Making It Home
From Vietnam to New Orleans
Students respond to themes inspired by HNOC’s exhibition Making It Home: From Vietnam to New Orleans, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
About
In conjunction with the exhibition Making It Home: From Vietnam to New Orleans, HNOC’s 2025 Student Writing Contest asked elementary, middle, and high school students to reflect on forced migrations—past, present, or imagined. Young writers drew on their own family stories, current events, and historical knowledge in essays that are imaginative, rich, and moving. Read the winning entries, chosen from over 500 submissions, below.
Elementary School Winners
First Place
“My Grandma” by Trinian Faulkner
4th grade, St. Joseph Catholic School, Jefferson County, AL
“When my grandma’s family arrived in South Vietnam, they found a new home to live in. She later got married and had six kids. She was happy with her six kids and her husband and life seemed good. Since North Vietnam wanted to take over South Vietnam too, they launched a surprise attack called the Tet Offensive in the towns close by where my grandma lived. My grandma’s husband had to go to war to fight North Vietnam. My grandma had to raise six kids alone while her husband was at war. Two of her babies died and she had to bury them alone.”
Second Place
“What Makes It Home” by Ada Knoll
5th grade, Homeschool, New Orleans, LA
“Though it can be, home doesn’t have to be a place. Home is a feeling. Homes include comfort, love and happiness. Home is always brought with, like how a turtle brings his shell. Sometimes home is brought through memories in handheld objects and necessities that we feel we must bring with us because love and happiness radiate through them. But other times we just need family and company, and love is brought through each other.”
Third Place
“Leaving Honduras” by Nicolle Mendoza
5th grade, Terrytown Elementary, Terrytown, LA
“My dad came here [to America] first. The day before he left, I wrote a letter to him wishing him luck in his trip and wishing that nothing bad happens and that I hope he gets to his destination safely. I prayed all month for him. I really love him, and he loves me too. He brought this letter with him in his wallet; every time he had time to do something, he read that letter. He took it with him and was careful with it. He suffered a lot coming here but he made it. He didn't bring a lot of things with him—just money, clothing, and my letter.”
Honorable Mention
“The Heroic Escape” by Alex Jackson
4th grade, Academy of the Sacred Heart, New Orleans, LA
“When my grandfather was still in the war, my grandmother was working in her parents’ French bakery in Vietnam. She was an amazing pastry chef, at the young age of 18, known for making the most realistic edible flowers. To her, leaving Vietnam meant leaving all of this behind, although she later continued her career in baking and appeared in newspapers in America. She sadly could not bring her parents when fleeing, but her son, siblings, and husband were able to come aboard the ship that led thousands of Vietnamese to safety to the land of the free.”
Middle School Winners
First Place
“My Grandfather’s Journey to America” by Adeline Maldonado
6th grade, Willow School, New Orleans, LA
“Henry gazed out the window, giddy with excitement. They were really doing it. They were moving to New York City! Where Coney Island was! I’m gonna ride all the rides when we get there, he thought. I still can’t believe this is happening! Just one month ago, they had been living peacefully in Uruguay. Well … not so peacefully. Uruguay had gone from being a nice little country in South America to the top country of terrorism while they were living there.”
Second Place
“Moving” by Sawyer Uhlman
6th grade, Willow School, New Orleans, LA
“Change is hard. Change means different. That’s how life is. When I was finishing kindergarten, my family made a huge change. It wasn’t a change we made by choice. My dad lost his job because the head baseball coach at the University of Oregon got fired, which meant we all had to move. I didn’t really think much about it; I thought it wasn't going to be a big deal. But as we got closer to moving time, I heard my parents talking about it and moving somewhere new started to feel a little scary. Our family of five was about to move over halfway across the country from Oregon to New Orleans and start all over again.”
Third Place
“Fleeing Theu Freedom” by Becket Faulkner
7th grade, St. Joseph Catholic School, Jefferson County, AL
“[My grandmother] wanted to help the South Vietnamese Army in any way possible, so she and some other women found loose wire and rolled it in bundles to give to soldiers to make bombs. As North Vietnam was advancing closer to her town, she and others were always one town ahead of them, trying to flee. When walking through different towns, my grandma would pick up grenades she would see on the streets and throw them out of the way of people.”
Honorable Mention
“The Stories and Cultures of The Melting Pot” by Braden Fox
8th grade, Brother Martin High School, New Orleans, LA
“In the late 1750s, the British, engaged in the French and Indian War, evicted the Acadians from Nova Scotia for refusing to pledge allegiance to England. The Acadians initially had nowhere to go, but they survived by reaching the East Coast, the Caribbean, and especially the swamps of Louisiana. One of my distant relatives was among the first French immigrants from France to Nova Scotia. A century later, her descendants were some of the first Acadians forced out. Despite enduring immeasurable hardship, they persevered to create a better life for their children, allowing me to be here today.”
