Exploring Multiple Truths Through Family History and Curiosity | Julie Pham

Julie Pham, a Vietnamese boat person, shares her family's journey as refugees fleeing communism and establishing a new life in the United States. Through Julie's experiences and insights as a historian, listeners will explore the power of multiple truths, the push and pull factors of immigration, and the dynamics of being an insider and an outsider in different communities. We delve into the significance of understanding family history and its impact on shaping individual perspectives and resilience. Join us as we uncover the importance of curiosity in fostering human connection, empathy, and inner peace while embracing the diverse stories that make up our shared history.

About Julie:

Dr. Julie Pham is the founder and CEO of CuriosityBased, an organizational development firm based in Seattle. She is the author of the Amazon best-seller, 7 Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work and a TEDx speaker. Dr. Pham has applied her award-winning community building approach to building strong, collaborative, and curious teams. Dr. Pham earned her Ph.D. in history at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and she graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley as a Haas Scholar. She earned her real life MBA by running her family’s Vietnamese language newspaper during the Great Recession. She has worked as a journalist, historian, university lecturer, marketer, nonprofit executive, and management consultant.

Connect with Julie:
Website: www.curiositybased.com
Facebook@curiositybased
Instagram@juliephamphd
LinkedIn Julie Pham
TEDxTalk on "curiosity as a practice"

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

Transcript

Exploring Multiple Truths Through Family History and Curiosity | Julie Pham

Stories in Our Roots, Episode 77

Heather Murphy: Hi Julie, thanks for joining me today on my podcast.

Julie Pham: Heather, thank you so much for inviting me.

Heather Murphy: Well, could you start off by just telling us a little bit about who you are and where you come from in the world?

Julie Pham: Yeah, so I'll start off personally and then a bit professionally. A really strong part of my identity is I'm a Vietnamese boat person. My parents and I came to the US when I was a two month old baby. And grew up in Seattle and they founded the first privately owned Vietnamese language newspaper in the Pacific Northwest.

So that was in 1986. so I think of my parents as hustlers among hustlers. And then professionally, I have my own company called curiosity base. I founded it in the middle of the pandemic in January, 2021. And we help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that's where we spend most of our waking hours.

Heather Murphy: Well, can you tell me more about your family's experience coming to the United States? Because honestly, I don't know very much about that piece and group of history.

Julie Pham: so we came over in 1979. And the reason why we came was to flee communism. So the what we know is the Vietnam War ended in 1975. And at the time, my father, he had served in the South Vietnamese military. And so along with other many other South Vietnamese officers, he was sentenced to what they call re education camp, which is really a prison camp.

So Vietnam War between North Vietnam and between South Vietnam was really a civil war that was then became an international war with Russia backing North Vietnam and the US, backing South Vietnam. And so anyone who started fighting for the losing side, which is South Vietnam, then they were sent to reeducation camp.

And was there for three years, and he realized after he got released, we can't stay. And so my parents were actually the first in our family to to flee. And so I at the time was just a two month old baby. and that was actually the second time my parents were refugees. The first time was in 1954.

And that's when the country got divided at the 17th parallel. And so my parents were actually born in North Vietnam, and they fled North Vietnam, which was communist by that time, to South Vietnam. So, actually refugees twice.

Heather Murphy: Wow. And how much do you know about your family culture? Because I imagine it's hard to bring anything with you or to maintain ties.

Julie Pham: Yes. Yes. when you're fleeing on a boat, you are not really, don't bring that much. so my parents are Catholic. so a lot of the people who fled North Vietnam to South Vietnam were actually for religious freedom as well, because many of us were Catholic.

 And so the people who fled are what they call 54 Northerners. Because they fled the north in 1954. And so I know that on my dad's side, his family had been Catholic for generations. And my mom was actually the first in her family to convert to Catholicism. And my parents were upper middle class and my father's family actually owned rubber plantations in the South. 

And On my mom's side, it was her great uncle, who was actually a diplomat. And so she was actually born in Thailand. Growing up I knew they would talk about being these refugees, what it was like to actually be a Northerner in the South.

And so, you know, when we think about identities, there are always insiders and outsiders and the minority, and it doesn't matter where you are, we could just be in our own little neighborhood. It's just, oh, well, this is how I'm different. So there was always a sense of, okay, well, my dad would talk a lot about just growing up in the South and just being teased by Southern kids for the Northern accent.

Heather Murphy: With immigrant families, it can go one of two ways. Either we don't remember where we came from or we do. How was it for your family?

