How Vietnamese Refugees Gardened to Become Vietnamese-Americans

Meet an immigrant from Vietnam in the US—especially one who arrived as a refugee after the Vietnam War—and the odds are good they have a home garden. It may be a simple planter box in an apartment balcony or an elaborate several-acre microfarm. Not all of them, but enough that if you bet even money on it, you would come out ahead long-term.

Farm to Freedom: Vietnamese-Americans and Their Food Gardens, by Roy Vu explains why. Vu is well-placed to explain. The son of Vietnamese refugees, he arrived in the US as an infant.

Vietnam was (and remains) a largely green-thumbed culture. Even in its cities, inhabitants garden and raise chickens and rabbits. They are also hardworking. Visit Vietnam today and it seems every other person has a side hustle on top of the day job.

When the Vietnam War’s end caused two million in the south to flee Communism, they brought those traits with them. Many brought native seeds. As Vu explains, in refugee camps in both Asia and the US, the first thing many did was plant gardens.

Gardens were a source of food, a demonstration of autonomy and empowerment and a way for homesick refugees to remind themselves of their forcibly abandoned homes. Bringing familiar Vietnamese cuisine with them grounded them in their new homes.

Once settled in the US they continued gardening. Food was plentiful but when they arrived, starting in the 1970s, traditional Vietnamese fruits, vegetables, and herbs were hard to find. Growing them in their own gardens gave them access to these uncommon goods, and reduced grocery costs. It also made having a traditional family meal, with all members of the family present for dinner easier. (Once also an American tradition, it is increasingly abandoned today.) It helps them keep memories of Vietnam alive today, even as they become Americans.

Vu illustrates this in many ways. He peppers the book with original oral histories, community-based recipes and poetry, along with photographs of home gardens in suburban and urban settings. He is a professor, so he also goes into discussions of culinary citizenship, food democracy, culinary justice, and food sovereignty. These excursions read more like genuflection to academic pieties than realistic concepts.

He also insists this behavior is unique to Vietnamese refugees. It is not. The Vietnamese who immigrated to the US in this century are also dedicated gardeners. Virtually every set of rural immigrants share these traits. My grandparents, who came to the US in the 1920s from rural Greece, we members of a generation that filled their backyard gardens with cultural foods of the motherland. One grandfather even had an eleven-acre truck farm as a hobby. Vu concedes this in his epilogue, where he discusses the farming practices of Congolese and Syrian refugees in the US.

While it has flaws Farm to Freedom is a worthwhile book. Vu sheds valuable light on the lives of the Vietnamese-Americans. It is a thought-provoking read.

“Farm to Freedom: Vietnamese-Americans and Their Food Gardens,” by Roy Vu, Texas A&M University Press, 2024,‎ 280 pages. $30.00 (Paperback), $14.95 (E-book)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.