MOMENTS OF
TRUTH
This project spotlights people in Texas who experienced turning points that reshaped the course of their lives.
ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN IBAÑEZ
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Click here for audio transcript
PHUONG PALAFOX: So this black box has Buddhist monks chanting. [Sounds of chanting monks.] And I know about this chant because when my mom was dying, she died on December 23rd, 2004, and so this year it’ll be 21 years.
My name is Phuong Palafox and I am a mother of three, a Vietnamese refugee, a passionate speech language therapist and advocate of communication rights, and a person with a lot of big feelings about this world.
You know, when we talk about cúng, I’ve just pieced together this thing that I know honors our ancestors. People have this PR image about what it looks like for Asian American, Vietnamese American families, you know, the lighting the incense and standing there.
But I think for me, everything I know, I either know from memory, from childhood or I’m kind of making it up because the people who would teach me all of the background aren’t here to teach me.
I know it’s three incense, but I have no idea why. I know that you bow three times, or I’ve seen it, but I have no idea why.
But yeah, I can show you what it looks like. So you get three. [Click of a lighter] I usually light it over there and whatever it is, the thoughts, the food, um, I know other people do like fake money, whatever it is that you want to provide for them gets to where they are.
The thing that I see every day that reminds me of her is my face in the mirror. We look identical, and anyone who knows both of us will be like, wow you, like you look so much like her.
I always start with my family story. So I’m a Vietnamese refugee. And when you bring up Vietnam, people are like, yes, there were these boat people. And so my dad was one of those boat people.
He was a South Vietnamese lieutenant. He was captured in a reeducation camp. I don’t think a lot of people know this, but reeducation camps were when the North side would take the people in the South after the fall of Saigon in ‘75. But there was no education. There was lots of hard labor and torture.
Someone approached him and asked if he would be willing to take his new bride at the time, my mom, and 54 more people, like, to leave the country ’cause it wasn’t safe for the South Vietnamese anymore.
Engine died the second day, but he had enough foresight to know, like, that this boat wouldn’t make it across the South China Sea. And so, um, he had brought sheets like fabric, and then he had asked everyone with a button-down shirt to give him a shirt. And so he pieced together like the buttons and the buttonholes and put together this whole sail, hung it, and they kept going.
And then after about, I think two weeks, they arrived in Hong Kong’s Harbor. And I was born at 3 AM that morning.
I knew that I wanted to make it into a book for a very long time. So I share this story because it tethers everything in my entire life, from my professional passions, to my mothering, to existing as a human being and a woman.
So now, whenever I do things, and I know she would be proud, so there’s articles in magazines or when the book was published or sometimes my own children will do something that I know she’ll really appreciate, so I’ll just put it here. [Sound of something setting down.] Then I light the incense. Then it’ll go to where Má is.
So today, at this moment in time, as a 46-year-old woman, grief is a part of my every day, and I have befriended grief, and it is just as meaningful to me as joy and peace.
And my name, Phuong, means going in the right direction. And so I feel like I carry my name with a lot of honor, ’cause Má and Bá gave me that name. And I feel like, through their effort, they did put our family on a path that was meaningful and right.
So that’s what it looks like, and it brings me a lot of comfort.
[Sound of monks chanting.]
‘I have befriended grief’: A daughter finds clarity and direction
Phuong Palafox wrote the children’s book “Buoy” about her family’s journey from Vietnam to Hong Kong. Next to the book is a tape measure that belonged to her late mother, and Phuong holds crocheted ice skates her mom made.
MELISSA NGUYEN / NEXTGENRADIO
Phuong Palafox’s mother was a natural storyteller. When her mother died of cancer 20 years ago, Phuong took up the mantle of storytelling. She shares stories so her mom can live on.
Phuong is an educator, mother of three, Vietnamese refugee and author. Her debut children’s book, “Buoy,” was borne of her grief, and grief is the lens through which she views the world.
Phuong stands in front of the Vietnamese ancestor altar in her home on Aug. 25, 2025.
MELISSA NGUYEN / NEXTGENRADIO
“So today, at this moment in time, as a 46-year-old woman, grief is a part of my every day. And I have befriended grief, and it is just as meaningful to me as joy and peace,” Phuong said. “And I think when you are grieving, the acknowledgement that it just exists and that it’s okay helps move you forward in this trajectory that I think brings levity … Grief keeps me steadied. And in that steadiness, it brings lightness to my days.”
In “Buoy,” she chronicled her family’s escape by boat from Vietnam during the war in 1978 – her mother pregnant with Phuong during the harrowing journey. It’s the family story she tells most often and credits as buoying all of her accomplishments in life.
Phuong points at her mother in a black-and-white staff picture from a school in Vietnam where her mother was a teacher.
MELISSA NGUYEN / NEXTGENRADIO
In 2017, as Phuong was hitting “submit” on her book manuscript, a window popped up with her mother’s signature attached. This was the moment she knew her mother was still alongside her for all Phuong’s milestones and achievements.
“She does exist here, just not here on Earth. And that brings me a lot of comfort,” Phuong said. “I think it’s so telling that it was the day that I submitted this book, and she was the biggest person who was like, ‘Oh, Giỏi Giỏi quá,’ you did such a good job. And so, it meant a lot.”
Her fireplace mantle showcases a makeshift altar for the Vietnamese cultural practice of cúng: lighting incense and making food offerings to those who have died with the belief that these offerings – and anything else shared, such as good news, worries or hopes – will be sent to the deceased.
On an afternoon in August, Phuong hit play on a black music box. Rhythmic chanting from a Buddhist temple played softly as she lit three sticks of incense, smoke rising in swirls.
“I know to light three incense [sticks], but I don’t know why,” she said. “I know to bow three times, but I don’t know why. The people who would teach me these things aren’t here to teach me.”
Lit incense sits on the Vietnamese ancestor altar in Phuong’s home. An illustration of the first page of “Buoy” sits on the altar next to red Thai peppers from her garden.
MELISSA NGUYEN / NEXTGENRADIO
In “Buoy,” during her family’s perilous journey across the sea, she writes of how her mother told her a whale helped correct the boat as it began capsizing. It’s exactly this magical suspension of disbelief that helped her embrace her grief.
“I had this image that popped into my head … I cry and I cry, and I cry and then I fill up like these tears are collecting through all of these years that I’ve had without her in my earthly plane,” Phuong said. “And then it becomes this stream, and then it goes back into the ocean, which is the South China Sea that kept my Má and Bá safe as we were making that journey.”
Phuong dedicated the book to her parents. The first page reads: “Buoy, written by Me. Má and Bá these words were written to honor our journey. We have arrived and it’s beautiful.”
“My name Phuong means going in the right direction [in Vietnamese],” she said. “And so I feel like I carry my name with a lot of honor because Má and Bá gave me that name. And I feel, through their effort, they did put our family on a path that was meaningful and right.”
PHOTO: MELISSA NGUYEN / NEXTGENRADIO
GRAPHIC: MADELEINE KING / NEXTGENRADIO