AACP September 2025 Newsletter

Hello AACP Newsletter Readers.

Happy autumn everyone!

I’m late with this newsletter. So I’ll try to be as brief as possible.

This month we have a great interview with authors Chau Thuy and Phuoc Tran. Part of what they reveal is their arduous journey to America as refugees after the end of the Vietnam War.

In our current times, when immigrants and refugees are being vilified, it’s important to see examples of real people that were refugees. In Chau Thuy and Phuoc Tran's case, they were given a chance and they succeeded in making new lives for themselves here in America. Please read this interview and remember that immigrants and refugees are not faceless hoards, but real people with compelling stories of their own.

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For our featured books this month, we have 14 books to put you in the mood for Halloween. If you like scary stories, be sure to check them out.

Among our featured books are a couple that are only available right now as ebooks. They include “The Anna Dressed in Blood Duology,” “Seven Deadly Shadows,” and “The Moon in the Lining of Her Skin.”

Many of the books offered by our BookShop.org site now have ebook versions. So those of you that prefer reading books on electronic devices, you can now do so from BookShop.org. Take this opportunity with these three books to try it out.

Among our other featured books for this month is a children’s book about musician Simon Tam called “We Sing From the Heart.” Simon Tam did a presentation for us back in 2019 which we transcribed for a newsletter article (in October 2022) called “A Presentation by Simon Tam: An Asian American Troublemaker That Took on the Government To Reappropriate a Racial Name.” Please check it out.

Two other children’s books featured this month are about celebrations that will be taking place in October. There is the book “Diwali: Love and Light” ( a book about Diwali, which starts on October 18 this year) and “White Sunday” about a Samoan celebration.

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That’s all the time I have for this message.

Thank you very much Chau Thuy and Phuoc Tran for doing the interview with us.

Thank you Charles. We wish you much success in your school work. We appreciate all the volunteer work you did with us and hope to see you around some time. Please keep in touch.

Thanks to our editors, especially Mina.

Hope to see you all at some of the upcoming events.

As always, take care.

Interviewed by Charles Zhong (CZ) and Leonard Chan (LC)

LC: This past August, author friend Phuoc Tran informed me of a presentation that was going to be given by Chau Thuy, founder of the Vietnamese Heritage Museum in Garden Grove, California. The presentation was a virtual tour of Chau Thuy’s museum.

A while back, while doing research for past AACP newsletter articles, I discovered this museum’s website and was quite curious about what was there. At the time I had discovered the website, it appeared that the museum was just getting started. Now that they were doing this virtual tour, I couldn’t pass up this chance to learn more about it.

Phouc’s email also directly introduced me to Chau Thuy and suggested that they could do an interview for our newsletter, since it was the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon (April 30, 1975) and the start of the Vietnamese mass arrival to America.

For those of you that may not know, we did an interview with Phuoc Tran for our January 2022 newsletter upon the release of her children’s book “All About Vietnam.” Phuoc is also the author of three other children’s books (Vietnamese Children’s Favorite Stories, Vietnamese Folktales for Children, and My First Book of Vietnamese Words) and is a retired librarian from Minnesota.

Along with being one of the founders of the Vietnamese Heritage Museum, Chau Thuy was also an electrical engineer for more than 35 years, an author of a novel (“Bloodstained Sea”) and books on calligraphy, and is also a skilled artist.

Both Phuoc Tran and Chau Thuy were also refugees that escaped Vietnam by boats.

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CZ: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview with us. Is there anything that you would like to add or correct with our introduction? We’ll get to questions about your refugee experiences later in this interview...

View full descriptions of all these featured books at Bookshop.org where you'll also have the opportunity to purchase them.