“Writing Her Story” – New York Times
[Asian Pacific Fund board member] Thuy Vu left Vietnam in 1975 with her family, eventually settling in California. She is the host of “KQED Newsroom” on the PBS television station in San Francisco, and does occasional reporting for the program.
Q. Did you always want to be a broadcast journalist?
A. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a novelist. I stayed up well past bedtime and hid under the covers with a flashlight writing short stories. Fiction was a good escape for an immigrant kid whose reality was nothing like I’d known in Vietnam, or envisioned. We came from such modest means.
Q. When did you choose your profession?
A. I didn’t have a road map for my life. I decided to do what I enjoyed; I figured the rest would sort itself out. At U.C. Berkeley, where I majored in rhetoric, I worked for the campus newspaper. Then I gravitated to the college radio station. I liked the intimacy and immediacy of the aural medium. After college, I won a diversity fellowship from San Francisco’s KQED, the National Public Radio affiliate, to work there for one year as a reporter. I stayed four years, rising to news anchor.
[ssba]