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Book of May / June 2025

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse

Discussion Guide

Host: Pacinthe Mattar

Topics covered:

About the book

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse is a powerful, genre-bending memoir that traces one family’s flight from Vietnam in the aftermath of war—and a haunting absence that follows. Decades after fleeing Saigon as the city fell, author Vinh Nguyen returns to the fragments of his family’s past, searching for the father who vanished during their escape.

In 1975, as the Vietnam War came to a close, thousands fled the country in desperation. Among them was Nguyen’s family—his mother, siblings, and himself. His father was supposed to follow them – but he was never seen again and what happened to him still remains unknown decades later. In the lead up to the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s end, Nguyen embarks on an emotional journey through memory, myth, and silence to reconstruct a life lost to history.

A beautiful, aching search for his father unfurls on the pages of The Migrant Rain Falls In Reverse: blurring the lines between recollection and imagination, Nguyen’s lyrical narrative weaves together fractured family stories, inherited grief, and the quiet echoes of displacement. Through abandoned homes, forgotten refugee camps, and the guarded secrets of loved ones, Nguyen confronts the ache of uncertainty and the weight of what can never be fully known.

A child's boot in a pond
A children's boot sits in the water in a creek at the U.S.-Canada border. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Soldiers hiding in river stream
American soldiers survey the situation from the relative safety of a watery rice paddy as they prepare to advance on a Viet Cong sniper position, Vietnam, mid 1960s. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A bit of history

A Brief History of the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War (1954–1975), was a prolonged conflict between North Vietnam—supported by communist allies—and South Vietnam, backed by anti-communist forces and the United States. The war’s roots lie in Vietnam’s struggle for independence from French colonial rule, culminating in the Geneva Accords of 1954 that divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel. North Vietnam, under Ho Chi Minh, sought to unify the country under communist rule, while South Vietnam, supported by U.S. military and economic aid, resisted.

From 1965 onward, the U.S. escalated its involvement, peaking with over half a million troops stationed in Vietnam. Despite massive military efforts, the U.S. could not achieve a decisive victory, and in 1973, American forces withdrew following the Paris Peace Accords. In April 1975, North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, marking the end of the war and the reunification of Vietnam under communist rule.

The Vietnam War Fallout: Refugees, relocation, and a generation of ‘Boat People’

The war caused widespread devastation, displacing millions of people within Vietnam and prompting waves of refugees to flee abroad. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) , approximately 2.5 million Vietnamese fled their homeland between 1975 and the mid-1990s, often in dangerous conditions aboard overcrowded boats—a phenomenon that gave rise to the term “boat people.” According to Refugees International, up to one-third of boat people perished at sea.

Hundreds of people on a boat from Vietnam
Civilians and troops board a Navy boat during the evacuation of the city of Hue in South Vietnam on March 26th, 1975. Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Vietnamese refugees exiting a boat
Vietnamese refugees walk down the gangway of the American ship 'Pioneer Contender' in Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam, on March 29th, 1975. Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

International co-operation on resettlement

Countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines became temporary hosts for large numbers of Vietnamese asylum seekers. Under pressure from international organizations, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR, many Western nations—including Canada, the United States, Australia, and France—established resettlement programs for Vietnamese refugees.

Canada’s resettlement role

Following the fall of Saigon, the Canadian government launched the Indochinese Refugee Program in 1979, responding to public demand to accept more refugees. Through this initiative, Canada resettled over 110,000 Vietnamese refugees by the early 1980s, most arriving through organized sponsorship programs. This effort marked a turning point in Canada’s humanitarian immigration policy and contributed to the growth of a vibrant Vietnamese diaspora in the country today.

Many Vietnamese communities around the world trace their origins to wartime migration, and subsequent generations continue to grapple with the intergenerational effects of trauma, loss, and adaptation.

2 Soldiers looking up at helicopters
Two American soldiers are waiting for the second wave of combat helicopters during the Vietnam War. Photo by Patrick Christain/Getty Images

By The Numbers: A snapshot of North American & European Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees

  • United States: Operation New Life (April 1975) evacuated around 132,000 Vietnamese to Guam for processing en route to U.S. resettlement. In 1975 alone, the U.S. resettled approximately 120,000 Vietnamese.
  • Canada: Reacting to the 1975 crisis, Canada reformed immigration under the 1976 Immigration Act, creating dedicated refugee categories and launching the pioneer Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR) in 1978–79. By 1979–80, Canada admitted over 60,000 Southeast Asian refugees, with roughly 50% privately sponsored. Sponsorship campaigns and church groups made it a national effort—so much that Canadians received the UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award in 1986.

