now granted they will not succeed in dividing us about not succeeding taking the people off the streets because we're tired of just dictatorship. taking the stand global news that matters d. double made. me feel the fear of everybody in the worries and and on the day that we read of course my parents couldn't tell us that we were fleeing. we never thought we would survive the trip.

we went to montreal to meet kim 20 and despite the chilly weather we couldn't have wished for a while mobile come. on the russia has been living in canada for over 40 years now and much you claim to know very strong her own experiences and memories. and you were 10 when your family fled saigon and then will remember anything what happened in saigon was how was your life that when i left i was old enough to remember and then all that not all the enough to understand everything so when you sit down to write you can you have the freedom to reinvent you know the stories between the little dots that you have of the memories but. this saw vivid images

and as children i think you have a very tunnel vision of things right and so i remember the smell the kitchen the women how they would dress have they moved around and then i also have images of those tanks coming into town we only feel the fear of everybody and the worries and and on the day that we fled of course my parents couldn't tell us that we were fleeing right but the tension was so dance that you can you know you know without anybody say anything and to have certainly all of the at the hopes in the house to warmer you know to whisper they never talk anymore. came to his childhood in saigon ended in 1975 when south viet nam fell to the communist north after 20 years the home city was renamed the main city. the

1500000 people who fled across the south china sea would dubbed the boat people hundreds of thousands died the despair that drove the mom board and the survivors relief are hard to imagine. we never thought we would survive the boat trip so already when we arrived in malaysia. it was a bonus you know a 2nd chance to life and as we got off the boat and the boat broke up 15 minutes after we got off so when you standing on the beach and you see that boat break up. you have no more complaint if everything goes after that. kim and her family lived in a refugee camp in malaysia until her parents secured entry to canada the start of a new life today she's one of the country's most celebrated authors her 3 best selling novels have been translated into 25 languages. it must have been a clash of cultures when you came to canada what was your most difficult challenge

we have arrived not from our home we arrive from a refrigerator can't so basically do you we became subhuman you know we lived in places that were not places and under citizenship we were stateless right and so you we arrived here and we couldn't compare with anything else we compare with 0 rights or anything after 0 was great and the beauty was that we arrived in a small city where my impression was the horsey was there waiting for us someone picked me up and held me in of his arms or her arms everybody was being held and that was the 1st moment where we we came to me it was not 2 years later with the paperwork and all that we became canadian on that 1st moment because you form what you fall in love with these people who didn't hesitate to pick up

a dirty refugee and i mean dirty you know we had infection everywhere we had wise and how hair and and even today you know i wonder if i would pick up myself when i was 10 when i arrived here kim trees family had been affluent and well educated her parents valued tradition as refugees they lost everything. going to canada was a decline for your parents for your father was a philosopher provide. and both of your parents worked in factories in kenya. did save see their stay the start of their new life in kenya as it would in richmond as a loss because my parents could already speak french and english that they couldn't follow courses and have a salary from the government for learning their language the hotel where we were we landed where we stay the director. gave him

a job to clean the stairs to the emergency stairs meaning he didn't need anybody he created this job for my dad and i still remember my dad gathering all of us in the room and he said and he started a sentence by saying we're small to the director he could have just given that money but he wanted to create a job so that that 1st job would lead to another job and also to give us back our dignity and so giving is a very difficult gesture and him exactly how to give that with dignity you know that not only a means of living in terms of money but dignity and dignity is everything from my own wants a view you have that back to you of being consider as a full human person. you can do anything. so how can we complain.

