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What did Anh do achieve in Australia?
Comedian and author Anh Do has won the top prize for his novel ‘The Happiest Refugee’ at Australia’s top book awards. Sydney-based Do won Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards in Melbourne last night. His family fled from Vietnam to Australia in a fishing boat in 1980 as refugees.
What contributions did the Vietnamese make to Australia?
Since 1975 they have taken the initiative in setting up support networks such as the Vietnamese Community in Australia (VCA), language schools, media and numerous temples. Vietnamese Australians have contributed creatively to many areas of Australian life such as politics, cuisine, arts, and research.
Did Anh do migrate to Australia?
Refugee. Anh Do and his family fled to Australia as refugees in 1980. In his 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee, Do tells of how his family survived five days in a leaky fishing boat nine and a half metres long and two metres wide.
How is Anh Do a role model?
Do has been nominated for this newspaper’s Australian of the Year award as a “great artist, and a wonderful, smiling and successful migrant who is a great role model for Australia’s multicultural society”. An entrepreneur from an early age, as a 14-year-old schoolboy Do set up a small business breeding tropical fish.
Why did the Vietnamese choose to migrate to Australia?
The majority of Vietnamese came to Victoria after the Communist government took over their homeland at the end of the Vietnam War. Those already in Australia were offered permanent residence, and refugees began to be admitted through resettlement camps based in South East Asia.
Who did Anh do travel to Australia with?
Anh arrived in Australia at age 3 on a small fishing boat packed with 47 other Vietnamese refugees. Having survived pirate attacks, dehydration, and internment in a Malaysian refugee camp, young Anh came through this adversity with a determination to make the most out of life.
What challenges did Anh do face?
Anh faces many obstacles as a boy and then an adolescent in Sydney, the city where the family settles. Most notably, he must struggle with poverty after he, his mother, his brother Khoa and his sister Tram are abandoned by his father. And yet, Anh proves to be creative, resilient, clever and hardworking.
What is Chapter 1 of The Happiest Refugee about?
Chapter 1 continues with the stories of uncle Huy’s narrow miss at death and uncle Thanh’s time in a communist re-education camp. Uncle Huy and his friends got plastered the night before they had to leave for war, but they slept in and watched their boat explode on the horizon.