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Amanda Nguyen with Thanh Tân
Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope
Note: Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
A livestream of this event will also be available.
Content Note: This discussion may explore themes of resilience, justice, and advocacy, including references to experiences of sexual assault and healing.
Live Captioning will be available for this event.
In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard.
Facing these unfathomable circumstances at odds with her goal to join NASA after graduation, Nguyen decided to delay legal action and file her rape kit under “Jane Doe.” She would then learn the harsh and limiting reality of her state’s legislation – anonymous kits were only held for six months before being destroyed, thus eliminating a survivor’s options for future legal action. This prompted Nguyen to pursue a cause larger than herself and in lieu of surrendering to a law that restricted her paths forward, she began to fight for change for survivors everywhere.
Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope combines Nguyen’s growth as an activist – eventually resulting in Congress unanimously passing of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016 – with a dramatized imagined journey through chapters of Nguyen’s personal healing throughout her life. Told through the lenses of significant ages in her own story – five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty – Nguyen’s informed introspection guides her younger selves and readers alike on her path toward recovery.
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Building resilience from not only her rape, but from childhood trauma and turmoil as well, Nguyen’s work aims to highlight hope, change, and the courage to break new ground. Saving Five blends deeply personal memoir with skilled storytelling to show that the paths forward can be crafted by healing through action and with ambitious hands prepared to grab hold of necessary change.
Amanda Nguyen is an author, astronaut, and activist focusing on the intersection of race and gender. She is the founder and CEO of Rise, a civil rights organization committed to pushing legislation to protect the rights of sexual assault survivors, and was a prominent voice in the Stop Asian Hate movement. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and was named a Time Woman of the Year in 2022. She will become the first Vietnamese woman to go to space when she flies on an upcoming Blue Origin launch on the New Shepard rocket.
Thanh Tân is an award-winning multimedia storyteller, journalist, and filmmaker based in Seattle. Over the past two decades, her work has spanned radio, television, print, and digital platforms, with contributions to The New York Times, This American Life, The Seattle Times, KUOW, and PBS. She has reported on issues ranging from politics and public health to refugee experiences and social justice, earning national recognition, including two Sigma Delta Chi awards and multiple regional Emmys.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle.
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