kim and her 2 brothers didn't just have to learn english and french upon arriving in quebec i had to learn how to trust again. i didn't have a voice you know vietnam felt really into silence after the end of the war in 75 you could no longer speak freely or as much as possible to last beat so that you don't make your the people around you bad information because we were all forced to the nouns any. jesters accents which were considered to be anti-revolutionary are all as you know you know in the common as contexts and so as much as possible that you don't you no longer speak you no longer you try not to hear it try not to see and so that's how i moved it to mean years after the end of the war and before that because i was such

a shy kid i didn't speak at all or of very very little all i did was crying i was very good at crying canada and our space if i could bear because we arrived here in quebec and that's why french is now my 2nd mother tongue i would say. gave me a voice a voice that i didn't know that i had and that i was now looking for. with this voice came to me become an author eventually her 1st book group was published in french in 2009 the novel is full of memories of her childhood in saigon of the city smells and food of being forced to flee and the refugee camps the language remains poetic even when dealing with despair. if a choreographer had been underneath the plastic sheet on a rainy day or night he would certainly have reproduced the same $25.00 people shortened to all on their feast each holding

a tin can to collect the water the dripped off the roof sometimes in torrents sometimes drop by drop if the musician had been there he would have heard the orchestration of all that water striking the sides of the tins if a filmmaker had been there he would have captured the beauty of the silent and spontaneous complicity between richard people but there was only us standing on the floor that was slowly sinking into the clay. finally the family was to. needed to immigrate to canada a new life between 2 cultures came to a 2nd book man was published in 2013 it tells the story of a woman from viet nam who meets her great love in canada similar to the author herself who has 2 children with her canadian husband and next novel is also somewhat autobiographical published in 2016 its protagonist is

a vietnamese woman living in exile in canada who gets relocated to hanoi for work. i have a chance to go back to work as a lawyer i was sent to vietnam on a project and that that's when i had the chance to meet vietnam again you know to learn to know about vietnam as an adult and more more than that not only as an adult but as a comedian but hung noise was not cells were numb it was enemy islam and yes it was a different country. to me hanoi words totally unknown and i think you know i would have adopted at that to myself better in germany then in hanoi simply because i thought i knew hanoi was germany i accept but i don't know anything or gonna learn the language i'm going to learn the culture was how i went in as of yet that means it was totally me stabilized because it was not the

same vietnam that i had in mind but i have discovered you know. so many stories that all of us there were no winners and we were all victims of a war for from one side or the other and that's why today i would never call the north of vietnam as the enemy land which are to victims you know of the same war standing on both sides of the fences but it's the same it's the same suffering it was the same thing. as it was the same last nobody won in a war. i don't think so. millions died in that war which also drove over one and a half 1000000 people to flee their home country 60000 vietnamese went to canada in the 1970 s. alone where they received a warm welcome. and when in 2015 the world was asked to grant asylum to syrians

canada once again opened its doors prime minister justin trudeau even came to greet the 1st syrian refugees but there isn't a phobia in canada to him 20 hopes her own story could help counter anti immigrant sentiment but when you came to canada your received a warm welcome this what about today's canada it's not recess you know when we left vietnam the international community community was waiting for us. that everybody was opening their arms in and taking us in today is not the same. it's not the same situation and that's why i just want to remind all of us that we have all really been so generous and so good we have this in the us we are capable of this goodness we can be great which is forget sometimes. canada's hospitality it's breathtaking scenery can make us forget the darkest chapters of this country's history it's

banning of the cultural practices and languages of its indigenous peoples the so-called 1st nations even in the 1990 s. it was still being relocated repressed and disenfranchised they continue to suffer the economic and psychological consequences to this day only now is the state taking responsibility for those terrible acts. we always forget that they were here before all of us but in books in images very often we have one. one portrait of the typical commune but today canada and specially canada set a new country. there so they have been to many many layers of of migration of people coming in. so yeah i think we're malty color multicultural multi you know the we have that kind of country we live together in order to live

well together we need to know each other before we can love each other right so if we don't know the story of our 1st nations then we will never be able to connect and live together and saw their stories have to be told we asked canadians need to know it's our responsibility to know like a family we need to know our brothers and sisters and stories and lives and their love break up so it's all for so i think fought for our nation is is so important to have conversation and as you know as soon as we have the communication is broken and that's where the misunderstanding start and wore it you know and hatred right so we need to have this conversation. a conciliatory attitude means that kim tweets influence extends far beyond the literary world and she doesn't shy away from to be

