Audiobook Excerpt
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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Chapter one Voyage to Freedom. It's in the moments of decision. Your destiny is shaped. Anthony Robbins. After North Vietnam took over South Vietnam in 1975 my family had a plan for my brothers to escape from our country. That was the thing to Dio. Most of the other families were doing it. The girls were never in the plan. Never. It was considered to be too dangerous. For starters, there's only a 50% chance of surviving the ocean voyage to freedom, my mother told me. Hundreds of times, any girl caught trying to escape was sent to prison, where you were raped and subjected to Horrible, an unimaginable tortures. If pirates got hold of you, it was even worse. They would make you a slave. This is why girls were not included in the plan to escape for my country. I walked into my house on an otherwise ordinary night when I was 13 years old. You could imagine what an unexpected event it was for me when I was just being my normal happy go lucky self, only to find my sister, mother and father crying and sobbing in our living room on instantaneous grief. hits you when you walk into a room where the patriarch of your family is crying. I didn't know how to feel, but as soon as my mother saw me, a shining light of hope and vision burst from her eyes. She opened her arms for me to come sit in her lap. Of course, I ran and jumped into the comfort of my mother's embrace. I wanted to cry, and I didn't know why. My mother wiped away her tears and looked at me with the deepest expression of care before saying My beautiful little flower. If there was a chance for you to escape from Vietnam tonight, would you do it? I was stunned. The holy word I could manage was what my mind was racing. I don't know how to swim. What about the Sharks and the pirates? They scared us with stories about sharks and pirates all the time in hopes that we would never consider escaping. Finally, I managed after all those warnings about sharks and pirates. Now you want me to go? Are you kidding me? My father was more serious than I had ever seen him in my life. Yes, it's scary, but you don't have much of a future here in Vietnam. I reacted, but you said we could never escape, not girls. I was wondering if this was a trick question. I had never experienced that sort of tension in her home before. I knew that my sister was going, but she had no choice. She was married, so it was her husband's choice. As for me, there is no way they would choose for me to do this. What they emotions race through my 13 year old body, mind and spirit. I was scared. Yet at the same time, I was excited, thinking I had the shot I thought I would never, ever have in Vietnam, ever. As far as I knew, my parents never talked about escaping illegally. I had been told that if we were to ever leave you being a legal way, we'd fly away from the country on a plane or because someone sponsored us so we could come to their country. My parents have been trying for years, but none of us had any real hope of ever getting out of Vietnam. Through legal channels. I sat in silence as I thought about myself. My life and my future. My dad was right. I didn't have a shot on any kind of successful life in Vietnam. I had already quit school and with helping my parents run a little restaurant. As far as I could tell, I would be running that little restaurant for the rest of my life. I never wanted to run a restaurant. I did it because they needed help and I was the only child left in the house. All of their other Children were married or had already escaped from the country. Fleeting images of a better future raced through my head as the sorrow of leaving my parents washed over my heart. Wracked with conflicting emotions, I stammered, but But who's going to take care of everything? Who's going to take care of you guys if I go? At that moment? The thought of leaving them felt wrong, as if I was abandoning them. My mom grassed me firmly