The book Positive Angle’s subheading is long on promises: Reboot Your Mind, Live Your Awesome Life. From anyone other than Chris Norlund ’03 AM, that could come off as pulpy overreach. But Norlund—a professor, writer, director, podcast host, and YouTube star—has a life story so amazing, we’re willing to bet that he has indeed rebooted his mind, possibly several times over. In 1975, as an infant, Norlund survived a horrific plane crash while being transported to the U.S. with 300 other child refugees in the first flight of Operation Babylift, part of the American evacuation of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
“To be in a plane crash and to survive a plane crash is like getting struck by lighting twice,” Norlund wrote in an essay while at Brown. “I don’t know if people get scarred from lightning, but when I was struck, I was afflicted with multiple scars. On my chest. On my conscience. On the first breath I take when I wake up to the morning dawn.”
A difficult childhood followed, but Norlund made it to Penn, then Brown; speaks Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English; has taught at Tsinghua University and the Fashion Institute of Technology; and, now, has published a book that mixes practical advice (“build your self-esteem with easy steps”) with intimate stories from his life. The book’s big reveal: 48 years after being separated from them, Norlund found his Vietnamese family. Now married and a resident of Busan, Korea, it seems that Norlund is, indeed, living his awesome life.