one of her sons has autism the author says he has changed her perception and her writing. and i always think that i'm 10 years late because i arrived here at when i was 10 so i'm always running to catch up the 10 years that i have lost that i'm late on everybody else rationally i know that i am ok you know at the same pace than everybody but i don't know instinctually i'm always running and my son who's a test cannot go with that pace he goes. at his own wisdom and he forces me to slow down like he does you know like at his speed and so for him when he walks into a room it takes him time to examine the room and because of that i also have to stop and examine the room to understand why he prefers one room to the to the other is of the right is of the shape of the lamps is it the number of people is it the

the texture of the the so far or you know i have to analyze all of the senses and because of him at become sensorium i become aware of all the little details that i would have never seen if i was just me i would just go into the blue and then get out and then leave and would not have even seen that there was a sofa. came to return challenges into opportunities for optimism has helped to succeed and it seems both literary critics and the public are impressed in 2018 she was shortlisted for the alternative nobel literature prize. there are only a handful of canadian writers known worldwide as man world margaret atwood. michael and that maybe you where where do you see yourself in canadian literature i don't know. i i still don't see myself as

a writer because a writer has to be. mr they they think more you know and i don't think so what i only enjoy what you know what i am doing. to me it's such a privilege to sit down and find the right word that's it i can spend the whole day just to try to find one word and that would be an accomplishment for me and so i'm not i don't know a writer has to be like this and i don't know in my ever reach him to me isn't. troubled by what others think of her she enjoys trying out new things she's been a lawyer and a restaurant and become a bestselling novelist she's even written a cookbook which she also presented in berlin with a cooking class. this is great cuisine just things for our. well there was more than roasted flour there were vietnamese styled pork meatballs

. and the air was thick with the smell of spices roasted nuts and kim to ace delicious homemade sources. if she didn't just make it look easy it really was easy and the results were delicious kim 20 has received several awards for her cookbook which also contains stories from her family life in class 2 she showed how cooking and eating can bring people together there was chatter and laughter and occasionally explanations from kim to a vietnamese food also plays a large role in her novels where it's used to seduce to comfort and to celebrate she says the vietnamese people eating is about much more than sustenance it's an attitude to life as she learned in her early childhood in saigon. my cousin's parents would base their choice of what to buy on the color of the fruit or the perfume of

a spice or simply according to the whim of the moment the food they brought home was always surrounded by a festive aura a sense of decadence and thrill they didn't fresh over the empty rice china kitchen or the palms we were supposed to learn by heart they just wanted us to stuff ourselves on mangoes to bite into fruition make the juice heard our spinning around and around like tops to the music of the doors tar michel sardou the beatles or cat stevens. you write that you like your family rely on foot to express your feet. things what do you cook for french was really suffering and what do you cook when you're happy oh i think the same. it's the fresh rolls because in vietnamese food is really. particular for its. aromas we eat a lot of fresh herbs just really yeah you don't cook before they just put on the

table and for the fresh rolls you put the leaves in the role of just really you have maybe 6 or 7 kinds of different kinds in there so every bite is different the 1st the 1st by the 1st perfume perfume that you you have is at the level of the lips right and then when you chew you have a different cocktail and when you swallow you have a whole opening up and everybody is different because you can never have this the same intensity in each leaf and the same amount of leaves and all so each lie is an experience right at the end it's like it's almost like a garden in your mouth so if you sat that will make you happy and if you're happy then you explore if you float. or was in a muse for just canadian food and have a similar effect not yes yes i know that you will laugh but it's called but they

