Growing up in a poor, refugee family from Vietnam in a trailer park in Sacramento, Calif., I never thought my story mattered.
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| Toan and his grandmother in a refugee camp after fleeing Vietnam. |
I remember thinking, “Why would anybody care about a poor Asian kid?” Most of the successful people I saw on TV were white. Deep down inside, I thought it would be so cool to be on TV and be a voice for the voiceless, but in the early 80s, even Oprah wasn’t living her best life. She was navigating her way through the talk show world. I dreamed of running scripts to Lavar Burton on “Reading Rainbow.” He was one of the only black male TV show hosts I saw on TV.
It wasn’t until several mentors convinced me my story, my talent for connecting with people, mattered, that I started to realize my true American Dream.
