Crappiest Refugee

"One thing I really regret is that I can't hold a grown-up, intellectual, spiritual conversation in my own language, but I can order a meal in Vietnamese with an Australian accent. So embarrassment.

What I regret most...is that I can't squat. Maybe the Minister of Culture was right and I am a traitor to my own people because I can't speak the language properly and I can't squat.

Bad Asian all round."

- Hung Le

"I carry you on my back, climb boats, keep you alive with noodle juice, your mum has to go to work ironing clothes in a factory while getting abused and yelled at by people she can't understand and can't hear. Your relatives are back in Vietnam rotting in jail or living in poverty and you become the first Asian ever to be kicked out of Melbourne University?"

- Hung Le's dad

On the last day of the Vietnam War, nine-year-old Hung jumped on a leaking prawn trawler on the Saigon River, somehow cheating death to become one of the first Vietnamese boat people to arrive in Australia, a land where a young man's potential is limited only by his imagination - that is unless you're Hung Le.

Defying the stereotype, Hung wasn't a math or computer whizz, had no doctoring or lawyering abilities, spoke Vietnamese with an Australian accent, and couldn't even play the violin. But what he was blessed with was funny bones, and through winning Red Faces on Hey Hey It's Saturday, he managed to make an international career playing the violin out of tune.

The Crappiest Refugee is a hilarious and endearing memoir about a boat person who never found his land legs, but who has always seen the funny side.