Comment je m’appelle ? (What’s My Name?)

In 1998, Marie-Claire d'Agonnier was a 28-year-old mother of two, living a quiet life with her husband and France. Then, one day, the facteur, her mailman, delivered a letter with an unusual stamp, the apple. All of a sudden, I saw that this letter was different. On the envelope, the table was American. In the envelope, there was a letter written by the mother. Marie-Claire didn't know anyone in America, and when she tried to read the letter, the mystery deepened. The letter was written in Vietnamese. Marie-Claire didn't know anyone who could read Vietnamese, but she remembered one Vietnamese man who worked in a photo store nearby, so she brought the letter to him. The man took the letter. He read it in silence. Then, he looked at it. He said to me, "It's a mother. She's looking for more than 20 years." Bienvenue and welcome to the Duolingo French podcast. I'm your host, Gauthain Boutoubele. Every episode, we bring you fascinating true stories to help you improve your French listening and gain new perspectives on the world. The storyteller will be using intermediate French, and I'll be timing in for context in English. If you miss something, you can always skip back and listen again. We also offer full transcripts at podcast.duolingo.com. Marie-Claire stared back at the shopkeeper. He had just told her her mother had been looking for her for more than 20 years. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. She was stunned. Though the letter came as a shock, Marie-Claire had known for some time that the man and woman who raised her, weren't her biological parents. At 10, I started to ask myself questions about my family. I went to school at the village. One day, another little girl told me, "You know, these are not very parents." Even though they were the unthinking words of a child, they rang true for Marie-Claire. The man she knew as her father was French and white, and the woman she knew as her mother was half Vietnamese. I knew that I was born in the center of Vietnam. In the war, I started to come to France when I was 6 years old. So I asked myself questions. I wrote them in my journal. One day, when Marie-Claire was about 14, her father read her journal, and the situation exploded. Her parents admitted that she was adopted. Even though Marie-Claire's adoptive parents claimed to have saved her, their relationship was never the same. Then, the relationship with my parents became very difficult. At 16, I went to the house and I was alone. Marie-Claire's adoptive mother died in 1992. In her adoptive father in 1994, when Marie-Claire was 24 years old, she was left to build her life with the little information they'd given her. When they died, I had nothing to watch. I wanted to forget this past that made me hurt. When Marie-Claire got back from the photography shop with that letter in her hand, she kept looking at the name the sender had called her, Hong. There was also a name at the bottom of the letter, Tian, her birth mother's name. There was a phone number below it. At the beginning, I didn't want to call this woman. I needed time, but my adoptive parents always said to me, "Your mother, you abandoned her. She was my dog." I didn't know if I wanted to talk to her. It took Marie-Claire two months to work up the courage to call. She finally dialed the number. She listened to the far away sound of the long-distance ringtone, then a woman with an elderly voice picked up. When my mother heard my voice, she began to cry. She asked me in Vietnam, "It's really you, Hong?" I replied, "Yes." Then she said, "Now I can finally die." Marie-Claire was shaken by her birth mother's emotion and by hearing the sound of her voice for the first time. But she also had so many questions. Tian told Marie-Claire that her father was a sergeant with a U.S. Air Force. They met when Tian was working at the American Air Base where he was stationed during the Vietnam War. After he returned to the U.S., Tian lost touch with him. Then she talked to me about my brother and sister. I learned that I had two of my brothers and three of my sisters in Vietnam. Beyond those half-brothers and half-sisters, Marie-Claire discovered that she also had a twin brother or brother Jumeau. She called her brother Jumeau. It's more than a brother. Then I wanted to know him and know where he was. I learned that he lived in the U.S., but he didn't have contact with our father. My mother and my brother didn't always know where my father lived. In 1991, Marie-Claire's twin brother and their mother had moved to the U.S. They had gone as part of a program for Vietnamese children of American service members. As she took all this in, Marie-Claire struggled with one question. I wanted to know why my mother had abandoned me. I wanted to understand why I was left in France with my adoptive parents. And why my brothers and sisters were staying in Vietnam. Her mother told Marie-Claire that she hadn't been abandoned or given up for adoption. According to Tian, Marie-Claire had been kidnapped. My mother told me her story. At the end, I was sad and in anger too. My mother was very poor. She had 8 children and she worked a lot. She couldn't keep all these children with her. Then she placed us in different places. Tian had worked as a maid for Marie-Claire's adoptive parents. A wealthy French couple lived in a big colonial house in Central Vietnam. They had developed a liking to Little Hung and offered to take her in. Tian accepted. She figured her daughter would be well-fed and Tian would still see her every day. One day, she arrived at the house to do the job. She wanted to see me, but the door was closed. The couple went to France without telling my mother. She took me with her. According to Tian, the couple left with Hung in April 1975. Five days before Saigon fell to the advancing Viet Cong troops. French citizens were being evacuated, and in the chaos of war, no one was checking children too closely. This was the war. There was no justice. No one defended the Vietnamian ordinary. But for the time being, I wanted to keep it. So I took my mother. Marie-Claire's adoptive parents had faked birth certificate, and they'd even gotten her birth date