High School Winners
First Place
Untitled by Nina Le
11th grade, Benjamin Franklin High School, New Orleans, LA
“I think my family tries to understand each other, but they do not understand what it is like to be on the other side of things. Emotional vulnerability is not popular within my family, or really any Vietnamese one. This is what war does. It causes a strange feeling of resentment but sadness. War separates us, but there are two different ones inside of us. I have to remind myself that when I start to think it is the end, it is really just another beginning. To be an immigrant is to be proud. To be an immigrant is to exist within a unique microcosm. To be an immigrant is to persevere. Being an immigrant is an inexplicable, indelible art.”
Second Place
“Six Things I Know About the Last Time I Evacuated” by Theo Santanilla
11th grade, Willow School, New Orleans, LA
“We were professional evacuees, my family. Every couple of years a familiar name rolled through, and every couple of years we found ourselves elsewhere. Ocean Springs for Ida, Baton Rouge for Isaac, San Francisco for Katrina. Holed up in offices and guest rooms and dens, armed with nonperishables, the little red radio, and the good flashlight, we used to wait out whatever tried to drown New Orleans for good. Nothing had worked, although everything seemed to come close.“
Third Place
“Diary 1: Leaving” by Jennifer Dang
9th grade, Morrow High School, Ellenwood, GA
“A home is supposed to hold you, not trap you. Some cages don't have bars. Some prisons feel like home.
As the translucent stained window of my old life blurred into my memory, I finally understood that nothing would ever be the same. The debris of war stretched so far that it became the ground we walked on. Routinely, men armed with guns and false promises from the government would run past, wounded and crying out for their mothers. At the time, I didn’t understand. Later, I learned this was war.”
Honorable Mention
“A Smile that was Once Hers” by Emma Pham
11th grade, Benjamin Franklin High School, New Orleans, LA
“Every morning, I wake up and look in the mirror; I’m looking at myself, but looking back at me is my grandmother. Maybe I am who she used to look like, before the war, before her life completely changed, before her unending sacrifices. The woman who fought for the life I have now, who would smile up at me every Sunday morning as I walked down her staircase, who inspires strength in every step I take and love in every choice I make. I used to miss her smile, but now I’ve realized that I shouldn’t miss it because it’s not gone, it’s just on a different face. I share her legacy as much as I benefit from her gifts.”
Student Writing Contest
Learn about HNOC’s annual student writing contest and read winning submissions from previous years.
All Contest Years
Read winning selections from previous contest years, below.
2020 Student Writing Contest: Agents of Change
Student writers reflect on experiences that have inspired them to create change, in response to HNOC’s NOLA Resistance Project.
2021 Student Writing Contest: Poetic Dialogue
Students submit works of poetry and prose in response to HNOC’s book Afro-Creole Poetry in French from Louisiana’s Radical Civil War-Era Newspapers.
2022 Student Writing Contest: “It’s Mardi Gras Morning!”
Students craft imaginative short stories that explore Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans.
2023 Student Writing Contest: A Letter to a Suffragette
Students write letters to New Orleans civil rights leader Sylvanie Williams about the state of equality in America today.
2024 Student Writing Contest: Tell Us Who They Are
Students pick up the pen where our curators left off and imagine details about the unknown portraits featured in HNOC's 2024 exhibition Unknown Sitters.
2025 Student Writing Contest: “Making It Home”
Students respond to themes inspired by HNOC’s exhibition Making It Home: From Vietnam to New Orleans, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
2026 Student Writing Contest: “The Trail They Blazed”
Students address important civil rights issues facing America today and in the future, inspired by the HNOC exhibition The Trail They Blazed.
More on the Vietnamese Experience
Making It Home: From Vietnam to New Orleans
Elders of the Vietnamese community describe their journey to a new country 50 years ago.
Viet Chronicle
An oral history project that documents New Orleans’s Vietnamese American community, which continues to profoundly influence the city and its culture.
Coming to New Orleans, Part V
Two disasters, the fall of Saigon and Hurricane Katrina, spurred the two largest waves of immigrants to New Orleans in recent history.
‘We Survived’: A Secret Escape From Vietnam
Coproduced with New Orleans Public Radio, WWNO 89.9 FM, listen to HNOC's New Orleans Life Story project interview with Kiem Do, former Deputy Chief of Staff for the Republic of Vietnam Navy, who led a massive—and secret—evacuation effort to bring members of the navy and their families to safety.
Subscribe to Our Education Newsletter