Julie Pham: Oh, it was definitely so much about remembering where we come from, even though my parents actually never went back to Vietnam. So even my Vietnamese name is Huai Hung and Huai Hung means to remember one's homeland. My father knew that once we left, they were not going to come back. Because for him it was just the experience of that re education camp, which by the way, just to explain re education camp, it's what happened after the war was the winning side, the communists, felt the South Vietnamese need to be re educating communism. And in Vietnam if you read re education camp, you see pictures of people sitting politely at these desks with studying Marxism, Leninism. And yet if you talk to people who actually lived through re education camp, through prison, they were really more like prison camps. So that was such a harsh experience for him.

And that's something that they would talk about. And I think that's something that's actually a part of a collective memory of a lot of the South Vietnamese refugee community in the U. S. And actually there's this workshop shower. She's a Somali British poet and she has this poem called "Home" and she writes, "No one puts their child on a boat unless the water is safer than the land." And I always love that line, because I think it really, conveys how dangerous the journey was. I think that, when we talk about immigrants to the US, there's often this sense The talk of the American dream and why people leave is for economic prosperity.

And what we don't talk about is why do people flee their home country? And so I think of it as there's the pull factors and the push factors. And so in the American narrative, there's a lot of, Oh, well, it's because we're so great. And that's why people want to be here. But what we don't talk about is what compelled people, what pushed people out.

Because actually the first time I lived in Vietnam and I started living there on and off of my research in my twenties, it's like, oh, there's a lot of really great things about the way of life here. And so then I could really understand what my parents had to give up. because my parents founded the Vietnamese newspaper, pride in our community, pride in being a refugee was always really important to us. And it was only later on when I talked to other Vietnamese American second generation where I found out that that wasn't always the case.

That for some of them, it was all about assimilation and about fitting in and even just talking to, I think sometimes people, when they talk about refugees, it's like, Oh, they're victims and they're to be pitied. And I always taught, Oh, we're really resilient. Look at all the things we've done. Look at all the things that our community has done for community, our size, we've actually accomplished a lot. So definitely, a really strong sense of pride.

Heather Murphy: And how have you seen your family's newspaper support that sense of community and culture? Okay.

Julie Pham: So my parents founded the newspaper because they could see that the Vietnamese community was growing and was getting bigger and that Vietnamese wanted to buy from Vietnamese. They want to be able to speak in our own language. And so my parents and especially my dad always really focused on the positive news. Things to celebrate. And so I even remember during the pandemic, we were getting all of these offers of Hey, we're funding of. Can you talk about this social service and that social service and these nonprofits and he said, we are not a community that only just takes handouts. We're a community of professionals and it's not like we are just constant need.

And I realized that I had kind of been caught up in this, the way an American view of refugees is always being victims and needing something myself, when he said that, it's like, oh, that's true. There are many professionals in our community. And so they don't want to just hear about, oh, this is where you get food or this is where you get resources. It's also just, what are the things that we have to be so proud of in our community?

Heather Murphy: Yeah, I think it's interesting that on a national stage that narrative that refugees is. are weighing down society, and that's where the spotlight is a lot of time. And it's not on all the people that aren't the ones that are in need all the time.

Julie Pham: Mm hmm. Well, and even, I mean, one of my favorite documentaries is called Nailed It, and it's about the, the rise of the manicure, pedicure industry in the U. S. and how it was really, popularized by Vietnamese Americans. And so a lot of times people think, oh, it's so sad that you have to work in a nail salon.

And yet in the documentary, what it really shows is this led to economic empowerment for For a whole community and generational wealth and also democratization of something that used to be an absolute luxury just for rich people and to make it incredibly accessible and also something that is considered artistic as well.

And so, I think that there's always different ways to look at something and something that My parents modeled this for me was to be optimistic to see how much we have done, not just how much left we have to accomplish.

Heather Murphy: Do you know much about the generations before your parents? 

Julie Pham: So I just know about my grandparents generation and that they were on father's side that my grandfather had some brothers who were the principal of a prestigious French Vietnamese school and that when they came first came down to the South, they really didn't have much, but they were able to regain wealth.

And on my mom's side, my grandmother actually divorced her husband, my grandfather, Um, when my mom was a teen, which was very unusual back then, and then my grandmother became a seamstress, had her own company and was able to raise three girls on her own. so those are the stories that I heard. 

Heather Murphy: So how has knowing your family's past informed your life and what you do in the present?

