S:7 E:28 From Broken to Brave with Amy M. Le: A Heart Warrior's Journey

How do you keep going when life gives you every reason to stop?

In From Broken to Brave, author and publisher Amy M. Le shares the deeply personal experiences that shaped her life, from escaping the Vietnam War as a five-year-old child to undergoing life-saving open-heart surgery shortly after arriving in America.

Amy joins the Books That Make You Show to discuss why, after years of writing fiction and helping other authors tell their stories, she knew it was finally time to tell her own.

Her memoir explores survival, identity, family, discrimination, homelessness, trauma, and the complicated experience of growing up between Vietnamese and American cultures. Amy also shares how reconnecting with a college friend helped her recover a missing piece of her past and gave her what she needed to finally complete the book.

But From Broken to Brave is about more than what Amy survived. It is also about what came afterward.

Amy discusses finding her voice, becoming an author, writing with her son, and building Quill Hawk Publishing, a hybrid publishing company focused on amplifying diverse voices. She also explains why community has been so important throughout her writing career and offers a simple piece of advice to aspiring authors: find your tribe and don't try to do it alone.

Amy's journey shows how storytelling can connect generations, preserve history, create community, and help us make meaning from experiences we once struggled to understand.