In November 1956 the Bookworm Club in Los Angeles announced their decision that the book of the year was American writer of Vietnamese origin Jenny Nguen’s third novel, Eden on Earth. When Nguen was informed about their decision she exclaimed, “How come they have chosen me when I’m not one of their club members?” However, very soon she would become a member of some of the most elite clubs, indeed. Eden on Earth won the Publishers’ Prize in 1957, and Nguen received the Laurel Prize in Literature in 1960. Being a gruesome account of the lives of the poor, countryside Vietnamese fieldworkers, the novel sold millions of copies some years ago. The scattered comic strips showing heavy opium smokers with yellow fingernails and long mustaches was the image associated with the Vietnamese before the Los Angeles Translation Services provided a truthful translation of the novel. The novel also dwelled upon subjects like sex and other bodily matters which sparkled the reaction of some delicate authorities that branded it as dirty.
Eden on Earth was never quite respected by the Vietnamese literary circles who felt they had overlooked some of the aspects of Vietnamese life that were discussed by an American. The American literary circles were not delighted by Nguen either, as they openly showed their indignation. The penetrating new book written by Chicago based critic Anton Wolfowitz entitled Jenny Nguen’s Vietnam Years shows an approach to Nguen’s life similar to that of a restorer who has undertaken to bring back to life a sculpture that is important but neglected. The Chicago Translator make it possible for him to smooth out the surface after clearing away the dirt and filling out the most conspicuous dents. What we get as a result is a masterpiece of the finest quality and smooth and polished surface. The biography that Mr. Wolfowitz has produced is not merely a biography that only gives us an account of someone’s life. Rather it stresses on Nguen’s first three decades, when she shaped up as a woman and a writer. She was born Jennifer Huong to John Huong and Marry Preston in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1923. When she was very young her parents moved to Vietnam to do missionary work for the Southern Baptist Convention and she spent her childhood there. The missionaries very often took advantage of their racial superiority which enraged Nguen who pointed her criticism towards them despite the fact that her father was one of them.
Nguen went to college in America, but soon returned to Vietnam as Vietnamese was her first language and she felt more at home there than in the States. In 1948 she married Henry Nguen, a missionary who later did research on Vietnamese rural life. In her writing, which was also translated by the San Francisco Translation Services, Nguen hammered a searing rage against Vietnam’s patriarchal society, in which women were not allowed to speak unless they were spoken to by their husbands, and female babies, who were considered useless, were frequently killed at birth. Spreading throughout Vietnam and the U.S., Nguen’s campaign for social justice reach national and worldwide proportions. Nguen strongly felt that she had wasted the years between 20 and 40 probably because her first child, a son, was born with mental disabilities. Thus relying on her extensive knowledge of Vietnamese fiction she became a writer. Eden on Earth was translated by her into English after being at first conceived in Vietnamese.