, and belonging. Fleeing Vietnam as a child, Hoangmai Pham describes the sudden change from life in Saigon to Philadelphia and the hidden psychological toll that accompanied her for many years. To survive her early trauma, she retreated into a comforting inner world where she developed Dissociative Identity Disorder. She didn't realize what it was until midlife, and then had to come to terms with it and learn how to embrace all aspects of herself. Despite all this, she was an amazing physician, policy expert, wife, and loving mother.

Blending intense therapy sessions with childhood memories, ancestral legends, and family stories, Pham crafts an inspiring, multifaceted narrative. Her memoir also honors the intricacies of embracing her Vietnamese, Scottish, American, and Jewish identities. Honest, poetic, and deeply moving, this memoir is a testament to the power of resilience, hope, and the lifelong journey toward discovering and loving one’s authentic self.

[Cathy VanLear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Goodreads and Pham for the opportunity to read and write an honest review of Bridge from Saigon: A Viet-American Memoir of Family and Mind.

This courageous memoir takes the reader on a journey from displacement, to the reconciling of childhood, through the process of what to keep and what to leave behind, and ultimately to finding one’s way home to one’s true self.

A compelling tribute to cultural integration and preservation, woven together through narrations of therapy sessions and family stories. This psychological and very personal memoir is definitely worth the read, leading the reader through a journey of struggle with twists and turns and surprises but leaving one with deep insight and inspiring hope.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable, intimate memoir of a woman who fled Vietnam with her family as a child and achieved "model minority" success, while all the while having a rich and disturbing interior life involving what some might call "imaginary friends." It's a fascinating, compelling story, and one that adds to our understanding of the richness and complexity of immigrant experience in the United States. I highly recommend it!

[Rhonda Lomazow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr.Pham has written an amazing memoir a story of courage of her family’s escape from South Vietnam just before it fell to communism I enjoyed reading about her and her family’s history. Dr.Phan is a strong brave woman who overcame a lot and succeeded.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this memoir, primarily the parts where the author talks about her childhood. I didn't really get into the psychiatric portions of it, but to each their own.

[Sherry Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very interesting , heartfelt, past experience of the author’s life journey. This book includes pictures and so much more. Worth reading.