Hiep Thi Le was born in 1971 one of seven children in Da Nang, Vietnam. At the tender age of eight, she and her younger sister stowed away on a fishing boat, believing their mother was aboard. It was a perilous journey which landed the sisters in the first of several refugee camps. Hiep's family was eventually reunited years later in Northern California. Once in the US, Hiep taught herself to read and write English. She was educated at Oakland...