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How can I speak in 10 minutes
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about the bonds of women over three generations,
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about how the astonishing strength of those bonds
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took hold in the life
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of a four-year-old girl
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huddled with her young sister,
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her mother and her grandmother
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for five days and nights
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in a small boat in the China Sea
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more than 30 years ago,
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bonds that took hold in the life of that small girl
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and never let go --
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that small girl now living in San Francisco
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and speaking to you today?
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This is not a finished story.
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It is a jigsaw puzzle still being put together.
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Let me tell you about some of the pieces.
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Imagine the first piece:
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a man burning his life's work.
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He is a poet, a playwright,
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a man whose whole life
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had been balanced on the single hope
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of his country's unity and freedom.
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Imagine him as the communists enter Saigon,
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confronting the fact
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that his life had been a complete waste.
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Words, for so long his friends, now mocked him.
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He retreated into silence.
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He died broken by history.
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He is my grandfather.
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I never knew him in real life.
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But our lives are much more than our memories.
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My grandmother never let me forget his life.
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My duty was not to allow it to have been in vain,
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and my lesson was to learn
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that, yes, history tried to crush us,
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but we endured.
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The next piece of the jigsaw
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is of a boat in the early dawn
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slipping silently out to sea.
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My mother, Mai, was 18
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when her father died --
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already in an arranged marriage,
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already with two small girls.
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For her, life had distilled itself into one task:
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the escape of her family
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and a new life in Australia.
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It was inconceivable to her
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that she would not succeed.
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So after a four-year saga that defies fiction,
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a boat slipped out to sea
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disguised as a fishing vessel.
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All the adults knew the risks.
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The greatest fear was of pirates,
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rape and death.
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Like most adults on the boat,
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my mother carried a small bottle of poison.
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If we were captured, first my sister and I,
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then she and my grandmother would drink.
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My first memories are from the boat --
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the steady beat of the engine,
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the bow dipping into each wave,
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the vast and empty horizon.
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I don't remember the pirates who came many times,
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but were bluffed by the bravado
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of the men on our boat,
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or the engine dying
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and failing to start for six hours.
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But I do remember the lights on the oil rig
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off the Malaysian coast
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and the young man who collapsed and died,
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the journey's end too much for him,
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and the first apple I tasted,
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given to me by the men on the rig.
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No apple has ever tasted the same.
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After three months in a refugee camp,
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we landed in Melbourne.
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And the next piece of the jigsaw
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is about four women across three generations
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shaping a new life together.
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We settled in Footscray,
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a working-class suburb
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whose demographic is layers of immigrants.
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Unlike the settled middle-class suburbs,
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whose existence I was oblivious of,
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there was no sense of entitlement in Footscray.
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The smells from shop doors were from the rest of the world.
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And the snippets of halting English
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were exchanged between people
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who had one thing in common,
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they were starting again.
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My mother worked on farms,
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then on a car assembly line,
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working six days, double shifts.
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Somehow she found time to study English
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and gain IT qualifications.
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We were poor.
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All the dollars were allocated
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and extra tuition in English and mathematics
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was budgeted for
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regardless of what missed out,
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which was usually new clothes;
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they were always secondhand.
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Two pairs of stockings for school,
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each to hide the holes in the other.
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A school uniform down to the ankles,
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because it had to last for six years.
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And there were rare but searing chants
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of "slit-eye"
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and the occasional graffiti:
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"Asian, go home."
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Go home to where?
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Something stiffened inside me.
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There was a gathering of resolve
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and a quiet voice saying, "I will bypass you."
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My mother, my sister and I
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slept in the same bed.
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My mother was exhausted each night,
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but we told one another about our day
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and listened to the movements
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of my grandmother around the house.
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My mother suffered from nightmares
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all about the boat.
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And my job was to stay awake until her nightmares came
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so I could wake her.
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She opened a computer store
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then studied to be a beautician
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and opened another business.
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And the women came with their stories
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about men who could not make the transition,
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angry and inflexible,
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and troubled children caught between two worlds.
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Grants and sponsors were sought.
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Centers were established.
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I lived in parallel worlds.
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In one, I was the classic Asian student,
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relentless in the demands that I made on myself.
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In the other, I was enmeshed in lives that were precarious,
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tragically scarred by violence,
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drug abuse and isolation.
