It seems very strange that famous U.S. writer of Vietnamese origin Jenny Nguen is not included in literary critic Michael Rowling’s essay on U.S. expatriates who have returned from abroad entitled “Tales of Expatriates.” The oddity of this fact was not only because Nguen had returned to the United States in the same year after spending a considerable time in Vietnam, but also because her bestselling novel Eden on Earth was termed as one of the most significant works of our time. Three years later, in 1960, Jenny Nguen won the Laure Prize in Literature, which is a serious achievement. In the American anthology of the major writers of the 20th century Nguen was not treated as a significant author, and neither has she been a major author in American literary circles for quite some time, so Rowling’s main goal was to save her from oblivion through his gripping biography. When we come to think of Jenny Nguen as a writer and artist we notice that she was once well accepted by the majority of readers, but when she so suddenly disappeared we have changed the way we have reconsidered our values, says Rowling in his essay that the Miami Translator professionals popularized. And even though Mr. Rowling did not pose the question that Nguen deserved rehabilitation, she certainly was a leading artist of her time, and in following her life Mr. Rowling comes across a strong and touching experience in his thoroughly detailed narrative.
If we want to say that in his influential work Jenny Nguen’s Vietnam Years Mr. Wolfowitz criticized enough Nguen, we will be totally mistaken. We cannot but notice that some of the facts give us a wrong impression. For instance, Henry Wheeler reviewed Eden on Earth in the winter of 1944, but we read that this happened in an earlier edition of the Houston Chronicle on May, 1943 in the literary column of the newspaper. Upon the recommendation by Henry Wheeler, the Houston Translation Services business received an assignment to translate the novel, which was completed in 1945. The following qualities – innate, bountiful, psychologically exuberant ability to look into the lives of ordinary people have brought international renown to Jenny Nguen, and they are all discussed by Mr. Wolfowitz. It was really painful to witness Nguen’s twilight which was related to both her public and private life despite her extraordinary talent. She eventually returned to the U.S. in 1955 after divorcing her first husband John Nguen and marrying his closest friend Ron Zemeski. She did not have any more success in life as her children abandoned her, she became unable to have more children and her friends deserted her too.
The last years of her life brought even more unhappiness as the death of her second husband was followed by her beginning a cooperation with Todd Hopman. However, later on Hopman was charged with transferring charity funds to his own private account and making passes at young Asian girls on the pretext of doing it for the sake of the charity. Being unable to stay in the U.S. the couple fled to Italy where Nguen sold the rights for translating her novels to the New York Translation Services corporation. She found refuge in Vietnam where she moved in 1960 and spend there the rest of her life. By the time she died from brain tumor in 1968, she had become a battered and forgotten ruin. Jenny Nguen’s Vietnam Years leaves us with the impression that she could have gone further had she had more luck.