Choosing To Be Seen: A Journey Beyond the Shadows

One of the first movies I ever saw that had an impact on me was Rambo: First Blood. I must’ve been 13 or 14 when I snuck into the theater with some friends. I was hooked on the action, until I caught one word, loud and clear: “gook.” Something about that stuck with me – not just the word, but the realization that people who looked like me weren’t the heroes on screen. We were the villains, or just disposable. Maybe that’s where my love for storytelling started – out of confusion, curiosity and a longing to see myself represented differently on the big screen.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of what some people call the Fall of Saigon – and others call the Reunification of Vietnam. Both can be true. It’s not impossible to find the truth in both. But the common theme is, we’re no longer the villains.

It was 5 p.m. on April 27, 1975 when we left Saigon. I was five years old. The chaos at Tân Sơn Nhất airport weighed on us – lines as far as my eyes could see, people desperate to get the hell out – but I thought we were going on vacation. My parents, my younger siblings and I crammed like sardines into a bomber plane. I was uncomfortable, but this was my dad’s Golden Ticket out. Just a brief trip. America would win the war, and we’d be back. No big deal.

Then, in Guam, everything changed.

We were crowded into a refugee camp. It was excruciatingly hot, so we spent many days on the beach. When my mom found out that the camp had been set up months prior, the brutal truth set in. We were not going back. A few days later, it was official: The war was over. We’d lost.

My mom cursed in Vietnamese at an American Marine, saying words I had never heard her speak. She was shaking, her face twisted in disbelief. It was the first time I saw her lose control. My dad was silent, but I could feel his sadness, too.

A week later, we were shipped off again, landing in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, a temporary home to more than 50,000 refugees. At night, my mom kept the curtains drawn tight. They say under the moon, we’re all the same, but to her, the moon was the one thing that was familiar in this strange land – and that’s what made it unbearable. The moon reminded her of home, of loss, of everything she couldn’t say out loud. A woman whose parents and siblings hadn’t been given a Golden Ticket.

After three months, a church in Chico, California, finally sponsored us. We were the first Vietnamese family in town, so the local paper showed up when we landed – real celebrity treatment. In reality, we had anything but celebrity status. My dad only spoke a little English, so he found work at a Japanese rice cake factory. My mom cleaned toilets by day and went to ESL classes at night.

We experienced our first earthquake while we were in a supermarket. Shelves shook, cans flew, people screamed – and we just stood there. A store clerk had to pull us out of the aisle. My parents thought it was bombs again. They’d lived through worse. We laughed about it later, but the muscle memory of war doesn’t go away so easily.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience – being somewhere and realizing everyone else belongs, except you. Like, really belongs. We didn’t. Not in Guam, not in California, not anywhere. We were just … fish out of water.

I was enrolled in kindergarten, the only Asian kid, speaking no English, with no friends. That changed one day when my dad came home with a gift from Kmart: a Batman toy I’d begged my dad for the night before, even though he hadn’t had the money. I found out later he’d gone back and stolen it for me.

Despite its questionable origins, that toy brought me friendship. My classmates gathered round to “ooh” and “aah.” I finally felt like I belonged.

Middle school was rough. That’s when the words hit: “Gook.” “Chink.” “Chop Suey.” I didn’t understand their meaning at first – but when I did, they landed hard. “Gook” was the worst. That’s what they called us in movies like Rambo and Platoon. I’m not proud of it, but I stopped being Vietnamese. I wanted to erase it. I wanted to erase me. To blend in. Disappear into whatever was easier. That was survival.

Surviving wasn’t always glamorous. I remember the hand-me-downs. There were no brand-new clothes. My bike? Also from the flea market. The other boys rode around on shiny BMXs while I struggled to keep up on a clunky orange bike with a banana seat. Always the last one in the group. Embarrassing? You bet.

Our Christmases meant waiting until the 23rd to grab the last leftover tree from the lot – the one no one wanted, for a big discount. Half the branches missing, looking like a desert bush, a few sad lights dangling off it like they’d given up. The Charlie Brown tree. We stuck it in the living room and took photos. And looking at those photos now, I smile. We made it work. We always did.

These aren’t sob stories, just the facts of growing up. Facts I realized much later had shaped me. When I returned to Vietnam in 1995, it clicked. We were not just gooks. We were more than the villains we’d been shown on screen. It became increasingly important for me to tell different stories – not just about war, but about social class, self-identity, and familial division. These themes followed me through my early work and into my most recent film, Daydreamers.

I never intended to write a vampire movie. I wanted to tell a story about a family being torn apart … something deeper. A kid who is constantly told he’s not welcome. The hunger to be seen. To belong. To stop hiding. The vampires were me.

Daydreamers is about vampires, yes, but they aren’t just about blood. They are about surviving in the shadows and finding a way to exist when the world says you don’t fit. I get that. I lived that. Growing up, I was taught to stay quiet, to blend in, to mold myself into what people wanted. I laughed it off. But, man, that takes a toll.

And now it’s April 2025 and I’m standing on Lê Duẩn Street in Saigon, where the heat hangs heavy in the air. Soldiers are rehearsing for the ceremony, flags are everywhere, all commemorating 50 years since that day the war ended. On the other side of the world, my vampire movie, shot in Vietnam with an all-Vietnamese cast, is about to premiere.

Fifty years after I left with nothing but fear and confusion, this film gets to be a bridge. Between where I came from and where I am now. Between the memories I still fall into, and the future I want to see.

It’s all in this moment. The kid riding the tattered orange bike from the flea market. The Batman figurine my dad stole because we had no money, when I had no words and no friends. The curtains my mom kept closed because the moonlight made her miss home too much. All of it.

Because Daydreamers isn’t just a vampire story, it’s a diaspora story. It’s about remembering where you come from, even when the world tells you to forget. It’s about reclaiming the shadows – and stepping out of them.

You know, vampires don’t have reflections. They’re stuck between past and present, between being seen and staying hidden.

But we’re not vampires. We get to choose. And now, we the gooks, are choosing to be seen.

Because in the end, we’re all under the same sky, looking at the same moon.

Fifty years on, I’m glad my mom can look now, too.

Featured image shows Timothy Linh Bui (center) on the set of Daydreamers; all images courtesy Timothy Linh Bui.