Cuong Lu and Lisa Miller have a meaningful dialogue for Groundless Ground

LISA MILLER: I wanted to just start with a little bit of history. You were born in Vietnam, right?

CUONG LU: Yes, I was born during the war, 1968, the Vietnam War.

MILLER: I remember I was 10. Living in America during that time– the experience here was very awful. I don’t know if you want to say anything about that time?

LU: Yeah, in fact, I didn’t notice that I was born in a war because I didn’t know peace. I was born, and I saw people fighting, killing, and hurting each other– and I didn’t notice that I was born in a war. Until I came to Holland, and I kept fighting to survive… ready to fight with someone, and he said, ‘Cuong, we are friends, we don’t fight.’ I was 12 years old.

MILLER: 12. You had no idea what it was like to live without fighting.

LU: So when he said that, I almost cried, because for the first time, I understood about friendship. People who live together and they don’t fight or don’t hurt each other. I don’t know how to express that feeling, that moment of enlightenment. Then, from that moment, I understood that I was born in a war. And I also saw not only the fighting outside, between me and society, but also the fighting inside of me.

Listen to the full interview here.