ByGandhinagar: In the opening moments of NPR’s “Inheriting,” a Vietnamese Air Force pilot’s songs echo with the weight of loss. Thuận Trương, who evacuated nearly 100 people to Thailand on the eve of Saigon’s fall, still composes melodies that mourn for a Vietnam that, in his mind, ceased to exist when communist forces took control. His son Bảo, however, yearns to embrace the Vietnam of today—a generational disconnect that crystallizes the podcast’s central theme: how historical events create ripples of discord and understanding through time, transforming family narratives in ways both subtle and profound.
Hosted by Emily Kwong, “Inheriting” positions itself as more than just another entry in identity-focused podcasts. Instead, it emerges as a careful excavation of what might be called the archaeology of family memory—how the sediments of history settle into the foundations of family life, creating layers that must be carefully brushed away to reveal the artifacts of understanding beneath.
The series’ strength lies in its intimate portrayal of conversations that feel almost too private to witness. In Long Beach, California, Victoria Uce grows up surrounded by love and support, while carrying the weight of knowing her father Bo’s devastating past. As a child, he was forced into the Khmer Rouge’s mobile youth brigade, participating in state-sponsored violence that tore Cambodia apart.
The episode reveals how Bo managed to transform himself from a young man trapped in cycles of violence to a father who created a sanctuary of safety for his daughter—the very thing that was stolen from him in his youth.
Perhaps most striking is the show’s ability to illuminate how historical trauma manifests in unexpected ways. Leah Bash, “an avid runner, a dog mom, a wife,” finds herself grappling with a heavy inheritance: both sides of her family were among the 125,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II.
Her father and his six siblings spent over three years behind barbed wire at Manzanar, California, and Crystal City, Texas. When Leah discovers her father’s struggles with panic attacks and confronts her own bipolar disorder diagnosis, she begins to question whether the shadows of those camp experiences might extend across generations, written not just in their stories, but in their very bodies.
The series doesn’t shy away from contemporary wounds either. In one of its most compelling episodes, we meet Shakeel Syed, a tireless activist within the South Asian community, who fought for Muslim civil liberties in the aftermath of 9/11.
His story reveals the often-invisible cost of community organizing—while he defended his community against FBI and LAPD targeting, his wife Saira Sayeed shouldered the burden of raising their four children alone. Their first on-air conversation about this period unveils the complex calculus of sacrifice that activist families must navigate.
What distinguishes “Inheriting” from similar ventures is its commitment to dismantling the monolithic conception of Asian American and Pacific Islander identity. This becomes particularly evident in Leialani Wihongi-Santos’s journey to understand her Chamorro heritage in Guam.
Raised with the narrative that America “saved” her island from Japanese occupation, she discovers a more complex truth about U.S. military presence—one that sometimes destroyed customs that had survived centuries of colonization. Her conversations with her grandfather, Joseph Aflleje-Santos, become a quest to reclaim a history that colonization had attempted to erase.
The podcast goes further in its examination of identity politics in a special episode featuring Sefa Aina, who served on President Barack Obama’s White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Through their discussion, Kwong and Aina expose how the very term “AAPI” can sometimes perpetuate the marginalization of Pacific Islander experiences, leading to misleading data sets and funding inequities.
The series also illuminates forgotten heroes of the civil rights movement. Nicole Salaver’s episode resurrects the legacy of her uncle, Patrick Salaver, a leader of the Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State University in the 1960s. His work helped establish ethnic studies programs nationwide and coined the term “Asian American,” yet his story remains largely unknown—a testament to the podcast’s mission of uncovering buried histories.
In its final episode, recorded live, “Inheriting” brings together its subjects—Bảo Trương, Shakeel Syed, Saira Sayeed, Leialani Wihongi-Santos, and Joseph Aflleje-Santos—to reflect on the very act of storytelling that has defined the series. It’s a meta-commentary that raises essential questions about the responsibility and complexity of narrating family histories, particularly those marked by trauma and displacement.
What emerges from these eight episodes is more than just a collection of family stories. It’s a meditation on memory itself—how it’s preserved, transmitted, and transformed across generations. The series suggests that inheritance is not just about genes or wealth, but about the stories we carry, the silences we maintain, and the questions we finally find the courage to ask.
Through these intimate family portraits, we glimpse something universal: the ongoing work of making peace with the histories we inherit and choosing which parts of that inheritance we wish to pass on. It reminds us that understanding our past—whether personal or collective—requires not just curiosity, but patience, courage, and a willingness to sit with uncomfortable truths.
