Three Funerals for My Father

Shortlisted for the 2022 Hamilton Literary Awards

What would you risk to save your children?

Jolie Phuong Hoang grew up as one of ten children, part of a loving, prosperous Vietnamese family. All that changed after the communists took over in 1975. Identified as a potential “bad element,” the family lived in constant fear of being sent to the dreaded new economic zone.

Desperate to ensure the family’s safety and to provide a future for his children, Jolie’s father arranged three separate escapes. The first was a failure that cost most of their fortune, but the second was successful—six of his children reached Indonesia and ultimately settled in Canada. He and his youngest daughter drowned during the disastrous third attempt. Told from the author’s perspective and that of her father’s ghost, Three Funerals for My Father is a poignant story of love, grief and resilience that spans three countries and fifty years.

In an era when anti-Asian racism is on the rise and the issue of human migration is front-page news, Three Funerals for My Father provides a vivid and timely first-hand account of what it is like to risk everything for a chance at freedom. It is at once an intimate story of one family, a testament to the collective experience of the “boat people” who escaped communist Vietnam, and a plea on behalf of the millions of refugees currently seeking asylum across the globe.