Julie Pham: I think all the time about, well, two things. One is resilience and the other one is different perspectives. So the first is whenever I feel afraid. Just, oh, can I do this? It's just like, wait a minute. I just have to think about the journey of getting on a boat and I have to tell you, it was quite dangerous because my parents were the first in our family to leave.

And yet, they had been urged by other family members, wait a week, wait a week. There's going to be another boat. It'll be a nicer boat and the relatives who got on that boat were caught.

So and my father was like, No, we need to leave now. Like, I cannot. I cannot. And so it just I share that to emphasize the danger of it. It was this is not a cruise. It was actually people got caught and they would keep going again and again. We were really lucky that we were able to go on the first time.

So one is that the resilience Transcribed and persistence, and courage. And then the second is how there are so many different ways to see a story. And so I'm trained as a historian. When I was an undergrad I was studying the Vietnam war and seeing, they talk about the Americans and they talk about the Vietnamese and then there are the South Vietnamese and they're not portrayed very well.

And so I talked to my dad about it and he said that the South Vietnamese are really kind of squished in and forgotten. And so that's when I actually started to do some formal research and I ended up interviewing 40 South Vietnamese veterans. The Vietnam War American media and films, it's between the Vietnamese and Americans, but the Vietnamese are the North Vietnamese.

So where the South Vietnamese, even though there are 2 million South Vietnamese in the U. S. So that's when I was just like, Oh, how could our side be not covered? Even though we're the ones who fled. And I would then talk to Americans who are just, Oh, I feel so sorry.

I'm so sorry what we did to your country. And then I was just, but we fought on the same side. Americans were our allies. It made me realize there are different ways of seeing any story. And so that's what got me interested in history. Cause for me, it wasn't about seeking the truth. Because I realized, no, there are multiple truths. 

There are multiple truths and they can coexist. And so when I first lived in Vietnam, what I realized was like, this is a really different perspective on history and the war. And so Heather, I'm going to give you a really clear example. April 30th is known as Fall of Saigon in the U S. In Vietnam, it's called Liberation Day. In communist Vietnam, it's called Liberation Day, the day we liberated the South. 

Heather Murphy: Yeah. 

Julie Pham: the South Vietnamese community calls it The Day We Lost Our Country. So you can see, fall of Saigon, Liberation Day, the day we lost our country. All three are true, just true to different perspectives.

And that to me was super fascinating. And I got really interested in historiography and just how the historian, the people writing the history, whatever their influences are, they influence how the history is written. And I thought that layer was super, super interesting.

And so that, that definitely influences my work today. And I know it can be controversial when I say that, that there are multiple truths. And yet I truly believe that there are multiple truths and, the reason why I studied history was because history sits at this intersection of social science and humanities.

And what I mean by that is social science, they believe they're searching for truth because we believe there is such a thing. And in humanities, we know everything is a story

in history, more than political science, more than sociology, more than literature, more than any other discipline sits right at that intersection, which means it's like striving for truth, but it knows there's no such thing, but it keeps striving, even though they know 

We know that there's no such thing and everything is a story. And that tension, that desire to find a truth keeps us moving, even though it's, and it's more about like, let's find all these different stories because there's so many different versions of this truth.

Heather Murphy: Mm hmm. And I see that a lot in the different people that I talked to about learning their family history, depending on which line you come down from, you can have one ancestor who had one perspective of their family situation and a sibling that had a completely different. And so these two families down three generations, they have a completely different understanding of what their family story is because of the individual experience and way they saw the world and the events that happened within their families.

Julie Pham: And it's so fascinating. Right. And then the learning happens when we're open to seeing that there is another way of viewing that history. I'll share one other example before I kind of connect this to my work is I remember living in Vietnam in Hanoi. It was 2008 and the movie Journey From the Fall had just come out and that movie was done, uh, directed, written by a Vietnamese American about the reeducation camp boat people experience. And he based it on 500 interviews with South Vietnamese refugees. And so it portrays it in a very harsh way. Uh, the prison camp experience, and I was living in Hanoi and I'd have these monthly movie nights.

I would invite my Hanoian friends, many of whom were born after the war, but there are people who were born before the war ended as well. And I remember after the movie ended and I turned on the lights and people's faces were just shocked because they were just, that's not the history I know.

Heather Murphy: Oh, wow.

Julie Pham: That's not the history. That's not what I've been told about re education camp, right? It did not look like a prison camp. It looked like people politely setting Marxism, Leninism at their tables. on the other end of that. I grew up, my parents have a, the newspaper is very anti communist and living in Vietnam.