should know what and that's a layer of memes meant to be corn and mashed potatoes it seems very simple but it's so cool for doing it something i hear a lot of over and over and it's quite heavy because it was invented for the people who work on the railroad when you eat that you know use you stay strong for a long time so i don't need that much strength from food so but when i eat. shinola it's always like a huge piece i can never stop. came to me it is very much at home in canada but vietnam is also an integral part of her . if you ask me if i was a canadian all of vietnamese i would say i am both i don't have to choose in the same so-called you know 30 percent of your me 70 no i'm 100 percent on both

especially because i would say i've eaten too much cheese and bacon now i'm big enough to sit on 2 chairs and not in the crack of the chairs you know and so i would say that i understand the immigrant. poster position because i have been one but i have also become of fully to me when you know i i don't know i consider myself a very often i forget that you can tell that i'm not a white person. on the readings of your books if be publicly about your past or what do you experience as a refugee does your success help you to raise awareness about the reality of free we have a referee trees i hope i hope i have had the chance to be invited to many events where i speak and and i'm always you know happy when there's one person in the room who would come up to me and say you've changed my view on the refrigerator you know

on how we see with your cheese and that's the whole purpose you know of yeah of me speaking because very you know when do you give a microphone to a refreshing never very rarely or when we talk about immigrants or refrigerate we talk as a about them as a group there's no story there's no name there's no age there's nothing right there's one history to each of them it's like a big group. as a human person you know our brain we cannot relate to a whole group we have to relate to one person at a time so i guess i am that person that you know who has the microphone and so i try to speak for all of us. i hope that the way you know the job fairly well. so yeah i tried to take responsibility

basically of this privilege to have a chip you where i can speak about that experience life in saigon flight from viet nam her marriage to a canadian came to his personal experience to serve as a basis for characters in all 3 of her novels can you imagine to write a novel that has no connection to your personal life. right now i can't i have so much to say still about the people that i've met and really my only objective when i write is to share what i find beautiful and this humans be gentle around me and so i don't even have enough time to write about the things i know so . maybe once the bear i finish that then our will imagine you know science science fiction on some different planets but right now just the people around me

are almost already so fascinating and amazing i don't need to go anywhere really and so maybe that's why it's so close to me you've changed your profession so often is there any challenge you still want to achieve i hope i hope there are more out there and there are many things i haven't done i'm so yes absolutely i've just last friday i've just accepted. a mandate that was way beyond my you know ability. yes and it was outside of my comfort zone but i accepted it for that very reason that i will learn something so absolutely yes when my children i would love to be an astronaut. but i think i'm too old back. oh yeah oh all model i think i'm too short i'll never get to be your model. thank you

very much it wasn't my pleasure it was a better candidate but. it seems unlikely that kim tree will run out of material anytime soon and through her storytelling she will continue to act as a force for office.

it's been 50 years since the. song over the last tough century the moon has gone slowly launching folk music. into combining the inspiration for the count. lescott. congress comes. in 15 minutes on d w.

i'm scared that the a war that's hard and in the end is a me you're not allowed to stay here anymore we will send you back. are you familiar with this. with the smugglers would lie and say. what's your story ready ready. i'm when i was a women especially in victims of violence. take part and send us your story we are trying in all it is to understand this new culture. for you are not a visitor nothing yet you want to become a citizen. in so migrants your platform for reliable information.

robots they're still in the development phase but what's going to happen when they grow out of. will schumann's and missions in spain able to peacefully co-exist or are we on the verge of a run of the lips if we just bumble into this totally unprepared with a resonance i am using to think about what could go wrong then let's face it it's probably going to be the biggest mistake in human history. artificial intelligence is now spreading through our society is this the beginning of a golden digital. world lucy subjected to continuous state surveillance. ai will experts be able to agree on the guidelines or will this technology create a deadly new autonomous weapon systems. school robot collapse starts aug 14th on d. w.

. played. place. blame. this is d w news live from berlin hong kong police crackdown on democracy protesters you're looking at live pictures now as police moved in to clear out the crowds in those protesters were marching against the organized gangs who was attacked earlier demonstrations will go to our correspondent in hong kong and there are similar scenes.