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But so many over the years were helped.
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And for that work, when I was a final year law student,
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I was chosen as the young Australian of the year.
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And I was catapulted
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from one piece of the jigsaw to another,
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and their edges didn't fit.
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Tan Le, anonymous Footscray resident,
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was now Tan Le, refugee and social activist,
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invited to speak in venues she had never heard of
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and into homes whose existence
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she could never have imagined.
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I didn't know the protocols.
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I didn't know how to use the cutlery.
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I didn't know how to talk about wine.
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I didn't know how to talk about anything.
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I wanted to retreat to the routines and comfort
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of life in an unsung suburb --
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a grandmother, a mother and two daughters
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ending each day as they had for almost 20 years,
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telling one another the story of their day
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and falling asleep,
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the three of us still in the same bed.
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I told my mother I couldn't do it.
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She reminded me that I was now the same age she had been
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when we boarded the boat.
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No had never been an option.
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"Just do it," she said,
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"and don't be what you're not."
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So I spoke out on youth unemployment and education
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and the neglect of the marginalized and the disenfranchised.
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And the more candidly I spoke,
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the more I was asked to speak.
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I met people from all walks of life,
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so many of them doing the thing they loved,
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living on the frontiers of possibility.
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And even though I finished my degree,
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I realized I could not settle into a career in law.
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There had to be another piece of the jigsaw.
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And I realized at the same time
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that it is okay to be an outsider,
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a recent arrival,
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new on the scene --
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and not just okay,
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but something to be thankful for,
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perhaps a gift from the boat.
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Because being an insider
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can so easily mean collapsing the horizons,
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can so easily mean
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accepting the presumptions of your province.
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I have stepped outside my comfort zone enough now
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to know that, yes, the world does fall apart,
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but not in the way that you fear.
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Possibilities that would not have been allowed
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were outrageously encouraged.
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There was an energy there,
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an implacable optimism,
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a strange mixture of humility and daring.
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So I followed my hunches.
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I gathered around me a small team of people
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for whom the label "It can't be done"
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was an irresistible challenge.
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For a year we were penniless.
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At the end of each day, I made a huge pot of soup
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which we all shared.
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We worked well into each night.
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Most of our ideas were crazy,
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but a few were brilliant,
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and we broke through.
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I made the decision to move to the U.S.
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after only one trip.
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My hunches again.
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Three months later I had relocated,
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and the adventure has continued.
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Before I close though,
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let me tell you about my grandmother.
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She grew up at a time
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when Confucianism was the social norm
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and the local Mandarin was the person who mattered.
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Life hadn't changed for centuries.
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Her father died soon after she was born.
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Her mother raised her alone.
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At 17 she became the second wife
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of a Mandarin whose mother beat her.
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With no support from her husband,
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she caused a sensation by taking him to court
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and prosecuting her own case,
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and a far greater sensation when she won.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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"It can't be done" was shown to be wrong.
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I was taking a shower in a hotel room in Sydney
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the moment she died
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600 miles away in Melbourne.
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I looked through the shower screen
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and saw her standing on the other side.
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I knew she had come to say goodbye.
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My mother phoned minutes later.
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A few days later,
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we went to a Buddhist temple in Footscray
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and sat around her casket.
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We told her stories
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and assured her that we were still with her.
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At midnight the monk came
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and told us he had to close the casket.
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My mother asked us to feel her hand.
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She asked the monk,
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"Why is it that her hand is so warm
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and the rest of her is so cold?"
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"Because you have been holding it since this morning," he said.
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"You have not let it go."
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If there is a sinew in our family,
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it runs through the women.
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Given who we were and how life had shaped us,
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we can now see
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that the men who might have come into our lives
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would have thwarted us.
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Defeat would have come too easily.
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Now I would like to have my own children,
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and I wonder about the boat.
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Who could ever wish it on their own?
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Yet I am afraid of privilege,
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of ease,
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of entitlement.
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Can I give them a bow in their lives,
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dipping bravely into each wave,
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the unperturbed and steady beat of the engine,
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the vast horizon
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that guarantees nothing?
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I don't know.
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But if I could give it
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and still see them safely through,
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I would.
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(Applause)
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Trevor Neilson: And also, Tan's mother is here today
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in the fourth or fifth row.
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(Applause)