I knew that that's not quite totally true either. Because I read something that Vietnam is actually has the 17th most capitalist mentality of the world. And that there is very much of a. if you go to Vietnam, capitalism is alive and thriving.

There's Gucci. There's lots of brand name stores and people are buying a lot of things. So my point here is it's complicated and it's more interesting to see what informs our view than it is for me to actually find an absolute truth.

Heather Murphy: Mm hmm. Because that is interesting, just the different perspectives and how many facets of the same thing you can come through by learning those different perspectives.

Julie Pham: Mm-Hmm.

Heather Murphy: We'll take that and we'll segue that into being curious about all these different perspectives. How did you end up going into a business that focus on curiosity?

Julie Pham: I just have to say when I came back to Seattle in 2008 and I had just finished my dissertation and I started working at my family's newspaper and I did that 'cause it was to kind of get my real life MBA to pivot. 'cause I didn't wanna stay in academia, Heather, I was not very curious at the time,

So I just wanna say that, I wanna admit that. And what I mean by that is, in academia, curiosity It's very much about the pursuit of knowledge to kind of show other people are wrong. Like, my research is better than your research. what I was working at the newspaper and in business and also in community building, it's very much about learning through people and learning with people.

And That's a different kind of learning, and it was very uncomfortable for me. It felt like a waste of time. It's like, why are we spending so much time talking? Let's just get this thing done. Right. And so it took quite a while for me to get at that. And then eventually, so I started doing lots of volunteering and and that was kind of my part of my learning process. and also I just saw, I wasn't having fun. Other people were having fun. It's like, Oh, let me try learning from other people. And that really opened me up because I went from very much like book learning, archives learning to learning real life. and then I eventually, I feel like I got my second real life, PhD in organizational development, and I did that by creating this, cross sector collaboration fellowship. So I ran a fellowship where I'd bring together people from the private sector, mostly tech, government and community based organizations, and they would be in a cohort for 6 months with each other.

And the idea was, how do we get them to collaborate? and so I ran this for 5 cohorts over 5, 6 month cohorts over 3 years. And so I kind of just kept watching. I mean, this was in the name of community service and learning and doing something good for the community. But I also had my research brain on, right.

And I was like, huh, why is it? Some people are doing really well, and they're having a lot of fun and other people are really struggling? it took me a while. It wasn't until the 3rd cohort where I realized it had to do with curiosity, Because what we saw was the people who are really struggling or those who are really fixed on a certain outcome.

It's like success looks like this. We've deviated from the plan. That's not the impact I want to have. And the people who are having a lot of fun were just like, Oh my gosh, look at what we're learning. This is amazing. I didn't know, and we built something out of nothing. And what I also saw was that could be contagious. 

So for those teams, if there was a critical mass of people who were curious, it could uplift the morale of the team. And if there is a critical mass of those who were not, who are just so fixated on the outcome, it can bring down the morale of team. Because there were bystanders to, they're just people were like, I'm just waiting to see how other people are. And it took me a couple of cohorts and then I realized I had to, I developed one question to see their willingness to stay, I would ask them, do you think you can learn from other people here?

Some of them said, no. And some of them said, it'll take me too long. Yes, but it's going to take me too long. It's like, all right, you don't have to stay then. It was based on, Hey, do you think we can learn from other people? And that is also just, I'm learning from different people's perspectives. I'm not learning from a book. I'm learning from how they see things. And it's different from how I see things. And I'm not trying to win over them. We're not debating. We are literally just, oh, you see the world differently. And that's so interesting to me. 

It was probably a year and a half into my business where I started to describe curiosity as a practice. For the longest time. Like most people, I talked about curiosity, like a trait you either have it or you don't. And since then, I've actually now described curiosity as a practice. We are all curious. Just not all the time and it's actually can be hard to practice curiosity because it does revolve. If we talk about curiosity, just learning something new, it's actually way easier to fill in something blank.

I don't know anything. So it's easier for me to fill this in. It's much more hard when it's just, I believe something and you're asking me. To challenge what I believe that's way harder. That's where practicing curiosity can be really difficult.

And so kind of where did that, the study of my own family history, because I realized that with growing up, it was just, it's okay that there are multiple views. and I think that sometimes in the American Writing narrative, it's they're good guys and they're bad guys. you either win or you lose and it's just, no, there's so much in between.

