My mom is Vietnamese and was around 15-16 during the Vietnam War. Our grandpa was the mayor of a small city along the middle of Vietnam and he opted to side with the South. This...did not end particularly well.
Background: My grandpa had 8 mistresses and owned one of the few mopeds in the city (hey ladies). My grandma largely ignored it as he never aired it out in public and she was pretty much the face of the family of 3 girls and 2 sons (one with polio). They were very wealthy and my mom told me they were the 2nd richest in the city. They had their own dog that my uncles really loved. My mom was actually trendsetter for her age group due to her being able to buy expensive US clothes. So our family was basically in one of those positions where we had all the power and money.
Once again, siding with the South was maybe not the best decision but the city leaned left despite the persecution of Buddhists by the Southern government (this was a largely Buddhist city).
After US troops pulled out, the city was overrun and my grandpa was put into jail. Luckily, he was well-liked by the citizens and could not be put to death any time soon.
Now, at the time, Vietnamese law(or the city's) declared that one parent had to have direct guardianship over the family and this law preceded many others. Women at the time were not respected as leaders and could not gain the type of income a man could. After several months of going from vast wealth to poverty, my grandmother decided it would be best to have a man lead the family. She dropped off my mom/aunts/uncles at another family member's house and drank a vial of poison. My grandpa was released soon after.
My grandpa gathered all the personal favors he could and was able to get on a boat to Hong Kong. This was actually a small raft where my mom witnessed several deaths due to lack of food and water. Eventually, they did arrive to Hong Kong and came to the US. It was a new start.
My mom became the bread-winner for the family as she was the oldest sibling as my grandfather was becoming too old for the jobs available to him (labor). She wound up in many different jobs going from being a waitress to being a pedicurist. She eventually married the son of a Vietnamese pig farmer from Ohio (those existed...I guess).
He was younger than her and was going to school to become an engineer. They ended up having two children while he was in school. First a boy, then a girl. The girl would cry all the time and my mom got fed up and hired a nanny. My mom used the extra time to open a nail salon business. It became extremely successful with multiple stores.
However, during this success and my family's newfound wealth, my dad began seeing younger women. He bought two houses for different mistresses and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from my mom who was raising middle schoolers at the time. The two were on the verge of divorce when my mom told my dad some news - she was pregnant. The divorce was put on hold and everything came together for a short while. They had a boy, and I personally think he was the best out of the three children.
After I was born, my parents got along again for a short while, but my dad was caught with another mistress. My mom divorced him and ran the family from then-on. He took all the money from the family and we just had my mom's nail salon business. However, it turns out my mom was an incredible business woman. We went from being poor to middle class during that time period (he stole a lot of money from us while they were together).
However, there was an incident when I was five. My older brother asked me if I wanted some slim jims because he was going out, and I said sure. He didn't come home that night. I didn't think much of that. He was 19 and never really came home on time so I went to sleep.
My uncle shook me awake, and I asked him if he came over to play pool. He seemed very shaken and told me I needed to get dressed along with my older sister.
I would walk into a hospital room and see my brother lying there. He had already passed. My mom was in tears.
I was confused, and I did not really know what to think. My grandpa walked past my mom and took my brother's necklace. It was gold and had a buddha on it encrusted with diamonds. He put it on me. I'm 19 now, and I have never taken it off. However, the story doesn't end there.
My mom was incredibly affected by this. He was her first son, and she absolutely loved him. One day, my dad came to visit, and I heard their argument. A lot of it was blame for my brother's death. The one phrase I distinctly remember was my dad saying "You bought him that damn car, it's your fault he's gone". My mom broke down and fled into her bedroom. My dad sat in the living room crying. He largely stayed out of my life from then on.
TLDR: My mom had to deal with her mom committing suicide to let her politically imprisoned father out of jail. Due to the Vietnam War, they went from wealth to poverty. Restarted in the US, and married a young man that would cheat on her multiple times and steal money from our family. A few years later lost her son to a car accident that her ex-husband would always blame her for.
There's a bit more, but I think there won't be too many readers and I'm a bit tired.