Holy Cross Graduate Returns to Native Vietnam After Fleeing 18 Years Ago

WORCESTER, Mass. – Olivia-Thao (Libby) Vo, Holy Cross Class of 2004, is among countless college seniors graduating this month. But the road she traveled to get here, and the road she’ll follow away from here, at least temporarily, is certainly a road less traveled.

Vo came to the United States from Vietnam when she was just four years old, after having spent two years in various refugee camps. Traveling with her parents and an aunt, the family settled first in Seattle, Washington, for two years, before moving to Worcester, where they have remained.

“My earliest childhood memories are of crowded rooms, powdered milk, and bunk beds. Although I was born in Da Nang, Vietnam, my family and I escaped when I was barely two. I do not remember much of the journey because as my mother tells me, I was drugged into a deep sleep, to prevent me from crying or making noise,” writes Vo in her personal narrative application essay for the Fulbright Fellowship.

Now, after nearly 18 years, she will be returning to her native Vietnam, on a prestigious Fulbright scholarship, to conduct fieldwork on the effects of children with congenital birth defects or developmental delays on Vietnamese family life. Currently tens of thousands of Vietnamese children are afflicted with congenital birth defects. Vo’s research will examine how Vietnamese parents, especially mothers, respond to and cope with their children’s disabilities.

While in Vietnam, Vo plans to spend time at the Friendship Village orphanage to examine how the presence of children with birth defects or developmental delays — possibly due to Agent Orange exposure — disrupts family life and balance in Vietnam.

“I want to show others how the mistakes of the past, such as Agent Orange, should not be repeated and it is with compassion that we must move forward into the future. While the atrocities of war are evident, there is futility in bitterness and peace reconciliation is possible,” she says.

Vo brings a unique perspective to her research, not only because of her Vietnamese roots, but also because she has a developmentally disabled younger brother, who she has helped care for.

Yet while her passion for this project seems inevitable, Vo says the idea developed only recently, under the guidance and encouragement of her Holy Cross professors.

The admiration is mutual. Ann Marie Leshkowich, a professor of anthropology, who spent the last semester guiding Vo through an independent reading course on contemporary Vietnam, says her exchanges with Vo were ones “in which the professor learned as much as, if not more than, her student.”

“Libby Vo is a true scholar whose creativity, intelligence and infectious curiosity are matched by a passion to understand viewpoints other than her own.”

In addition to conducting research, Vo plans to reunite with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. “I have never seen Vietnam, save for the colorful, glossy pages of National Geographic. I hope to rekindle relationships with my extended family that I have only known through scattered photos. Vietnam is a country that my family was fearful of and fled. I want to return to my birth country and discover it for myself and obtain in the process, a deeper understanding of myself — of who I am and where I came from.”

Following Commencement, Vo will visit local hospitals and institutions that care for disabled children, in order to have a point of comparison for her findings in Vietnam. She leaves for Da Nang in August.