And so that's where the curiosity part comes in and she's like, I want to learn that that part is way more interesting to me than figuring out who lost or why they lost or who should have won or whatever the strategies are. You know, people talk about the lessons learned from history, and especially when, whenever people talk about the Vietnam war, what are the lessons learned. And they talk about that as if we can avoid making those same mistakes. I don't like talking about history in terms of the lessons learned, because in a way that feels very kind of extractive of history, as if that's the purpose of history. So we can learn from it and not do it again. The thing is, Heather, we will do it again. We will continue to make the same mistakes again.

They will just look like different stories with different characters and it's more about how do we continue to learn the different ways that we see that story, though, who are the different characters in that story.

Heather Murphy: Yeah, and I think having curiosity about the past, whether it's global or our own families, that helps us understand why the present is the way that it is, especially when we get lots of different perspectives and we are curious and we're looking for possibilities rather than an answer.

Julie Pham: And one also, I mean, even just like practicing inward curiosity, because when we talk about the practice of curiosity, we actually talk about it having three elements. The first is self awareness. The second is relationship building, and the third is clear communication. So the way that looks is starting with, how do I be curious about me? am I thinking what I'm thinking? What's this based on? What's this based on in my history? The second one is relationship building. So Heather, how do I ask you questions and be curious about you and ask you what's that based on? And also I'm going to give you my reactions to that. And then I'm also going to share me.

I'm going to tell you about myself and you're going to react to that. And that back and forth creates reciprocity. And that reciprocity creates relationship building. And then the third is clear communication, which is how do we listen to understand? How do we ask questions when we don't understand? And then this one, I think it's really, it's how do we share stories and examples? So not just, this is the way we should do things. It's like, this is why this matters to me. And I'd like to understand why that matters to you. And so there's the personal history too. And then going back and thinking, Oh, why do I care about the things the way I do. For me, I'm pretty optimistic and that is because of my parents journey. We fled communism and we survived and we thrived here. That has given me a hugely optimistic view on the world.

Heather Murphy: So what are some of the benefits that you've observed of when people have been able to develop more curiosity in their lives? 

Julie Pham: Oh gosh, inner peace. I think it's because I think that when we are a lot of judgment of other people, and so that lack of curiosity is actually, there's, I think, a lot of judgment of ourselves. Just like, oh, this is the way I should be, or this is the way I shouldn't be, and this is the way other people should be or shouldn't be.

And so when we're able to go, oh, other people are contradictory, and we're all hypocritical, you know, we all make mistakes. It's also okay for me to do that too, and to share it. Because I know I'm doing it. I just don't want to share it because I share that how can I judge other people? so I think that inner peace part, that grace for ourselves, it's when we start, when we're able to, and it's kind of reciprocal and cyclical too, it's just when I'm able to give grace to others, then I'm able to give grace to myself.

When I'm able to learn from others and if I want them to learn from me I have to be willing to learn from them. And I also have to be open to learning and open to changing my mind, and open to me evolving, which can feel hard. 'cause it's like, wait, why did I change? Am I becoming softer?

Why is the, you know, it's just, no, I'm just changing. I'm evolving. So I think that the practice of curiosity allows us, allows me to evolve. Actually a criticism of my work is that I'm too adaptive, it's too fluid, There needs to be a right and a wrong.

and I mean, what history shows is we judge things in hindsight so much, right? What is right or wrong is actually determined afterwards after this thing is done. So, yes, I think that we're able to forgive ourselves and have inner peace with ourselves, which then actually creates this ripple effect of, then we can actually be more forgiving and open to other people. Cause I actually think oftentimes we have the solutions. We just have to look inward. 

Heather Murphy: I looked on your website and you have a, a white paper there about curiosity. So if anybody wants to read more about what you have to say about that, I thought that was something good to go through. Um, you had a quote on there that said something to the effect of that being curious about each other will help the world not be so centered on conflict and trauma. It brings us together to be curious about each other rather than like you were saying judgmental

Julie Pham: Yeah. And I mean, the why for is that there's the inner peace and there's also the human connection, I need to actually have inner peace for me to have human connection for me to, be open to that. And I also another resource that your listeners can check out is I just did a TEDx talk on curiosity as a practice as well.

Heather Murphy: Yeah, pulled that up, too So I will have links to your website and to that TED talk in the show notes But thank you so much for joining me and sharing your thoughts about your family and your experience and about curiosity

Julie Pham: Thank you so much Heather. I really enjoyed this conversation.