Lessons and Legacy

The Vietnam War’s refugee aftermath highlights root causes Amnesty International is tackling—war, environmental degradation, political persecution—for modern migration challenges. Today’s global crises (e.g., Sudan, Palestine, Myanmar, Ukraine, Afghanistan) are a reflection and continuation of these patterns. Humanitarian bodies including Amnesty International as well as Human Rights Watch, IOM, and Refugees International all emphasize the need to address these root causes, protect refugees, and facilitate safe resettlement.

“Intentionally or not, Bill C-2 paints people escaping persecution and violence with the same brush as serious public safety concerns such as the flow of illegal fentanyl or weapons. Stigmatizing refugees and linking them to public safety problems not of their making is cruel, irresponsible, and heightens their risk of facing violence, harassment and discrimination in their everyday lives.”
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France-Isabelle Langlois

Executive Director of Amnistie internationale Canada francophone

Discussion Questions

  1. Vinh Nguyen’s book blends memoir, memory, history, imagination, and magical realism. What impact do all these styles have on the story he tells?
  2. Nguyen notes his relative lack of comfort with the Vietnamese language, but occasionally uses Vietnamese writing in the book. What impact does the presence of his native tongue have on the book? If you understand Vietnamese, what did it do for you? For non-Vietnamese speakers, what impact did it have?
  3. Many of Nguyen’s scenes centre around shared meals, living in close quarters, and being intimately close to the family members as he digs into his father’s story. What do those scenes around food, drink, and family evoke? What function do they serve in the telling of Nguyen’s story?
  4. What was your reaction to the moment when Nguyen slips into magical realism and imagination, deviating from his memoir and real-life memory?
  5. It’s been 50 years since the Vietnam War. What impact does learning about its legacy through the intimate story Nguyen weaves have on your understanding of it? What more did you learn?
  6. Nguyen wrestles with his identity as Canadian, “outsider”, refugee, as well as his sexuality as a gay man. How do these identities change, evolve, or challenge him as he moves through Canada, Vietnam and the refugee camps of Thailand?
  7. What did you think of the ‘conversation’ Nguyen has with his mother about his decision to tell this story, her obsession with the facts, and her weariness of him being so public about it? Did you identify with her? Did you feel protective of him? Who has the right to tell a family’s story?
  8. Nguyen writes: “The war is not over. The war continues to kill. We have yet to know how many lives it will claim whether by bomb or gunfire or drowning or grief.” What do those lines evoke in you reading this as wars continue in Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine and Iran?
  9. We often hear about “the refugee experience” in general, and rarely hear one singular refugee story with such nuance and intimacy. What impact has reading this book had on you? What windows did it open up for you in understanding the lived experience of refugees? If you are a refugee yourself, what felt familiar to you about Nguyen’s story?
The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse by Vinh Nguyen

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse

By Vinh Nguyen

Counterpoint LLC Publishing Company

Vinh Nguyen

writer, editor & professor

Vinh Nguyen is a writer, editor, and professor who was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He is a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly, where he curates an ongoing series on refugee, migrant, and diasporic writing. He is the co-editor of the academic books Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada and The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, and the author of Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience. His writing has been short-listed for a National Magazine Award and has received the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Literature. In 2022, he was a Lambda Literary Fellow in Nonfiction for emerging LGBTQ writers. He lives in Toronto.

Discussion Guide

Download the Amnesty Book Club Discussion Guide for The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse in a high-resolution printable and low-resolution sharable PDF file.

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Learn More

Listen to Vinh Nguyen’s interview on CBC’s The Sunday Magazine:

Listen Now »

Take Action

Urgent Action to Halt Mass Deportations

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Canada: End the Safe Third Country Agreement

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Stop Bill C-2, Canada’s new border bill, an attack on the human right to seek asylum

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Sources

Sources: UNHCR, International Organization for Migration, Refugees International, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Red Cross, Senate of Canada, Government of Canada

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