wrong by two years. The year she met her birth mother, she wasn't 28. She was 30 years old. Now that Tian had finally found her daughter, she wanted to see her as soon as possible. So, a few months later, Tian booked a flight from California to France. With Marie-Claire, we went to look for my mother at the airport of Lyon. When I saw her, I recognized her all the time. It was the only Asian woman. She was very small, but she walked with a lot of energy, I found her very nice. I went to her, I hug her and then nothing happened. Marie Claire had wondered for so long what it would feel like to finally meet her birth mother. But in the moment, she felt nothing, no emotion. It felt as if something inside her had just shut off. Tien told her daughter that she'd been trying to contact her for years. She'd gotten hold of the couple's address in France through a relative in Vietnam. Tien stayed with Marie Claire for nearly two weeks, sliding into her daily routine. She helped her cook meals and drop her boys off at school. Still, Marie Claire couldn't bring herself to fully trust this woman she had just met. At the end of her visit, my mother was sad. And she said, "I see that you're not the same." I replied, "It's not that. It's just that I don't know you." Though she was clearly disappointed, Tien insisted on coming to see Marie Claire again that Christmas. And she did. Eventually, Tien convinced her daughter to come visit her in California. "Party in California. It was difficult for me. I had my job. But two girls were still small. And I had to take care of them. I was waiting for the year 2004 to make the trip. I'm alone." Marie Claire had hoped to meet her twin brother during that trip, but he was on the road a lot, working to send money to his own wife and daughter back in Vietnam. "My mother lived in the house of a family in Vietnam. The day she took care of their children. The night she slept in a small room in their house." Marie Claire stayed with her mother in that bedroom. It only had one narrow twin bed, so Tien said she'd give the bed to Marie Claire, and she'd sleep on the floor. "I said, 'No, I can't let you sleep outside. I have to show you respect.' But she insisted. She was far away from the floor, and I was sitting on the bed. Marie Claire laid down on the bed and closed her eyes, but she couldn't sleep. Eventually, she slipped out of bed and quietly laid down on the floor next to her mother." "At the beginning, I didn't know how to touch her. But I think that my mother was waiting for this moment. She came close to me, and I took her in my arms. I felt her little body against me." In that moment, Marie Claire felt something shift. "I had the impression of letting her go. I would liberate deep feelings. In my life, it's because I was alone with my mother. In another country, I was not in France with my life. My responsibilities, my children. I felt free. At that moment, love was born." At the end of the trip, Marie Claire, a rather honk as she was beginning to call herself, didn't want to leave her mother. "I didn't want to go back to my normal life. I realized that something had been absolutely my life. When I took the plane to come back to France, I cried for all the travel. 12 hours." After that trip, Hong, as we'll call her from now on, was determined to make Tian part of her life and meet the rest of her family, even her father, if she could find him. But first, she decided to return to the place where her story had started. Vietnam. In 2005, Hong made her first trip to Vietnam. It was the first time she returned to her birth country, since being brought to France as a child. She went with her mother. Hong realized how poor, invulnerable her mother must have been. She understood her mother in a different way, and returned from Vietnam with a new sense of self. "I'm very proud of my mother. Her life was difficult, but she had a lot of courage. And she never stopped looking for me. Now that I know all this, many things have changed." Finally, in 2012, 12 years after she'd been reunited with her birth mother, Hong raised enough money to fund a trip to meet her twin brother in California. When we saw her at the airport, we hugged each other. It was wonderful. It's the best thing that happened to me since my mother found me. "Me and me, we're all together. Our life has come naturally. I had the impression that we had never been separated." Hong's long search for the pieces of her lost identity had taken her to California and Vietnam. It ended in 2018 at a cemetery in Georgia. After taking a DNA test, Hong had finally tracked down the name of her father, former U.S. Air Force Sergeant Edmund Lewandowski. I remember he was dead in 1996. But I met his sister and his son, my second brother. I went to the cemetery with my aunt. I put pink on her leg that I didn't know. I buried a mesh of my hair on the leg. I stayed in front, in silence, a long time. After this trip, Hong finally felt that she was offered a new beginning. She now proudly goes by the name that reflects her family's full heritage. Now, I'm called Hong Rui. Lewandowski Daugongy. Hong Daugongy is a hospital worker living near Lyon, France, with her husband and two sons. She's working on a boat about her experiences and is thankful to have her entire family in her life. Hong also wanted to give a special shout out to a distant cousin named Annette O'Brien who helped her track down her father. Thank you Annette. This story was produced by Lorena Galliet. We'd love to know what you thought of this episode. Send us an email with your feedback at [email protected]. And if you like this story, please share it. You can find the audio and a transcript of each episode at podcast.duelingo.com. You can also subscribe at Apple Podcasts or your favorite listening app so you never miss an episode. With over 300 million users, Duolingo is the world's leading language learning platform and the most downloaded education app in the world. Duolingo believes in making education free, fun, and accessible to everyone. To join, download the app today or find out more at Duolingo.com. This podcast is a production of Duolingo and Adon de Media. I'm your host, Mofen Poutouelle. A la prochaine!